Among everyone I've known decently well, you are the greatest outlier on the intellectual-ability/ambition scale, and I feel the gap between you and my no. 2 person on that scale is not small.
This puzzled me for a long time after we met. Initially I thought it had to be caused by trauma but after many months of idly turning the question over in my mind when we were hanging out, I ended up concluding it was probably just a quirk of your personality. But it still seemed somewhat mysterious. I think I'm generally an astute judge of character, but even after reading this post, I don't feel like I have a deep understanding of what's going on here with you. Prior to reading this post I also felt like I had no idea how you thought about it, and I never brought it up because I felt I couldn't predict your reaction, and felt afraid that the interaction could go badly.
I don't empathize with your unambition, except in the sense that you also have a very diverse set of interests and appreciations. And even though I know rationally I need to commit to one pursuit to have any hope of being world-class at it-- I haven't figured out how to do that without what feels like fundamentally narrowing my perspective on the human experience, and that is a very painful thing to do. On some level, I do envy those who can commit most of their lives to only working on, say, making compilers. But I'm not sure if I could do it myself. I want to understand everything.
I think most people see me as unambitious because money and status barely motivate me, and the things I have been ambitious about aren't legible. But I feel my desires themselves are almost pathologically ambitious. When I'm not depressed, I experience physical pain (chest, stomach) just thinking about things I want to be doing-- but can't-- merely due to time constraints. I felt that multiple times reading this piece. I feel a lot of empathy for Roon's mood, but also envy and contempt. Many humans-- past and present-- have been willing to risk torching the commons because, apparently, the hedonic pull of their own ambition was so strong. When I contemplate this, I start wondering if we, as a species, have ever really been in control of our destiny.
I wouldn't call this post naval-gazing -- that is a pejorative. This post is about how we choose to spend our time, which is one of the things in life that really matters. And it is concrete, with real skin in the game. This is my new favorite of what you've written.
Hey, great read as always. I wonder if the future impact of AGI makes a lot of us rethink what ambition even means when the traditional drive for work might shif so much. It's honestly very insightful to read someone so clearly articulat a feeling many probably share but struggle to put into words.
1. You take pleasure in the process — the learning, the challenges, the friends you make along the way (in less pedestrian words of course)
2. You haven’t identified an ultimate “destination” that is worthy of foreclosing on other possibilities, or of sacrificing other things in life that you value.
Perhaps additionally:
3. You are skeptical that sacrifices made in service of “great” accomplishments are likely to be worth the trade-off?
4. You are skeptical that what is superficially imagined to be “great” isn’t often either hollow or a mirage?
> My ambition is to be invited to the Gathering 4 Gardner, and to be able to show off something beautiful and beguiling.
awesome
Among everyone I've known decently well, you are the greatest outlier on the intellectual-ability/ambition scale, and I feel the gap between you and my no. 2 person on that scale is not small.
This puzzled me for a long time after we met. Initially I thought it had to be caused by trauma but after many months of idly turning the question over in my mind when we were hanging out, I ended up concluding it was probably just a quirk of your personality. But it still seemed somewhat mysterious. I think I'm generally an astute judge of character, but even after reading this post, I don't feel like I have a deep understanding of what's going on here with you. Prior to reading this post I also felt like I had no idea how you thought about it, and I never brought it up because I felt I couldn't predict your reaction, and felt afraid that the interaction could go badly.
I don't empathize with your unambition, except in the sense that you also have a very diverse set of interests and appreciations. And even though I know rationally I need to commit to one pursuit to have any hope of being world-class at it-- I haven't figured out how to do that without what feels like fundamentally narrowing my perspective on the human experience, and that is a very painful thing to do. On some level, I do envy those who can commit most of their lives to only working on, say, making compilers. But I'm not sure if I could do it myself. I want to understand everything.
I think most people see me as unambitious because money and status barely motivate me, and the things I have been ambitious about aren't legible. But I feel my desires themselves are almost pathologically ambitious. When I'm not depressed, I experience physical pain (chest, stomach) just thinking about things I want to be doing-- but can't-- merely due to time constraints. I felt that multiple times reading this piece. I feel a lot of empathy for Roon's mood, but also envy and contempt. Many humans-- past and present-- have been willing to risk torching the commons because, apparently, the hedonic pull of their own ambition was so strong. When I contemplate this, I start wondering if we, as a species, have ever really been in control of our destiny.
I wouldn't call this post naval-gazing -- that is a pejorative. This post is about how we choose to spend our time, which is one of the things in life that really matters. And it is concrete, with real skin in the game. This is my new favorite of what you've written.
Hey, great read as always. I wonder if the future impact of AGI makes a lot of us rethink what ambition even means when the traditional drive for work might shif so much. It's honestly very insightful to read someone so clearly articulat a feeling many probably share but struggle to put into words.
It seems that we can position unambition as gratitude for the status quo.
I believe I’m hearing at least a couple things:
1. You take pleasure in the process — the learning, the challenges, the friends you make along the way (in less pedestrian words of course)
2. You haven’t identified an ultimate “destination” that is worthy of foreclosing on other possibilities, or of sacrificing other things in life that you value.
Perhaps additionally:
3. You are skeptical that sacrifices made in service of “great” accomplishments are likely to be worth the trade-off?
4. You are skeptical that what is superficially imagined to be “great” isn’t often either hollow or a mirage?