Making decisions (and owning those decisions, esp. taking responsibility for them) is very costly and effortful. It’s great for having a sense of agency, but is still stressful.
One reason people sometimes found startups or organizations is because they just want the organization or product to exist. But often they do so because they expect an outsized payout if they do a good job.
Someone commented last year “being a leader sucks, and lately there’s been a bunch of egalitarian forces that push against many of the benefits you traditionally get for being a leader.”
People who identify with kings against competing interests often (but not always) hate prophets. But they often like the idea of prophets enough to retain false prophets. My former corporate employer in the mortgage finance field had lots of Econ PhD forecasters even though decisions weren’t being made based on technical expertise, to be able to claim that experts had been consulted & farsighted decisions were being made. We did have at least one true prophet too.
Relatedly – to what degree to animals have leaders? Also curious to what degree those leaders are accountable to decisions. Are there animals where leaders exist, and they don’t also get disproportionate resources? In those situations, are they held accountable?
On the flipside, there’s probably some kind of sweet spot of resources a leader can really get value from. I’m thinking of pirate captains, (and quartermasters) who had authority, and (as I understand it), somewhat more access to resources, but not much. (I think Legal Systems Different From Our Own claims they got an even share of the treasure, another book I read awhile back claimed they got two shares, as opposed to military captains that got much higher pay than the rest of the crew)
[edit: I’ve also heard that hunter gatherer societies also pushed egalitarianism in terms leaders not being much higher status. Or maybe this was part of a multi-level game where people play low status but actually are high status? In any case, the point is that the egalitarian forces are not new]
On my “How do people become ambitious?” question, one answer (not quite answering the question I meant to ask, but relevant here) was:
Seems to me like what happens is that redirection of sex or survival drives get caught up in some sort of stable configuration where they can never be satisfied yet the person doesn’t notice that aspect of the loop and thus keeps Doing the Thing far past the time normal people notice. Essentially they’ve goodharted themselves in a way that creates positive externalities for others.
Where I think most “healthy” leaders would want some outsized share, but not the sort of infinite desire to score money or power that drives the CEOS of the largest corporations, or the sort of people who become president.
Both. The semi-mythical Cassandra is a case in point: people (and gods) hated her and she hated being a prophet, just couldn’t do much about it. No one likes a bearer of bad news, and most prophesies are bad news. But being a prophet and being a leader are different jobs, not sure why the OP conflates them.
The former. Being a prophet is great! You’ve achieved enlightenment! All you’re doing is trying to spread the good word of your revelations with the rest of humanity. Here are all of these people, living lives of immense suffering, and you have the solution. You can bring them peace. You can ease the torment of their souls! Even a cold-blooded utilitarian can see that a 5% reduction in suffering multiplied by several hundred million people represents a substantial gain in overall utility. And if a bit of force needs to be applied in order to get people to see the Good Word, then that is justified, is it not?
This feels fairly off both from how historical prophets seem to have thought, and the modern day aspiring-prophets I’ve seen behave.
Being a prophet sucks in part because you can clearly see that correct thing that everybody should do… but nobody understands you and are constantly misinterpreting you or not listening to you or seeing you as a threat to their power.
And you generally don’t have the power to actually just make people do things. And if you do… you still have do all the stressful leadership things, without any commensurate reward.
Being a prophet sucks in part because you can clearly see that correct thing that everybody should do… but nobody understands you and are constantly misinterpreting you or not listening to you or seeing you as a threat to their power.
Turns out this part doesn’t suck because being a prophet you also understand this is going to happen and are accepting of it and work with it. It only counter-factually sucks to the non-prophet imaging what it would be like to be a prophet.
At least for some sufficiently advanced prophet. I think Sarah is using “prophet” in a way that your interpretation makes sense, as in many people will be in what I might instead call the “advisor” category.
I think prophets vary in whether they are “the sort of enlightened which comes bundled with equanimity.”
I agree advisor generally works, but not for the use case (important to this post) wherein someone does lead, but isn’t at the top of the pecking order.
We’ve been using the term prophet here, but it’s really just a term to refer to people who make decisions but don’t allocate all the resources to themselves. Certainly that more general group of people has not achieved enlightenment.
I think the distinction is important, but also my sense is the people who are actually enlightened don’t have that great a lived experience [at least of the process of trying to teach others about enlightment].
Do people hate prophets, or hate being prophets?
Making decisions (and owning those decisions, esp. taking responsibility for them) is very costly and effortful. It’s great for having a sense of agency, but is still stressful.
One reason people sometimes found startups or organizations is because they just want the organization or product to exist. But often they do so because they expect an outsized payout if they do a good job.
Someone commented last year “being a leader sucks, and lately there’s been a bunch of egalitarian forces that push against many of the benefits you traditionally get for being a leader.”
People who identify with kings against competing interests often (but not always) hate prophets. But they often like the idea of prophets enough to retain false prophets. My former corporate employer in the mortgage finance field had lots of Econ PhD forecasters even though decisions weren’t being made based on technical expertise, to be able to claim that experts had been consulted & farsighted decisions were being made. We did have at least one true prophet too.
Relatedly – to what degree to animals have leaders? Also curious to what degree those leaders are accountable to decisions. Are there animals where leaders exist, and they don’t also get disproportionate resources? In those situations, are they held accountable?
On the flipside, there’s probably some kind of sweet spot of resources a leader can really get value from. I’m thinking of pirate captains, (and quartermasters) who had authority, and (as I understand it), somewhat more access to resources, but not much. (I think Legal Systems Different From Our Own claims they got an even share of the treasure, another book I read awhile back claimed they got two shares, as opposed to military captains that got much higher pay than the rest of the crew)
[edit: I’ve also heard that hunter gatherer societies also pushed egalitarianism in terms leaders not being much higher status. Or maybe this was part of a multi-level game where people play low status but actually are high status? In any case, the point is that the egalitarian forces are not new]
On my “How do people become ambitious?” question, one answer (not quite answering the question I meant to ask, but relevant here) was:
Where I think most “healthy” leaders would want some outsized share, but not the sort of infinite desire to score money or power that drives the CEOS of the largest corporations, or the sort of people who become president.
Both. The semi-mythical Cassandra is a case in point: people (and gods) hated her and she hated being a prophet, just couldn’t do much about it. No one likes a bearer of bad news, and most prophesies are bad news. But being a prophet and being a leader are different jobs, not sure why the OP conflates them.
The former. Being a prophet is great! You’ve achieved enlightenment! All you’re doing is trying to spread the good word of your revelations with the rest of humanity. Here are all of these people, living lives of immense suffering, and you have the solution. You can bring them peace. You can ease the torment of their souls! Even a cold-blooded utilitarian can see that a 5% reduction in suffering multiplied by several hundred million people represents a substantial gain in overall utility. And if a bit of force needs to be applied in order to get people to see the Good Word, then that is justified, is it not?
This feels fairly off both from how historical prophets seem to have thought, and the modern day aspiring-prophets I’ve seen behave.
Being a prophet sucks in part because you can clearly see that correct thing that everybody should do… but nobody understands you and are constantly misinterpreting you or not listening to you or seeing you as a threat to their power.
And you generally don’t have the power to actually just make people do things. And if you do… you still have do all the stressful leadership things, without any commensurate reward.
Turns out this part doesn’t suck because being a prophet you also understand this is going to happen and are accepting of it and work with it. It only counter-factually sucks to the non-prophet imaging what it would be like to be a prophet.
At least for some sufficiently advanced prophet. I think Sarah is using “prophet” in a way that your interpretation makes sense, as in many people will be in what I might instead call the “advisor” category.
I think prophets vary in whether they are “the sort of enlightened which comes bundled with equanimity.”
I agree advisor generally works, but not for the use case (important to this post) wherein someone does lead, but isn’t at the top of the pecking order.
We’ve been using the term prophet here, but it’s really just a term to refer to people who make decisions but don’t allocate all the resources to themselves. Certainly that more general group of people has not achieved enlightenment.
I think the distinction is important, but also my sense is the people who are actually enlightened don’t have that great a lived experience [at least of the process of trying to teach others about enlightment].