I have a somewhat similar feeling of having become less ambitious and agentic over time. Part of the issue is that a lot of the cool weird stuff I tried when I was younger didn’t really work out, so the expected value is low. And my current life status makes me more risk averse.
Or to use your analogy, if the last 10 times the wizard has tried something clever, 9 times the result was some useless green goop, and 1 time a smoking crater where your castle used to be. Then its entirely rational to reallocate funds away from the wizard towards hiring more guys with swords, or castle masons.
So I think the challenge is to make these experiments low risk, and intrinsically enjoyable in some way, so even if they fail you don’t lose out. And also be mindful of what domains are best to apply a wizard approach to, and which need the application of mundane forces at scale.
I have a somewhat similar feeling of having become less ambitious and agentic over time. Part of the issue is that a lot of the cool weird stuff I tried when I was younger didn’t really work out, so the expected value is low. And my current life status makes me more risk averse.
Or to use your analogy, if the last 10 times the wizard has tried something clever, 9 times the result was some useless green goop, and 1 time a smoking crater where your castle used to be. Then its entirely rational to reallocate funds away from the wizard towards hiring more guys with swords, or castle masons.
So I think the challenge is to make these experiments low risk, and intrinsically enjoyable in some way, so even if they fail you don’t lose out. And also be mindful of what domains are best to apply a wizard approach to, and which need the application of mundane forces at scale.