Tongue-in-cheek: “when their pathological need to do something outweighs their pathological need to do nothing.”
In more detail: there are several different kinds of deep-rooted psychological needs that ambition might be powered by, and I think the resulting different kinds of ambition are different enough to discuss as distinct entities (in particular, they vary in how prosocial they are). Some possibilities off the top of my head, not mutually exclusive, inspired by Enneagram types:
1. Reinforce a particular identity / self-narrative (e.g. “I’m special” → strive to become a celebrity or w/e, see Instagram influencers); Enneagram 4
2. Get people to like you (again see Instagram influencers); Enneagram 3
3. Have power over people (some politicians, maybe); Enneagram 8
(One way to probe this in a given ambitious person is to look at what coping mechanisms they turn to when they fail. E.g. if it’s about reinforcing a given identity through some ambitious project, when that project fails do they start reinforcing that identity in other ways?)
Then there’s genuine compassion, which is the cleanest power source for ambition I’ve found so far, and arguably the most prosocial (there might be others, e.g. childlike joy and wonder). I am quite concerned that most of the ambition in the rationality / EA space is not being powered by genuine compassion; personally, most of the time I’ve been here I’ve been powered by a combination of #1 and #2.
There are also several different kinds of deep-rooted psychological needs that lack of ambition might be powered by. Again, some possibilities off the top of my head, inspired by Enneagram types:
1. Not drawing criticism / pissing people off; Enneagram 2, Enneagram 3, or Enneagram 9
3. Sense that ambition is morally wrong / corrupting; Enneagram 1
4. Sense that ambition is not your place / not the sort of thing people like you are allowed to do; Enneagram 2, Enneagram 3, Enneagram 4
Historically I think a lot of my lack of ambition was powered by a combination of #1, #2, and #4, although it’s hard to disentangle. There were also less psychological obstacles, e.g. I was tired all the time because I was eating, sleeping, and exercising poorly, and had an awful social life; real hard to be ambitious or agentic in that state.
To summarize, I mostly relate to ambition as a relatively surface-level psychological phenomenon that’s being powered by deeper dynamics, and I think at least as much in terms of obstacles to ambition as in terms of ways to cultivate ambition.
Epistemic status: based on lots of personal development work and looking at other people’s psychology and personal development, e.g. via circling; especially, noticing my own level of ambition increase drastically the more work I do on myself, and looking at what seem to be the gears of that.
Thanks. This is a different lens than my pet theory but seems pretty compatible with it.
My pet theory was specifically “one contributor towards people becoming ambitious is having someone they respect tell them that they believe in them (credibly signaling it by spending at least a few hours talking to them about their projects and goals and how to achieve them).” This is based on what happened to me and a few other people I know who gained certain kinds of ambition.
[This comes with some background beliefs that ambition is generally good, in particular when the ambition is of the form ‘create something’, rather than ‘be the best at something’ (which is zero-sum). This may be a different lens than you’re currently looking through]
This seems somewhat downstream of the sort of thing you’re point at here, which seems to be pointing at two clusters:
What sort of personality do you need to have for “become ambitious” to be a live option (including healthy and unhealthy mechanisms)
What sort of things could actively harm your capacity for ambition.
Both of which suggest much earlier interventions than what I was thinking about. I basically want all the interventions going on, but at the earlier stages, it’s not obvious that the right thing for a person is to become ambitious. Rather, I want them to have a psychologically outlook that lets them be generally physically and emotionally healthy and reasonably productive (because these are generally good things).
Once they get to that stage, maybe the right thing for them is to tackle ambitious projects, maybe not. But it seems better to think of interventions at that stage to be more oriented towards ‘help the person become generally healthy’ rather than ‘help them become ambitious.’
For people just reaching the stage where they’re considering an ambitious project (either one that’ll directly accomplish something, or help them grow) I think having a someone give them a few hours of encouragement and guidance is a fairly high-value-for-low-cost.
(This does seem like something that might be most relevant for people motivated by approval of others, although I think might also fit with other motivation clusters. Possible exception that people motivated by power seem least likely to need someone else to believe in them to pursue power?)
Yeah, I agree that at the earlier stages it’s not clear that ambition is a thing to aim for, and I would also advise people to prioritize health broadly.
I agree that encouragement and guidance is good, and more generally think that mentorship is really, really deeply important. I am not about this “individual rationality” life anymore. It’s group rationality or nothing.
Tongue-in-cheek: “when their pathological need to do something outweighs their pathological need to do nothing.”
In more detail: there are several different kinds of deep-rooted psychological needs that ambition might be powered by, and I think the resulting different kinds of ambition are different enough to discuss as distinct entities (in particular, they vary in how prosocial they are). Some possibilities off the top of my head, not mutually exclusive, inspired by Enneagram types:
1. Reinforce a particular identity / self-narrative (e.g. “I’m special” → strive to become a celebrity or w/e, see Instagram influencers); Enneagram 4
2. Get people to like you (again see Instagram influencers); Enneagram 3
3. Have power over people (some politicians, maybe); Enneagram 8
4. Have fun to avoid feeling bad; Enneagram 7
(One way to probe this in a given ambitious person is to look at what coping mechanisms they turn to when they fail. E.g. if it’s about reinforcing a given identity through some ambitious project, when that project fails do they start reinforcing that identity in other ways?)
Then there’s genuine compassion, which is the cleanest power source for ambition I’ve found so far, and arguably the most prosocial (there might be others, e.g. childlike joy and wonder). I am quite concerned that most of the ambition in the rationality / EA space is not being powered by genuine compassion; personally, most of the time I’ve been here I’ve been powered by a combination of #1 and #2.
There are also several different kinds of deep-rooted psychological needs that lack of ambition might be powered by. Again, some possibilities off the top of my head, inspired by Enneagram types:
1. Not drawing criticism / pissing people off; Enneagram 2, Enneagram 3, or Enneagram 9
2. Avoiding the feeling of not knowing what to do; Enneagram 5, Enneagram 6
3. Sense that ambition is morally wrong / corrupting; Enneagram 1
4. Sense that ambition is not your place / not the sort of thing people like you are allowed to do; Enneagram 2, Enneagram 3, Enneagram 4
Historically I think a lot of my lack of ambition was powered by a combination of #1, #2, and #4, although it’s hard to disentangle. There were also less psychological obstacles, e.g. I was tired all the time because I was eating, sleeping, and exercising poorly, and had an awful social life; real hard to be ambitious or agentic in that state.
To summarize, I mostly relate to ambition as a relatively surface-level psychological phenomenon that’s being powered by deeper dynamics, and I think at least as much in terms of obstacles to ambition as in terms of ways to cultivate ambition.
Epistemic status: based on lots of personal development work and looking at other people’s psychology and personal development, e.g. via circling; especially, noticing my own level of ambition increase drastically the more work I do on myself, and looking at what seem to be the gears of that.
Thanks. This is a different lens than my pet theory but seems pretty compatible with it.
My pet theory was specifically “one contributor towards people becoming ambitious is having someone they respect tell them that they believe in them (credibly signaling it by spending at least a few hours talking to them about their projects and goals and how to achieve them).” This is based on what happened to me and a few other people I know who gained certain kinds of ambition.
[This comes with some background beliefs that ambition is generally good, in particular when the ambition is of the form ‘create something’, rather than ‘be the best at something’ (which is zero-sum). This may be a different lens than you’re currently looking through]
This seems somewhat downstream of the sort of thing you’re point at here, which seems to be pointing at two clusters:
What sort of personality do you need to have for “become ambitious” to be a live option (including healthy and unhealthy mechanisms)
What sort of things could actively harm your capacity for ambition.
Both of which suggest much earlier interventions than what I was thinking about. I basically want all the interventions going on, but at the earlier stages, it’s not obvious that the right thing for a person is to become ambitious. Rather, I want them to have a psychologically outlook that lets them be generally physically and emotionally healthy and reasonably productive (because these are generally good things).
Once they get to that stage, maybe the right thing for them is to tackle ambitious projects, maybe not. But it seems better to think of interventions at that stage to be more oriented towards ‘help the person become generally healthy’ rather than ‘help them become ambitious.’
For people just reaching the stage where they’re considering an ambitious project (either one that’ll directly accomplish something, or help them grow) I think having a someone give them a few hours of encouragement and guidance is a fairly high-value-for-low-cost.
(This does seem like something that might be most relevant for people motivated by approval of others, although I think might also fit with other motivation clusters. Possible exception that people motivated by power seem least likely to need someone else to believe in them to pursue power?)
Yeah, I agree that at the earlier stages it’s not clear that ambition is a thing to aim for, and I would also advise people to prioritize health broadly.
I agree that encouragement and guidance is good, and more generally think that mentorship is really, really deeply important. I am not about this “individual rationality” life anymore. It’s group rationality or nothing.