Is the glass half full or half empty?
You’ve likely encountered this as a personality test. Optimists see possibilities. Pessimists see lack. But that framing can be too rudimentary.
Before deciding how to describe the glass, especially if we’re going to drink from it, we should ask a more important question: what’s inside it?
If it’s water, we call the glass half empty because we want more of it. The framing encourages restraint. You sip instead of gulp. You pace yourself. The worst-case scenario is that you will run out of water too soon. If you’re wrong and there was plenty more water coming, the regret is minor.
If it’s poison, we call the glass half full because we want less of it. The framing keeps the danger visible. You don’t experiment. You don’t “just take a little.” If you’re wrong and it turns out to be harmless, the regret is inconvenience or delay. But if you’re wrong, the cost is catastrophic and irreversible.
Same glass. Same uncertainty. Different framings, chosen to shape behavior toward lower regret.
This logic shows up in more ordinary places too.
At a Nigerian party, you can decide to fight for food early: hover aggressively, stay close to the serving point, make sure you’re seen. If food turns out to be scarce, that strategy pays off. But you stand a chance of embarrassing yourself.
Or you can stay back. Let things play out. If food runs out, the regret is that you would buy dinner on your way home with your own money.
In both cases, the decision isn’t about optimism. It’s about which regret you’re willing to live with.
That’s minimax regret in practice.
When uncertainty is high, the rational move isn’t to chase the best possible upside. It’s to choose the action that protects you from the worst version of being wrong.
Some mistakes are recoverable. Others are not so forgiving. They cost trust, credibility, or moral footing, things that don’t reset easily once spent.
In those situations, bounding regret is the wiser one. Because intelligence has limits. Confidence doesn’t cancel consequences. And some errors don’t just teach lessons. They leave scars.
So the real question isn’t whether the glass is half full or half empty. It’s whether you’ve framed it in a way that protects you from the most expensive way of being wrong.