I want to live in a better world. You can’t change the world (win) by giving up. You can’t change the status quo easily and I can’t live with myself if I do nothing.
I don’t think of them as “losing causes”. While it’s important to be realistic about the current state of your cause, framing it this way assumes they have already and permanently lost, so nothing can ever change. Assuming a mindset of defeatism is demoralizing even if it is only in the language you use.
The notable part is that it indicates sophisticated tool making behavior 600,000 years before we previously thought it occurred.