> and only framing that makes sense is realism vs confusion/delusion

I think it's very hard, if not impossible, to have objective realism. We all have a tilt. Most people are probably a bit deluded. The frameworks of pessimism and optimism maybe work given the broad inability to have objective realism?

I'm not talking about people's personal predispositions / decision strategies per se. I'm talking about the outcome-based labels that we stick on them after the fact.

Make a table where the world is 3-valued (up/down/neutral) and our subject is only 2-valued (up/down), you'll see what I mean. World up, person down: person is wrong/confused. World up, person up: person is correct/realist. Optimistic / pessimistic roles only work when the world is neutral. This is very silly of course; that's what I'm trying to point out.

In terms of discussing personal predisposition we need to address whether the individual uses strategy to determine appetite for risk, accepts and integrates feedback or doesn't, etc. But yeah.. a completely generalized and non-situational predisposition based on no trends in evidence, on no expected-value considerations, ignoring feedback.. is also called confused or delusional. Notice that the outcome doesn't matter here actually. Intent does matter.. if you're trying and failing to evaluate evidence properly, suffering from imperfect info, you might still be realist. Realists aren't perfect, they just try to align with what is real