lmao only if this argument worked. To that end, you could argue that we'd all be much happier people if we expected all things to be awful -

But I believe that you need to actually believe your expectations. If one falsefully downgrades their expectations (defaltes) just so they can be pleasantly surprised later then they actually don't have that expectation.

There's a quote from 

Peter Thiel

that I can't find right now that roughly says that 

burning witches

was done by people in the past who were more superstitious than contemporary folk -- slightly -- and they were willing to burn witches because they actually thought that would alleviate a lot of their problems. Things like plague and whatnot I believe. 

Thiel jokes that this witch burning only worked because the people believed it did. The feeling of agency and the

placebo

belief that things were improving after these burnings would be rendered moot if they were to not actually believe that they were working.