Are depressed people more realistic?

[Angrboda]

A person determined to succeed will also often take imprudent steps. History is full of such people, determined to storm the castle, for instance.

Give and take. A realistic person would be somewhere in the middle, wouldn't they? Determined to succeed, acutely aware of what may aid them in failure, weighing both before action? For example, it isn't pessimistic to conclude that you are likely to fail at a task due to your lack of skill, opportunity, and planning...lol is it? Wouldn't optimism or pessimism be the appropriate appraisal of a situation (and your relation to it) based upon the circumstances? If a person is being optimistic despite staring at the gaping maw, as it were, are they actually being optimistic, or are they simply being foolish? The same for the reverse.

I think perhaps what is meant is optimistic or realistic "given the facts of the matter," or in other words, whether one has greater confidence in their abilities, or in the situation's liabilities, than is warranted. This brings up several questions. First, related to the nature of reason and what is an appropriate or ideal appraisal of the world. Historically, models of such have focused on optimization under constraint, that we seek the ideal compromise of all values. However, proponents of the bounded rationality model since Herbert Simon have suggested that, not only is this an inaccurate model of human problem solving, it may blind us to the virtues and vices of the heuristics we do use. Second, for whom is the result being generated? Self-image and belief are remarkably perseverant in the face of dissonant facts, and one has to ask, if the optimist doesn't realize any subjective disadvantages to her optimism, as a consequence of bias or delusion, then shouldn't the gauge for "too optimistic" be that person's own experience of the results, not some "objectively valid" assessment? And the third question has to do with teleology, meaning, and the goals of behavior. If instrumental utility is the yardstick, perhaps people who aren't depressed are too optimistic for their own good. However, this is not the only perspective from which to view the question. If the goal of behavior is subjective pleasure, then the remarks made under my second objection apply. If the goal is reproduction, it's not clear that the hypothetical "more realistic outlook" is in fact more useful than one infected by optimism. And if life is meaningless, the question of what we're measuring that realism against becomes very problematic. What is instrumental utility if instrumental utility is without value. Perhaps it's better to be deluded and wrong if it's all going to amount to the same in the end.