Good questions.

It is optimism you can defend with evidence. Intelligent Optimism means being thrilled about the future in an informed and rational way, based on statistics, data, facts and science. It is not a mood or a slogan. It is a way of looking at the world that starts with the record of what humanity has actually achieved, and asks what we could achieve next.

Ordinary optimism can be blind: a hope that things will turn out fine. Intelligent Optimism is the opposite of lazy. It looks hard at the numbers, including the bad ones, and concludes that progress is real, that it was made by people solving problems, and that it can continue if we keep doing the work.

News reports what happens suddenly, and bad things tend to happen suddenly: a crash, an attack, a disaster. Good things tend to happen slowly: a vaccine reaching one more country, a child staying in school a little longer. The slow good news rarely makes headlines, so a news diet can leave people believing the world is getting worse when, on many of the biggest measures, it is getting better.

No. Climate change, pandemics, inequality, conflict and the risks of new technology are real, and Intelligent Optimism takes them seriously. The point is that problems are solvable. Pessimism tends to say "nothing can be done"; complacency says "nothing needs to be done." Intelligent Optimism says: a lot has been done, and a lot more can be.

Over the last century and more: average life expectancy has roughly doubled, infant and maternal deaths have fallen dramatically, extreme poverty has dropped from most of humanity to a small minority, literacy is higher than ever, and the rate of violent death is far lower than in past centuries. See the fifteen reasons and A Case for Intelligent Optimism.

From long-running public data sets and the researchers who study them, including the United Nations, the World Bank, the World Health Organization, and work popularised by thinkers such as Steven Pinker, Hans Rosling, Max Roser (Our World in Data) and Peter Diamandis. We encourage everyone to check the sources and look at the long-term trends for themselves.

Psychologists call it negativity bias: we notice threats more than gains, and we remember losses more than wins. Add a 24-hour news cycle and social media that reward outrage, and it is easy to feel the world is falling apart. Intelligent Optimism is a deliberate correction: look at the long-run data, not the last hour.

AI is one of the most powerful tools humans have ever built. Used wisely, it can speed up science, personalise education and medicine, and help solve problems that have resisted us for generations. Used carelessly, it brings real risks. Intelligent Optimism means engaging with AI thoughtfully: learning it, shaping it and holding it to human values, rather than fearing it or ignoring it.

Climate change is a serious problem, and it is also a problem people are actively solving. Clean energy has become dramatically cheaper and is being installed at record pace. The intelligent optimist's position is not "it's fine" but "we have the tools, so let's use them faster."

Because what we believe about the future shapes what we do today. People who think nothing can improve rarely try to improve anything. People who see that progress is possible are more likely to start, build, invent, study and help. Optimism, grounded in facts, is fuel for action.

Intelligent Optimism was founded by Rohan Roberts. It is a global community initiative of SciFest Dubai and part of The HUMAN Project curriculum. The movement has over 400,000 followers on Facebook.

Follow the movement on social media, share the good news you find, and join or start a local group through IO Global. Teachers can bring the ideas into the classroom. Everyone can practise the habit: when you hear a claim about the world, ask what the long-term data says.

Yes. Intelligent Optimism groups meet in cities around the world to share ideas, host talks and debates, and celebrate progress. Get in touch and we'll help you begin.