TL;DR I think "Pessimization" is a bad concept to think about in the case of activist movements. I think most of it can be explained by ordinary failures, and that using pessimization as a concept is worse than just thinking about the ordinary causes of failure on an object level.

Pessimization

"Perverse Pessimization", says Richard Ngo, is when an organization nominally dedicated to X ends up causing not-X. This is particularly common amongst activist groups according to Richard, and he has a separate thread calling it "The Activist's Curse"

Two of his choice examples are pretty weird to me (Liberalism? Liberalism?? The ideology which took over the half the world and reigned supreme for at least half a century, which is widely agreed to be the best half-century ever. Is the "pessimization" of liberalism that eventually people stopped doing liberalism? And I don't see how transhumanism has made us [...]

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Outline:

(00:26) Pessimization

(01:45) Losing

(03:08) Being Wrong

(04:04) Opportunists

(04:54) Replacement

(05:28) Scenario:

(07:14) Synthesis

(10:10) Red-Thing-Ism

(12:08) Coda

The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
October 1st, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/35Mfu9qhKpp6YLzo8/pessimization-is-just-ordinary-failure

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“‘Pessimization’ Is just Ordinary Failure” by J Bostock

LessWrong (30+ Karma)