What Its Like To Be a Rational Optimist in a Pandemic
MATT RIDLEY IS one of the best-selling—and best-regarded—science and economics writers on the planet. He wrote recently that in the face of the coronavirus pandemic “we are about to find out how robust civilisation is” and that “the hardships ahead will be like nothing we have ever known.” Given that Ridley’s best-known book is 2010’s The Rational Optimist, those dire words caught some of his fans by surprise.
Ridley’s next book, How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom (Harper), will be published in May. It touches on many questions now of acute interest, including how to set the stage for major breakthroughs in medicine and technology. Innovation, the book argues, “cannot be modelled properly by economists, but it can easily be discouraged by politicians.”
In late March, Reason’s Nick Gillespie spoke with Ridley via Skype from their respective selfquarantines in New York and Northumberland, England. They discussed the political response to COVID-19, Ridley’s longstanding distrust of viruses and bats, and when we’ll be able to reopen the world economy.
Reason: You are the rational optimist. But when the coronavirus hit North America and Europe, you wrote a couple of pieces that were striking to me because of the pessimism involved. You talked about how you thought we would never be faced with something like this. Can you explain how the emergence of this pandemic has shaken some of your beliefs about progress?
Ridley: Well, the first thing I should say is that I’ve never believed that the world is the best of all possible worlds and can’t be improved—you know, that we’ve already reached nirvana. One of the things I’m very clear about in The Rational Optimist is there are still problems to be solved. There are still threats. There are still risks. I personally think we’ve been worrying about the wrong risks, and this is a reminder that we have been doing that. But I’ll hold my hands up and say I was not out there saying, “Watch out. There’s a pandemic coming.” I wish I had been.
But back in 1999, I was asked to write a short book about the future of disease,
