Hmm. I notice when I think "Ambition" I don't necessarily think of people getting rich or gaining a lot of power. I think of people with really crazy goals. Like... Trying to create life in a petri dish is "Ambitious", trying to make AI sentient is "Ambitious". This does seem to say to me that I think of ambition as relating to challenging... or perhaps hubristic tasks.
But at the same time, gaining status and power also seems ambitious- but it doesn't feel like it has to be hard to be ambitious. You can achieve a lot of power and status just by spending all your free time seeking it instead of playing video games. There's some intuition that 'Ambitious' refers to the property of their ego that drives them to pursue status and power. This really just says to me... there are multiple overlapping concepts in the linguistic ecosystem around the word "Ambition". Status and Power seeking are 'Ambitious'. Trying do do hard things is 'Ambitious'. Trying to make great works is 'Ambitious'. If you try to do these things and consistently fail- you might not be seen as 'ambitious' by others, even if something internal to you is pointing or attempting to point in that direction.
I think it's complicated by our relationship with role models. Someone who actually converted their ambitions into great works or power or status is more of a role model for someone with their own ambitions, than someone who has ambitions and fails, so if we are choosing someone to point to as 'ambitious' we are never going to point at some basement Neet spending 18 hours a day failing to code an AI girlfriend- because he's not a great role model (Terry A. Davis comes to mind). It wouldn't be great for our point. We're going to point at Sam Altman or someone like that, who can be agreed to have achieved some level of great accomplishment in the field. This may not even fully map to the inner feelings of ambition- but it correlates heavily I would think. Practically no-one achieves greatness without trying at all.
My working definition is that ambition is basically neuroticism plus competitiveness, with the former defined as something like 'inability to accept one's self and one's situation uncritically' and the latter as simply 'desire to win'. At the extremes the 2x2 would be
(Low neuroticism)(low competitiveness)- Laid-back people, contented housewives, 'it's not much but it's honest work'. Eg. The Dude.
(High neuroticism)(low competitiveness)- chronic anhedonics, complainers & worrywarts. Eg. Every Woody Allen character.
(Low neuroticism)(high competitiveness)- Typical 'winners' who compete until satisfied & then relax. Eg. Chad Thundercock.
(Hugh neuroticism)(high competitiveness)- People for whom every setback is a challenge & no victory is ever sufficient. Eg. Every conqueror, usurper, visionary and notably 'driven' person.
As a low/low, I kind of feel bad for highly ambitious people. Only a few of them actually get to be legends, most burn out or get crushed (being hypercompetitive doesn't neccessarily make you hypercompetent) and being highly neurotic doesn't sound like much fun even for the billionaires. But I can definitely appreciate the benefits of their existence, preferably far away from me.
Hmm. I don't know. I'm not a billionaire and haven't read any of their biographies, so I feel like I could look into whether your model is right or not...
But my first intuition is that there's a way to do the thing without it sucking? Something where you have an enlightened Buddhist growth mindset sort of shape to your analysis of your failings, and all improvement with respect to your goals is euphoric to you. Then you shape your goals such that you are a maximizer rather than a satisficer, or such that you are a satisficer of things you have determined to be great works.
This is the kind of mindset I try to cultivate. But I'm a loser in terms of current attainment of status, money, or great works, so I can't guarantee that there's an actual path there that works for achieving 'greatness'.
More generally, I'm just skeptical that your proposed architecture- high neuroticism, high competitiveness, is the only architecture that leads to greatness... or perhaps that it has to feel bad. I could be convinced that it's the only one that works for humans if all the billionaires pattern match to it... but there should be other architectures that work in principle.
As a high/high on your quadrant (competence would be a different issue however) - it’s weird to think that other people don’t have these sorts of worries and drives gnawing at them 24/7. To me, it’s just the way life is. So it’s always good to be reminded that there are people who experience the world in such a fundamentally different way.
Ambition is a strong desire for socially-evaluated achievement, almost always involving peer competition. Some of this is probably personality, and some of this is probably learned and honed. It’s a useful construct, why not? There’s a nice documentary on Netflix about Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is the embodiment of ambition. His entire life was about dominance over competitors, many of whom were peers that did not necessarily see themselves as competitors. This “ambition” drove him to be a top bodybuilder, then a millionaire in business, then a top actor, then governor of California.
Ambition, then, is the overzealous pursuit of gain. It’s going full Conan the Barbarian. The problem with ambition is that (1) it’s zero sum, and (2) it’s narrow-minded. A society filled with Schwarzeneggers would terminate itself. The dominance-hungry who fail would self-implode and lash out, and all the necessary thinking and consideration outside dominance would not get done.
Some people seek power more than others. Ambition is a good word for this.
Napoleon, Elon Musk, Julius Caesar on one side, the stereotypical lazy NEET on the other side. Some people will go to extraordinary lengths to get power, others don't.
There's no such thing as ambition, there's just 'long description of personality traits which people typically describe as ambition'.
I don't think you've said anything meaningful here other than implying that ambition is a multifaceted concept and not a single numerical value. Which of course it is, pretty much all personality traits are multifaceted and not single dimensional sliders even though people sometimes describe them as such.
You have not defined ambition and that is annoying to me.
Looking at various definitions of ambition. There is "a strong wish to achieve something" which, I suppose when put into action might be called "Drive".
There is also "a strong wish to be successful, powerful, rich, etc." which is possibly closer to the idea you are debunking, except you're doing it by saying that successful/powerful/rich/etc. is highly relative. I think few would disagree.
I do not think your introduced terminology/acronyms adds anything and that is annoying to me as well.
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Notes -
Hmm. I notice when I think "Ambition" I don't necessarily think of people getting rich or gaining a lot of power. I think of people with really crazy goals. Like... Trying to create life in a petri dish is "Ambitious", trying to make AI sentient is "Ambitious". This does seem to say to me that I think of ambition as relating to challenging... or perhaps hubristic tasks.
But at the same time, gaining status and power also seems ambitious- but it doesn't feel like it has to be hard to be ambitious. You can achieve a lot of power and status just by spending all your free time seeking it instead of playing video games. There's some intuition that 'Ambitious' refers to the property of their ego that drives them to pursue status and power. This really just says to me... there are multiple overlapping concepts in the linguistic ecosystem around the word "Ambition". Status and Power seeking are 'Ambitious'. Trying do do hard things is 'Ambitious'. Trying to make great works is 'Ambitious'. If you try to do these things and consistently fail- you might not be seen as 'ambitious' by others, even if something internal to you is pointing or attempting to point in that direction.
I think it's complicated by our relationship with role models. Someone who actually converted their ambitions into great works or power or status is more of a role model for someone with their own ambitions, than someone who has ambitions and fails, so if we are choosing someone to point to as 'ambitious' we are never going to point at some basement Neet spending 18 hours a day failing to code an AI girlfriend- because he's not a great role model (Terry A. Davis comes to mind). It wouldn't be great for our point. We're going to point at Sam Altman or someone like that, who can be agreed to have achieved some level of great accomplishment in the field. This may not even fully map to the inner feelings of ambition- but it correlates heavily I would think. Practically no-one achieves greatness without trying at all.
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My working definition is that ambition is basically neuroticism plus competitiveness, with the former defined as something like 'inability to accept one's self and one's situation uncritically' and the latter as simply 'desire to win'. At the extremes the 2x2 would be
As a low/low, I kind of feel bad for highly ambitious people. Only a few of them actually get to be legends, most burn out or get crushed (being hypercompetitive doesn't neccessarily make you hypercompetent) and being highly neurotic doesn't sound like much fun even for the billionaires. But I can definitely appreciate the benefits of their existence, preferably far away from me.
Hmm. I don't know. I'm not a billionaire and haven't read any of their biographies, so I feel like I could look into whether your model is right or not...
But my first intuition is that there's a way to do the thing without it sucking? Something where you have an enlightened Buddhist growth mindset sort of shape to your analysis of your failings, and all improvement with respect to your goals is euphoric to you. Then you shape your goals such that you are a maximizer rather than a satisficer, or such that you are a satisficer of things you have determined to be great works.
This is the kind of mindset I try to cultivate. But I'm a loser in terms of current attainment of status, money, or great works, so I can't guarantee that there's an actual path there that works for achieving 'greatness'.
More generally, I'm just skeptical that your proposed architecture- high neuroticism, high competitiveness, is the only architecture that leads to greatness... or perhaps that it has to feel bad. I could be convinced that it's the only one that works for humans if all the billionaires pattern match to it... but there should be other architectures that work in principle.
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As a high/high on your quadrant (competence would be a different issue however) - it’s weird to think that other people don’t have these sorts of worries and drives gnawing at them 24/7. To me, it’s just the way life is. So it’s always good to be reminded that there are people who experience the world in such a fundamentally different way.
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Ambition is a strong desire for socially-evaluated achievement, almost always involving peer competition. Some of this is probably personality, and some of this is probably learned and honed. It’s a useful construct, why not? There’s a nice documentary on Netflix about Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is the embodiment of ambition. His entire life was about dominance over competitors, many of whom were peers that did not necessarily see themselves as competitors. This “ambition” drove him to be a top bodybuilder, then a millionaire in business, then a top actor, then governor of California.
Ambition, then, is the overzealous pursuit of gain. It’s going full Conan the Barbarian. The problem with ambition is that (1) it’s zero sum, and (2) it’s narrow-minded. A society filled with Schwarzeneggers would terminate itself. The dominance-hungry who fail would self-implode and lash out, and all the necessary thinking and consideration outside dominance would not get done.
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What I want to know is—how do you feel about intuition?
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Some people seek power more than others. Ambition is a good word for this.
Napoleon, Elon Musk, Julius Caesar on one side, the stereotypical lazy NEET on the other side. Some people will go to extraordinary lengths to get power, others don't.
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I don't think you've said anything meaningful here other than implying that ambition is a multifaceted concept and not a single numerical value. Which of course it is, pretty much all personality traits are multifaceted and not single dimensional sliders even though people sometimes describe them as such.
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You have not defined ambition and that is annoying to me.
Looking at various definitions of ambition. There is "a strong wish to achieve something" which, I suppose when put into action might be called "Drive".
There is also "a strong wish to be successful, powerful, rich, etc." which is possibly closer to the idea you are debunking, except you're doing it by saying that successful/powerful/rich/etc. is highly relative. I think few would disagree.
I do not think your introduced terminology/acronyms adds anything and that is annoying to me as well.
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