I’ve been thinking about that lately, and I think a good reason for telling yourself you’ll succeed even if the odds are against you is that you should prefer to be the kind of entity that succeeds; ergo, you should optimize your predictions to benefit that kind of entity. Doing so will also maximize the measure of those entities, because of how our brains treat prediction of success as encouragement; so it’s preferable on that level as well.
I’ve been thinking about that lately, and I think a good reason for telling yourself you’ll succeed even if the odds are against you is that you should prefer to be the kind of entity that succeeds; ergo, you should optimize your predictions to benefit that kind of entity. Doing so will also maximize the measure of those entities, because of how our brains treat prediction of success as encouragement; so it’s preferable on that level as well.