The economics Paul Romer distinguishes between complacent optimism, the feeling of a child waiting for presents on Christmas morning, and conditional optimism, the feeling of a child who wants a treehouse and realizes that if he gets some wood and nails and persuades other kids to help him, he can build one.

Steven Pinker, Enlightenment now: the case for reason, science, humanism, and progress, New York, 2018, p. 154