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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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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