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How to Be More Agentic

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Re: How to Be More Agentic

#61

Post by Podgajski »

FredPret wrote: post #57
Podgajski wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who says I’m not taking charge of life? I just know the role that luck has to play in life as well. That way when I’m not lucky I don’t keep all that blame on myself or when other people are unlucky I don’t blame them for their failures. Because who the hell knows?

My apologies - not calling you a loser. Just saying that blaming one’s own or other people’s success on luck will always lead to suboptimal outcomes for the blamer. Good and bad events will happen one way or another, and it’s up to each one of us to make the most of it. Therefore, if you think luck is the main determinant of outcomes, you’ll try much less hard.

He went from calling something success to “making the most of it”.

You’re assuming I’m a nihilist and I’m not. I’m going to die, but I don’t kill myself.

In my opinion, if we looked at peoples success and failure as all based on luck, we would be much kinder to each other.

Re: How to Be More Agentic

#62

Post by Podgajski »

dclowd9901 wrote: post #55
Podgajski wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you’re wrong, luck isn’t helped by anything. It’s just luck. You can change all the opportunities you want but if you have bad luck you have bad luck if you have good luck you have good luck. Other words, the odds don’t care about your luck.

You keep missing it. If I go to a job interview and at the end of it, the person says “ok, I’m gonna flip this coin — guess the outcome and you get the job”. I guess — I miss. Then they say “want to guess again?” Repeat until I get the job. Probability has an effect on outcomes, but only insofar as the chances you’re willing to take. Luck is just an observation of a single outcome.

I don’t even know what’s going on here anymore.

You’re artificially predicting a positive outcome. You said “repeat until I get the job“. But you could be very unlucky person and keep sitting there flipping and flipping the coin and never guessing right. I’m not saying to not keep trying. I’m saying your certainty of positive outcome is false.

Re: How to Be More Agentic

#63

Post by FredPret »

Podgajski wrote: post #61
FredPret wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My apologies - not calling you a loser. Just saying that blaming one’s own or other people’s success on luck will always lead to suboptimal outcomes for the blamer. Good and bad events will happen one way or another, and it’s up to each one of us to make the most of it. Therefore, if you think luck is the main determinant of outcomes, you’ll try much less hard.

He went from calling something success to “making the most of it”. You’re assuming I’m a nihilist and I’m not. I’m going to die, but I don’t kill myself. In my opinion, if we looked at peoples success and failure as all based on luck, we would be much kinder to each other.

That would be a horrible society.

High achievers getting zero credit. Moping losers blaming their failures on “bad luck”. Zero reason to strive for greatness because you’ll get sympathy if you fail and jealousy if you succeed.

No thanks.

Re: How to Be More Agentic

#65

Post by Podgajski »

broscillator wrote: post #48
Podgajski wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your interpretation of my comments is negative. I’m not saying you can’t change your opportunity in life, I’m saying that if luck has anything to do with your success or failure, then it’s all based on luck, and nothing to do with what opportunities you create. It may will be that I do everything wrong in life and limit my opportunities, and still win the lottery because I tripped and fell on my face and lo and behol…

It might also be that you find that lottery ticket and don't play it, because you believe you have no agency to do anything with the money anyway. > Just like you cannot change the fact if a coin lands on heads or tails. You can, just throw the coin again until it lands the way you want.

> You can, just throw the coin again until it lands the way you want.

Oh, I didn’t realize life is that simple. I can just keep doing things until they turn out the way I want.

Re: How to Be More Agentic

#66

Post by nick__m »

Podgajski wrote: post #47
nick__m wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If luck is a stable quantity for a given individual and it's range is ]-1,1[ you are right. But if luck is a quantity that fluctuate and is positively biased, (a reasonable a priori seeing that most people succeed at something) or that it's range is ]0,1[ , you are wrong and willful exposure to opportunities increase your total amount of wins.

Why are you saying that luck is positively based question. And what’s your definition of success.? I mean I put my coffee cup down on a table, do I count that as success?

You made your coffee and it doesn't taste bad. Congratulations you succeed at making good coffee!

Re: How to Be More Agentic

#67

Post by hiAndrewQuinn »

Good article! I am in a phase of life where I'd prefer to be less "agentic", and more of a mindless automaton, always doing the tasks I set out to do myself in a day.

What stands between me and most of my current goals is nothing but investments of time - hundreds, thousands of hours of time. There is no money component, and I cannot significantly accelerate my progress on any of them using money either. My agency isn't going to go anywhere, in fact it reasserts itself annoyingly often with flights of fancy and going back to focusing purely on making money. But I do wish I could tell it to shut up and just let me focus on the grind more often.

Re: How to Be More Agentic

#68

Post by deegles »

jvanderbot wrote: post #40
drakonka wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always assumed everyone assumed everything was learnable. Realizing this (i.e., that being everyone's default belief) might not be the case is kind of blowing my mind a little right now.

You can learn anything you want, but really wanting is the hardest part.

I think actually following through over time is the hard part. Wanting to do something is easy.

Re: How to Be More Agentic

#69

Post by Podgajski »

FredPret wrote: post #63
Podgajski wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He went from calling something success to “making the most of it”. You’re assuming I’m a nihilist and I’m not. I’m going to die, but I don’t kill myself. In my opinion, if we looked at peoples success and failure as all based on luck, we would be much kinder to each other.

That would be a horrible society. High achievers getting zero credit. Moping losers blaming their failures on “bad luck”. Zero reason to strive for greatness because you’ll get sympathy if you fail and jealousy if you succeed. No thanks.

This tells me a lot about you as a person.

Let me tell you how I would see it. High achievers, knowing that they’re successful based on lock would be more helpful to people who didn’t have good luck. This would turn out to be a more stable and even society.

I guess you like the separation of wealth we’re experiencing right now?

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