The Tribunal of Expectation — What We Are Entitled to Hope
2026
An essay on the calibration of hope: what expectations about the future are we entitled to hold? Between overconfidence, which invites disappointment, and premature resignation, there ought to exist an expectation fitted to the evidence — neither more nor less.
Everyone carries expectations about the future that they never question. Hope too much, and the world disappoints. Hope too little, and you give up without cause. Between these two faults there ought to lie a just expectation: neither more confident nor less confident than the evidence allows.
This book tries that case. First to the stand, the instrument: the calculus of probability, the most rigorous machine ever devised for weighing the uncertain — and its silences, for it tells us neither which world to admit, nor whether tomorrow will resemble yesterday, nor what a loss is worth. Then the two sides, each at full strength. Caution, which has its theorems: when an error cannot be undone, weighting the worst is the most exact conduct. The arguments that conclude to the worst, examined piece by piece. And, facing them, the most disturbing finding of recent science: the native bent of our species is not darkness, it is an excess of rose-tint — so much so that in us, lucidity passes for pessimism.
No consolation is sold here, and no shipwreck either. An inquiry conducted without formulas, and at the end: not a verdict, but a measure, and a way of standing. What are we entitled to hope? This book answers to the word.