[JumpCrisscross]

> the 2 people who were pictured comforting each other while trapped at the top of a burning wind turbine

Optimism doesn't necessarily mean hope. It can mean belief in an afterlife. An end to a suffering. Or gratitude for having someone else in a terrible moment.

I think OP is correct. You can't have good without optimism. Your point, which is also correct, is you can do good without hope.

[overfeed]

From the Oxford dictionary:

op·ti·mism (noun): hopefulness and confidence about the future or the successful outcome of something.

[JumpCrisscross]

The term has a philosophical heritage way richer than a dictionary one liner. I’m using one that makes OP’s statement make sense.

[overfeed]

The philosophical definition just opens up bigger cans of worms that can't be adequately addressed in an HN thread, and have been debated for thousands of years: what is "good"? Perhaps we need a moral framework to answer that, but then, what are morals? "You can't have good without optimism" is a declaration that has to be contextualized, and is far from universal.

I suspect answers couched in terms of individualism will always sound inadequate to questions that are inherently collectivist, such as why people do things "for the greater good" detrimental to their own well-being.