I wonder to what degree ‘follow your dreams’ is a counterbalance to Dunning-Kruger. I.e. the people that should follow their dreams are likely to underestimate themselves, so a general ‘go for it against the odds’ climate might be just enough to push them to actually follow through. This would still leave the less skilled to suffer in following dreams they can’t succeed at, but there should be some thought as to whether the end result is positive for humanity-in-general or not.
There is also something to be said that some times the people that should follow their dreams are not apparent, and you only figure out they “had it in them” if indeed they go through the process of actually pushing through and improving themselves for it. This is why investment (and hiring) is so hard. All of a person’s history isn’t enough to tell you whether they will succeed in a new environment. You can select for an unbroken string of success, but that still leaves a huge amount of false negatives. Again, this lends credence as to whether it is better for humanity-in-general to contain the ‘follow your dreams’ meme.
And of course there is the related thought that the success cases of following your dreams might be wider than actually succeeding at them. In that case, following your dreams pushes you to strive for excellence, and that will push you to develop conscientiousness, a positive attitude towards learning, potentially improve your degree of agency. These characteristics are extremely valuable in many roles. Following something more conventional might not have motivated you enough to actually mould yourself into a more fierce agent. If this last thought is true, following your dreams, even in zero-sum games, might me a positive-sum game when looked at with a wide enough lens.
The advice to “follow your dreams” seems to have two different interpretations, “use your gut feeling to choose your career” and “strive for excellence in your chosen career”. I’m mostly objecting to the first interpretation.
As to what motivates people, I’ve come to believe that our interests and motivations are changeable, though I believed otherwise for many years. You can consciously choose to abandon a hopeless dream, and get a different dream that will motivate you just as much.
I don’t think making decisions based on gut feelings is the core issue. How does someone come to want to be a sports star?
1) They usually look towards people who they perceive to be high status and want to copy them.
2) They look at which activity they did in the past that they enjoy or where they got approval from others and then try to think up a career that matches them.
The first one could be good if the person has good role models but a lot of people simply have poor role models that don’t make the world a better place.
The second is problematic because a student who just finishes school has no experience at all in the majority of tasks that need doing in the world and thus won’t have any reference experience that they enjoy them.
Motivation is a gut feeling and without motivation you won’t strive for excellence.
I wonder to what degree ‘follow your dreams’ is a counterbalance to Dunning-Kruger. I.e. the people that should follow their dreams are likely to underestimate themselves, so a general ‘go for it against the odds’ climate might be just enough to push them to actually follow through. This would still leave the less skilled to suffer in following dreams they can’t succeed at, but there should be some thought as to whether the end result is positive for humanity-in-general or not.
There is also something to be said that some times the people that should follow their dreams are not apparent, and you only figure out they “had it in them” if indeed they go through the process of actually pushing through and improving themselves for it. This is why investment (and hiring) is so hard. All of a person’s history isn’t enough to tell you whether they will succeed in a new environment. You can select for an unbroken string of success, but that still leaves a huge amount of false negatives. Again, this lends credence as to whether it is better for humanity-in-general to contain the ‘follow your dreams’ meme.
And of course there is the related thought that the success cases of following your dreams might be wider than actually succeeding at them. In that case, following your dreams pushes you to strive for excellence, and that will push you to develop conscientiousness, a positive attitude towards learning, potentially improve your degree of agency. These characteristics are extremely valuable in many roles. Following something more conventional might not have motivated you enough to actually mould yourself into a more fierce agent. If this last thought is true, following your dreams, even in zero-sum games, might me a positive-sum game when looked at with a wide enough lens.
The advice to “follow your dreams” seems to have two different interpretations, “use your gut feeling to choose your career” and “strive for excellence in your chosen career”. I’m mostly objecting to the first interpretation.
As to what motivates people, I’ve come to believe that our interests and motivations are changeable, though I believed otherwise for many years. You can consciously choose to abandon a hopeless dream, and get a different dream that will motivate you just as much.
I don’t think making decisions based on gut feelings is the core issue. How does someone come to want to be a sports star?
1) They usually look towards people who they perceive to be high status and want to copy them.
2) They look at which activity they did in the past that they enjoy or where they got approval from others and then try to think up a career that matches them.
The first one could be good if the person has good role models but a lot of people simply have poor role models that don’t make the world a better place.
The second is problematic because a student who just finishes school has no experience at all in the majority of tasks that need doing in the world and thus won’t have any reference experience that they enjoy them.
Motivation is a gut feeling and without motivation you won’t strive for excellence.