> Pessimists do not discriminate between charlatan and innovator. They just sit on the sidelines and crap on everything because a) it doesn't require any work, and b) ideas and attempts are imperfect, so it's easy to point out flaws in them and be correct.

This is the complaint of a salesman (or a follower of one) who's upset his job isn't easy, and wishes everyone was an optimist who'd just buy what he's selling based on his pitch.

The difference between a charlatan and an innovator is an innovator delivers and a charlatan sells.

This is precisely the attitude I was talking about with my comment. It assumes that it's everyone else's job to provide you with solutions, because providing solutions is the part that requires actual work.

> This is precisely the attitude I was talking about with my comment. It assumes that it's everyone else's job to provide you with solutions, because providing solutions is the part that requires actual work.

No it doesn't. Skepticism (or "pessimism") does not mean you "assume... it's everyone else's job to provide you with solutions."

> ...because providing solutions is the part that requires actual work.

And what if the solution isn't a solution, or isn't actually good enough to elicit universal enthusiasm and praise? No one's entitled to criticism-free cheerleading.

You're strawmanning pretty hard here. Nobody mentioned anything about universal enthusiasm, praise, cheerleading, or anything similar. Looks like you've intentionally missed the point.

If we identify optimists and pessimists only by the most extreme variant of each we will have excluded virtually everyone and no longer possess a scale with which to measure them.

So what's your threshold for when to call someone pessimistic when they're doing the very useful work of identifying flaws in something?

Never?

That's not going to work.

There's a difference between identifying things that you will need to overcome, mitigate, or work around in order to be successful (which is useful) and insisting that the existence of these things means the task is impossible or not worth trying (which is not useful).

Sure, but if you google the definition of the word we're all talking about, there's no mention of impossible. Just someone that, "see[s] the worst aspect of things or believe[s] that the worst will happen".

So basically, it's the person you might want around when you're building a bridge, or a jet, or a shuttle.