Goal: I’m interesting specifically in unambitious people who become ambitious. (Mostly because this seems like the most useful/interesting lever to push on. The broader goal is figure out ‘what would help people become more ambitious in a healthy/productive way at scale’).
Some people seem “born ambitious” but there’s not a lot I can change my actions based on that.
Related questions:
What’s a list of people who “are ambitious”? Potentially including:
people I know who seem ambitious
think for 5 minutes listing famous people
how do I get non-famous people? are famous people representative?
Rich people (Forbes 500 list)
Startup Founders
People who launch movements (see wikipedia list of movements. Who founded them, and/or took over them?)
People who have biographies written about them
Might conflate people who “have an ambition” vs “people who are generically ambitious” but that might be fine for now
Is there a procedure you can easily do to check biographies for “what was their main causal factors towards ambition” at moderate scale?
Who has thought about ambition through this lens?
Paul Graham and other YCombinator folk probably have.
What has Paul Graham has written about this topic?
As Tracey Davis would say, that’s not true! And what’s it mean?
Seems like there’s power over others and power over things to happen. To become ambitious about the first kind, most people only need a chance to taste and realize what it is they’re tasting. The setting might be for the greater good, the reflection might discourage the pupil, but the option will be on the table.
As to the power over things to happen, it requires serious autonomy (an ability to pick the real dependencies between things and to keep a roof over one’s head meanwhile) and/or serious despair (as in people who might survive cancer).
I mean that ‘ambitious’ people might be ‘just generally ambitious’ - I see some of them when they come to buy books on self-help or startups or esoteric things. They might be ‘ambitious, as in wanting to have power over other people’, & then they buy books on, say, romantic relationships or English for two-year-olds, or planners; but largely it’s also a hobby. Some of them do get to wield this power and are content with it. Some do collect thousands of likes on Facebook or Youtube, and are visible, and therefore counted ambitious by others.
And then there are people who want power over things, over events in the world. The least ‘personal’ example is a scientist, but the volunteer who sends winter clothes to families living on occupied land and the sniper who crouches on the roof above a demonstration, they also belong to this species. And I have yet to peg them down when they enter my bookstore. They are… invisible.
I think the category I’m most interested in is something like “ambitious creators”, and I’d expect them to buy books related to whatever thing they’re trying to create. (They would probably buy some books on self help and entrepreneurship, and they’d also buy books about music or math or programming or whatever)
Hmm, they must be rare. Most likely, shopping online and in English… one side of ambitiousness would be then ‘willingness to pay’, maybe even ‘willingness to pay to become known as such a person’.
I remain confused about your definitions. From the Paul Graham article:
If willfulness and discipline are what get you to your destination, ambition is how you choose it.
This would suggest a definition of “ambition” as it is commonly used: the tendency to choose big goals. On the other hand, you say:
Some people seem “born ambitious” but there’s not a lot I can change my actions based on that.
Okay, now I have a little insight into your motivations for thinking about this: you want to become more “ambitious” yourself. But this suggest “ambitious” to mean rather something like “capable of achieving big goals”—you don’t need to attain the “tendency to choose big goals”, because that’s trivially easy, and anyway, if you care about this topic, that means you already have big goals.
So, does your question in the OP mean something along the lines of “how do people become capable of achieving big goals”?
I think you’re equivocating between two possible meanings of “choose” here. There’s “choose” as in you start telling people “I want to write a book” and then there’s “choose” as in you actually decide to actually write the book, which is quite different. I think Ray is asking about something like how to cultivate the capacity to do the latter. It is not at all trivially easy. Most goals are fake; making them real is a genuine skill.
Ah, yes, when I say “choose”, I mean system-2-choose (i.e. the former meaning in your comment). Learning how to
actually decide to actually write the book
(i.e. how to work with setting intentions, or in general, how to overcome akrasia) would already be a to-do included on the big to-do list called “achieving goal X”.
In any case, if I understand it correctly, the question still is: how do people become capable of achieving big goals, including whatever system-1 manipulation, intention-setting, habit-forming, incentive-landscape-shaping, motivation-hacking, etc. is necessary to achieve these goals?
Further Braindump:
Goal: I’m interesting specifically in unambitious people who become ambitious. (Mostly because this seems like the most useful/interesting lever to push on. The broader goal is figure out ‘what would help people become more ambitious in a healthy/productive way at scale’).
Some people seem “born ambitious” but there’s not a lot I can change my actions based on that.
Related questions:
What’s a list of people who “are ambitious”? Potentially including:
people I know who seem ambitious
think for 5 minutes listing famous people
how do I get non-famous people? are famous people representative?
Rich people (Forbes 500 list)
Startup Founders
People who launch movements (see wikipedia list of movements. Who founded them, and/or took over them?)
People who have biographies written about them
Might conflate people who “have an ambition” vs “people who are generically ambitious” but that might be fine for now
Is there a procedure you can easily do to check biographies for “what was their main causal factors towards ambition” at moderate scale?
Who has thought about ambition through this lens?
Paul Graham and other YCombinator folk probably have.
What has Paul Graham has written about this topic?
Cities and Ambition
Anatomy of Determination (in which he claims ambition is an important element of determination)
How easy it is to ask him about different angles on questions he’s previously explored? Does he respond on Twitter or email or whatev?
What is the existing literature on ambition?
Scan through google scholar or whatever
Who in the rationality community has already thought about this a bunch?
How many startups have gotten a million users?
How many songs or youtube videos have gotten a million unique views?
As Tracey Davis would say, that’s not true! And what’s it mean?
Seems like there’s power over others and power over things to happen. To become ambitious about the first kind, most people only need a chance to taste and realize what it is they’re tasting. The setting might be for the greater good, the reflection might discourage the pupil, but the option will be on the table.
As to the power over things to happen, it requires serious autonomy (an ability to pick the real dependencies between things and to keep a roof over one’s head meanwhile) and/or serious despair (as in people who might survive cancer).
I’m having trouble parsing this comment (in part because I can’t tell which part of my comment this is replying to). Could you restate it?
Sorry, I often have this problem.
I mean that ‘ambitious’ people might be ‘just generally ambitious’ - I see some of them when they come to buy books on self-help or startups or esoteric things. They might be ‘ambitious, as in wanting to have power over other people’, & then they buy books on, say, romantic relationships or English for two-year-olds, or planners; but largely it’s also a hobby. Some of them do get to wield this power and are content with it. Some do collect thousands of likes on Facebook or Youtube, and are visible, and therefore counted ambitious by others.
And then there are people who want power over things, over events in the world. The least ‘personal’ example is a scientist, but the volunteer who sends winter clothes to families living on occupied land and the sniper who crouches on the roof above a demonstration, they also belong to this species. And I have yet to peg them down when they enter my bookstore. They are… invisible.
I think the category I’m most interested in is something like “ambitious creators”, and I’d expect them to buy books related to whatever thing they’re trying to create. (They would probably buy some books on self help and entrepreneurship, and they’d also buy books about music or math or programming or whatever)
Hmm, they must be rare. Most likely, shopping online and in English… one side of ambitiousness would be then ‘willingness to pay’, maybe even ‘willingness to pay to become known as such a person’.
I remain confused about your definitions. From the Paul Graham article:
This would suggest a definition of “ambition” as it is commonly used: the tendency to choose big goals. On the other hand, you say:
Okay, now I have a little insight into your motivations for thinking about this: you want to become more “ambitious” yourself. But this suggest “ambitious” to mean rather something like “capable of achieving big goals”—you don’t need to attain the “tendency to choose big goals”, because that’s trivially easy, and anyway, if you care about this topic, that means you already have big goals.
So, does your question in the OP mean something along the lines of “how do people become capable of achieving big goals”?
I think you’re equivocating between two possible meanings of “choose” here. There’s “choose” as in you start telling people “I want to write a book” and then there’s “choose” as in you actually decide to actually write the book, which is quite different. I think Ray is asking about something like how to cultivate the capacity to do the latter. It is not at all trivially easy. Most goals are fake; making them real is a genuine skill.
Ah, yes, when I say “choose”, I mean system-2-choose (i.e. the former meaning in your comment). Learning how to
(i.e. how to work with setting intentions, or in general, how to overcome akrasia) would already be a to-do included on the big to-do list called “achieving goal X”.
In any case, if I understand it correctly, the question still is: how do people become capable of achieving big goals, including whatever system-1 manipulation, intention-setting, habit-forming, incentive-landscape-shaping, motivation-hacking, etc. is necessary to achieve these goals?