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Being too ambitious is a clever form of self-sabotage

maalvika.substack.com

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Re: Being too ambitious is a clever form of self-sabotage

#91

Post by willguest »

fcatalan wrote: post #41

This resonates a lot with me. In fact it's a trait that has made me unhappy for as long as I can remember. I'm seeing a therapist later this month because in a talk with my GP she saw strong enough hints of ADHD to send me there, and the kind of situations and some feelings talked about in the article came up a lot in the conversation. I size up my oil paints against the old masters, not the old ladies in the atelier…

To have such capacity and drive, as well as critical self-reflection is a rare thing. I would first suggest some appreciation for the interesting and curious state of being that you seem to have developed. Nicely done!

My own route out of this trap was to explore theories of mind and, more profoundly, practices of no-mind. Doing nothing is much harder to achieve than doing something and can create a space for insight that the analytical mind cannot access. From this place, which is free of comparison and judgement, incredibly beautiful things can emerge.

If you would like to get to the root of it, I would suggest Taoist teachings and reading a few things by Krishnamurti. To understand the fundamental limitations of the mind can tell you something about who you through negation. For me, this has brought a deep sense of peace as well as an ability to use my mind in a more satisfying way.

Just my two cents :)

Re: Being too ambitious is a clever form of self-sabotage

#92

Post by michaelbrave »

simianwords wrote: post #69
meander_water wrote: post #26

> the "taste-skill discrepancy." Your taste (your ability to recognize quality) develops faster than your skill (your ability to produce it). This creates what Ira Glass famously called "the gap," but I think of it as the thing that separates creators from consumers. This resonated quite strongly with me. It puts into words something that I've been feeling when working with AI. If you're new to something and using AI…

This is not what Ira Glass meant by taste gap. What he rather means is that taste is important. It’s what gets you into the field and what makes you stick around. Happy to be corrected on this.

yes that was the gist of Ira Glass's quote, but he also added to it that it makes you feel frustrated when you have taste but are not creating things that live up to that taste, but that as a young artist you should push through that.

Here is a copy paste of the quote:

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.” ― Ira Glass

Re: Being too ambitious is a clever form of self-sabotage

#93

Post by strogonoff »

raynr wrote: post #63
strogonoff wrote: post #47

To be strategic, you think hard enough how to get somewhere and carefully plan and eliminate unknowns until you reach a point when getting there is no longer interesting . Congratulations: you have successfully turned your cool idea into a chore. It’s just a lot of trivial typing and package management and it might not even be all that impressive when it is done. Your idea is not at all a path well-trodden, but it is…

> Congratulations: you have successfully turned your cool idea into a chore. The article gave me a vague, off-topic sense of unease but your comment crystallised the feeling for me. I really wish less emphasis is placed on this kind of blue-sky, "strategic" thinking, and more placed on the "chores". Legwork, maintenance, step-by-step execution of a plan, issue tracking, perspective shifting etc. are all, in my opinio…

This might come from childhood and problematic praise patterns. You can grow to both crave praise and surprise, but at the same time when you get it not really value it. You might be interested to do impressive work as play when you don’t know how it will pan out, but if you don’t feel like it is interesting enough then you are demotivated.

I think it is important to be able to strategise, especially if you can delegate parts of the work. If you cannot delegate, there needs to be a balance with capacity for grunt work. One way to address it perhaps is learning to get in the zone and enjoy ongoing work as a process. Unfortunately, sometimes it is hard to snap out of big picture view and get to it.

Re: Being too ambitious is a clever form of self-sabotage

#94

Post by strogonoff »

cl42 wrote: post #12

In the spirit of July 4, John Lewis Gaddis explores a similar theme in "On Grand Strategy". This is one of my favourite explorations, where he compares Abraham Lincoln and John Quincy Adams: > Compare Lincoln’s life with that of John Quincy Adams. Great expectations inspired, pursued, and haunted Adams, depriving him, at critical moments, of common sense. Overestimations by others—which he then magnified—placed objec…

Some people grow to both crave praise but also when they get it not really value it; they want people to be always surprised at cool stuff they can do but are not motivated to do boring uninteresting work. This may be accompanied by one or more of: perfectionism, narcissism, rejection anxiety, etc.

I suspect this might have to do with praise patterns in childhood.

Re: Being too ambitious is a clever form of self-sabotage

#95

Post by exceptione »

ninetyninenine wrote: post #45
Loughla wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the disconnect between proponents and detractors of AI. Detractors say it's the process and learning that builds depth. Proponents say it doesn't matter because the tool exists and will always exist. It's interesting seeing people argue about AI, because they're plainly not speaking about the same issue and simply talking past each other.

>It's interesting seeing people argue about AI, because they're plainly not speaking about the same issue and simply talking past each other. There's actually some ground truth facts about AI many people are not knowledgeable about. Many people believe we understand in totality how LLMs work. The absolute truth of this is that we overall we do NOT understand how LLMs work AT all. The mistaken belief that we understan…

  > we do NOT understand how LLMs work AT all.
  > We Do Not understand Why or How an LLM produced a specific response for a
  > specific prompt.
You mean the system is not deterministic? How the system works should be quite clear. I think the uncertainty is more about the premise if billions of tokens and their weights relative to each other is enough to reach intelligence. These debates are older than LLM's. In 'old' AI we were looking at (limited) autonomous agents that had the capability to participate in an environment and exchange knowledge about the world with each other. The next step for LLM's would be to update their own weights. That would be too costly in terms of money and time yet. What we do know is that for something to be seen as intelligent it cannot live in a jar. I consider the current crop as shared 8-bit computers, while each of us need one with terabytes of RAM.

Re: Being too ambitious is a clever form of self-sabotage

#96

Post by missinglugnut »

theshrike79 wrote: post #62
meander_water wrote: post #26

> the "taste-skill discrepancy." Your taste (your ability to recognize quality) develops faster than your skill (your ability to produce it). This creates what Ira Glass famously called "the gap," but I think of it as the thing that separates creators from consumers. This resonated quite strongly with me. It puts into words something that I've been feeling when working with AI. If you're new to something and using AI…

This is Rick Rubin pretty much. He has 100/100 in taste, but almost 0/100 in skill. He can't really play an instrument, but he knows exactly what works and what doesn't and can articulate it.

Being able to articulate taste is a skill in and of itself.

Re: Being too ambitious is a clever form of self-sabotage

#98

Post by baxtr »

> At semester's end, all the best photos came from the quantity group.

The quantity group learned something that cannot be taught: that excellence emerges from intimacy with imperfection, that mastery is built through befriending failure, that the path to creating one perfect thing runs directly through creating many imperfect things.

This reminded me of Roger Federer, who has won 82% of all matches but only 54% of all points.

I really enjoyed this article and also believe that in many cases doing is superior to planning.

Just a word of caution: the author doesn’t account for cost. All examples given are relatively low-cost and high-frequency: drawing pictures, taking photos, writing blog posts.

The cost-benefit ratio of simply doing changes when costs increase.

Quitting your high-paid job to finally start the startup you’ve been dreaming of is high-cost and rather low-frequency.

I don’t want to discourage anyone from doing these things, but it’s obvious to me that the cost/frequency aspect shouldn’t be neglected.

Re: Being too ambitious is a clever form of self-sabotage

#99

Post by jibal »

Loughla wrote: post #27
meander_water wrote: post #26

> the "taste-skill discrepancy." Your taste (your ability to recognize quality) develops faster than your skill (your ability to produce it). This creates what Ira Glass famously called "the gap," but I think of it as the thing that separates creators from consumers. This resonated quite strongly with me. It puts into words something that I've been feeling when working with AI. If you're new to something and using AI…

This is the disconnect between proponents and detractors of AI. Detractors say it's the process and learning that builds depth. Proponents say it doesn't matter because the tool exists and will always exist. It's interesting seeing people argue about AI, because they're plainly not speaking about the same issue and simply talking past each other.

This is a radical misrepresentation of the dispute.
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