There is no such thing as ambition, what does exist is contentment/personal satisfaction. I have a theory about what determines a person’s ‘ambition’ as regards work they do. I don’t have a great description of it yet, but roughly:
What is referred to as ‘ambition’, how challenging work one does is, is only one part of several factors making up a total personal satisfaction of a person. I refer to total personal satisfaction as their sweet satisfaction zone (SSZ) which exists on a spectrum of satisfaction (SoS). Everyone’s SSZ, to which several factors contribute, determines an individual’s mental state in the long term.
Among the factors affecting where their SSZ lies on the SoS are things like the challenge of the work they do, their relationships with friends, their romantic relationship(s), their status in the hierarchy of their local community etc. Everyone requires different levels of satisfaction from each of these different factors depending on their personality, but each of these factors contribute to the SSZ.
When some people work on what seems ‘ambitious’ to some others, it may just be work that feels sufficiently challenging to them, as they require a huge amount of satisfaction from interesting and high-impact work to contribute to their SSZ. And when a person one thinks to be clever and capable of more works on what one thinks to be below their intellectual ability, it may be that how challenging work they do is doesn’t rank on factors they demand huge amounts of satisfaction from to make their SSZ. The golden handcuffs are in fact personal satisfaction.
So ‘ambition’ doesn’t exist in the sense people like to talk about it. You cannot really be more ambitious or less. It is based on personality.
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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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