[HN Gopher] How to Be More Agentic
___________________________________________________________________
How to Be More Agentic
Author : danboarder
Score : 231 points
Date : 2024-01-13 05:58 UTC (17 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (usefulfictions.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (usefulfictions.substack.com)
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| I liked the author's idea of finding rough edges that other
| people don't want to deal with. Unlike the author, I have always
| been a bit of a slacker, working just part time most of my life.
| That said, I do think that when I do work I like rough edges!
| Good read.
| samstave wrote:
| > _"manifest determination to make things happen."_
|
| In my family, my mother always called this as "Reality Bending"
| (no relation to airbender) -- but they referred to Jobs' "reality
| distortion field"
|
| My father had this to great effect.
|
| My brother has it to a certain degree.
|
| I used to have it in spades when I was younger - but I have
| become "will-power" complacent in my older years, which snowballs
| into to depression.
|
| I certainly feel getting dumber as I age - which is in part to
| the fact that I had a vast amount of information relating to my
| job when I was younger in my head - but now a ton of the
| knowledge I once had on quick access is simply obsolete.
|
| Here is a quick example.
|
| When I was ~20 someone I knew had accidentally changed ALL the
| display UI elements in Windows 95 to black.
|
| Just by memory I could hit start and navigate to settings and
| display and fixed it back to normal - all by memory.
|
| I couldnt even tell you where any of those setting were as fast
| on W95 today even if I had the machine in front of me and access
| to google.
| rco8786 wrote:
| Your Windows 95 story definitely resonates. I installed Windows
| XP so many times that I had not only the pirated key memorized,
| but I would start moving my mouse toward the next button before
| it had even appeared on screen. People used to be impressed at
| how fast I could find the "Eastern Time Zone" option in the
| combo box.
| nick__m wrote:
| Assume everything is learnable
|
| This made me think of late grandmother who used to say : "c'est
| faite par du mondes" which roughly expand to "a person
| did/learned/discovered that so there is no a prioi reason that I
| cannot do so myself". That's the greatest value she passed unto
| me. When I feel that I cannot do something, I think about that
| phrase and persevere.
| danenania wrote:
| Something else I find encouraging, and the reason, basically,
| that "everything is learnable" is that all knowledge, no matter
| how complex, is composed of fundamentally simple parts. Just as
| complex tasks or complex movements are composed of many simple
| steps or movements.
|
| This is what makes the maxim that "you don't understand
| something unless you can explain it in simple terms" true.
| stvltvs wrote:
| Yes, and this has its limits. Many true experts in their
| fields would struggle to explain their field simply. I like
| to think I'm an expert in my work, but how many times have I
| explained to my wife what I do in simple terms, and she still
| has no idea what I do?
|
| Complex ideas often get distorted or lost in simple
| explanations.
| danenania wrote:
| I think the limits are mainly a matter of time and mental
| energy. While quantum physics is ultimately composed of
| many simple concepts, the number is so large that it takes
| years to enumerate them all.
|
| You _could_ explain your work to your wife in terms simple
| and exhaustive enough for her to fully understand. It would
| just take a longer time and more concentration than either
| of you wants to expend.
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| Absolutely. And most things most people work on today are
| complex. To do my job I need to understand 100 different
| things. Not a single one is difficult. But to explain it in
| simple terms simply isn't possible because it's not 1 or 2
| big things.
|
| When people explain things in simple terms, they are often
| either borderline lying, or tucking an exceptionally large
| tree of concepts under a single word or phrase.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| I actually work for a guy like this now and at first I didn't
| quite get what he was doing, but I really like it now. He comes
| from a non-technical background but can code enough to be
| dangerous now.
|
| He loves talking to experts in every facet of what we do, and
| just start from the most basic foundational questions. He has
| absolutely no ego about embarrassing himself by the basics of
| questions he asks and no shame about digging in with follow
| ups.
|
| It's actually quite a powerful thing. Experts love to explain
| things if given the space. You also start to realize how narrow
| and sometimes shallow expertise is, and it lowers your own
| anxiety.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| Yes, pride is the biggest obstacle to growth. It prevents you
| from making our needs known, because it means making an
| admission that you _lack_ something (like knowledge or
| understanding, in this case). It means being _honest_ about
| what you are (humility), revealing your deficits. And we all
| have deficits. We all have lack. Love is about seeking and
| receiving what you lack (eros), and giving to those who lack
| what they seek (agape).
|
| So what does this tell us, this tendency toward pride? I
| means many of us spend a horrifying amount of time posing,
| pretending, feigning worth we don't actually have, in order
| to appear to be something we are not, because we think this
| will get us things we couldn't by being honest. In order
| words, we're liars, fraud, and cheats. We lie to get things
| we know, or least believe, we do not deserve, through false
| advertising. And we fear being belittled and ridiculed and
| put down, or losing or losing something. We shirk
| responsibility this way. We confuse purity with a kind of
| "cleanliness". We want to appear clean, but become impure and
| corrupt in doing so.
|
| The choice between pride and humility is, I think, the basic
| decision in life one must make, and keep making, and it can
| be difficult as the world does not make it easy to prefer
| what is good. It seems to want to reward you for pretense,
| and punish you for honesty and the truth. That's why you also
| need courage, the courage to surrender to the consequences,
| of doing the right thing and being humble, and embrace them.
| You cannot control anything but your actions within your
| limits. You need to be able to accept just but painful
| outcomes gladly, and suffer the injustices. The inability to
| suffer, to suffer injustice, is the gateway to pride, and
| pride comes before the fall, before death and stagnation. You
| get further in life by suffering and moving forward,
| suffering and moving forward, suffering and moving
| forward.[0] There is no life in you otherwise. There is no
| love in you otherwise.
|
| [0] This is also why the Via Crucis is so powerful. Life is
| not a party or a pleasure garden. It's a struggle that ends
| in death. The only choice is one between miserable comfort
| and wasteful decay on the one hand, and struggle, suffering,
| and total exhaustion on the other. The Via Crucis, a road
| full of suffering that passes through death, at least ends in
| final liberation. But that is the price, the narrow gate.
| Most choose the wide gate of miserable self-preservation,
| something they will loose in the end anyway.
| brnt wrote:
| > You also start to realize how narrow and sometimes shallow
| expertise is
|
| Thanks for putting this in such clear words.
|
| What I would really like to learn is not to be ticked off
| about seeing this. I get annoyed when somebody is pawning
| their expertise of as something grand while I think it's
| quite limited, and often, of course, so limited that they
| can't even conceive of the space outside their limits. I find
| my natural reaction overly negative and just not productive.
| twbarber wrote:
| This resonates with me. I've so far chalked it up to envy
| of their "unearned" confidence that's rooted in my own
| self-esteem issues. Recognizing a fellow imposter in the
| wild.
| sn9 wrote:
| This guy will be a staff engineer soon.
| twbarber wrote:
| Is this tongue in cheek? I appreciate and try to emulate
| this trait, but worry it comes off as politic-ing.
| brobinson wrote:
| What I got out of it was "determination eventually beats
| natural skill over time".
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| Hopefully they want that title :)
| drakonka wrote:
| 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.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| You can learn anything you want, but really wanting is the
| hardest part.
| drakonka wrote:
| Agreed, I've always believed you can learn anything you
| want. The realization I was talking about was the one where
| maybe that's not the default assumption for everyone.
| coldtea wrote:
| Of course it's not the default assumption.
| deegles wrote:
| I think actually following through over time is the hard
| part. Wanting to do something is easy.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Sustained motivation is just a matter of degree of want.
| If you want something enough you will do it.
|
| At least that's my premise.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| This is a wild oversimplification. And very dangerous if
| you try to apply to people in more complex situations.
| kiba wrote:
| There's all sort of obstacles to learning. It could be the
| price of the courses you want to take, the lack of
| motivation/willpower/discipline to follow through, poor
| learning skills, lack of equipment or materials.
| p1esk wrote:
| Everything is learnable but most things are not worth
| learning.
| LargeWu wrote:
| Ask ten people if they can draw, and half will say "No, I'm
| not artistic" or "I'm not creative", as though it were an
| innate quality.
| ants_everywhere wrote:
| People used to think few things were learnable and you had to
| have innate talent to learn something.
|
| One of the few remaining holdouts of this idea is perfect
| pitch. Most people I've seen express an opinion don't believe
| it's learnable after some childhood cutoff period. I'm not
| sure how well researched it is, though.
| spease wrote:
| There was a study where they found that taking valproate
| opened a critical period that helped people learn it.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3848041/
| ants_everywhere wrote:
| Very cool, I wasn't aware of that study. Thanks!
| scoot wrote:
| That in turn reminds me of a British reality TV series from the
| 2000s called "Faking It". Participants were trained by experts
| in a specific skill that they had no existing knowledge of, and
| then they had to convince others that they were genuinely
| skilled in that area, which they almost always did.
|
| It was "fake it 'till you make it" condensed into a single
| episode. Loved that show!
| abecedarius wrote:
| Interesting how different the things we're reminded of are: I
| was thinking of a maxim Feynman liked, "What one fool can do,
| another can." (Not sure if it's original to him; my memory
| suggests it might've been from one of the calculus book he
| read as a teen.)
| aimor wrote:
| Ancient Simian Proverb
|
| That's how it's attributed in Calculus Made Easy by
| Silvanus P. Thompson and it stuck with me too.
| Scubabear68 wrote:
| I found this out late in life working on an environmental
| cause. We were all volunteers and had limited money, so I
| started learning about pipelines and regulations and legal
| concepts, etc etc. If you have the right kind of mind, it very
| empowering to be able to step into a new field and really learn
| it and work it.
|
| The flip side of this is that not everyone's brain works this
| way. In fact, I'd say the vast majority can't do this. The
| biggest mistake an autodidact can make is assuming other people
| can learn like they do. But if you have the gift, use it and
| explore it and it will likely be highly rewarding to your life.
| drakonka wrote:
| I don't think I can believe that the majority can't do this
| without some evidence. But regardless, I'm really curious
| what makes you think that? What in your opinion would be
| stopping them, other than maybe just not believing they can
| or bothering to try (which imo has nothing to do with whether
| they _can_)?
| Scubabear68 wrote:
| Based on the environmental and community based work I've
| done, and also my experience at school. I pick up most
| things on my own, and always suffered in a classroom
| environment.
|
| But most people I know and have worked with are the
| opposite. They have real trouble picking up new subjects
| without a teacher guiding them through it and formal
| courses.
|
| Anecdotal I know, but the true autodidacts I've encountered
| are rare in general terms. That said, a LOT of technology
| people can largely self-teach, and I think a much higher
| percentage of HN readers can learn new subjects quickly
| compared to the general population.
| kiba wrote:
| Learning materials in itself a skill that is not widely
| taught.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| Yeah. I clued into this at some point. I think it came to a
| head when I had a washer start making a lot of noise and
| behaving badly. I thought, "The worst thing you can do is break
| it more, these things _were_ designed to be repaired by other
| humans with a manual, humans who might not have even gone to
| college, gasp. "
|
| So I ordered the manual and the parts I thought needed
| replacement and went at it. Boom, done.
| d-lisp wrote:
| You probably mean "c'est fait par du monde" or maybe that's
| some way of mocking french language that I am not aware of !?
| nick__m wrote:
| it's the way it's spoken where I reside.
| d-lisp wrote:
| Where do you reside ?
| johnchristopher wrote:
| I am curious now, without revealing too much, can you give
| the phonetics ?
| g-w1 wrote:
| Here is a question I asked about concrete examples of doing
| agentic things, because I think that concrete examples are
| necessary to expand your horizons:
| https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/umJmRfcJndY3Gsr36/concrete-e...
| takinola wrote:
| I wish the author had included concrete examples of finding edges
| (and the process of finding them). I wonder if anyone here has an
| example from their experience?
| dist-epoch wrote:
| One way is seeing if the predictions you make repeatedly come
| true in some domain, especially if they go against the general
| consensus. Is so, it means you have an edge in that domain -
| you see things more clearly than others or have original
| insights. Now think about your current predictions about that
| domain, and see if you can act on them somehow.
|
| One definition of an edge is knowing something other people
| don't. You have to be careful not to fool yourself.
| munchler wrote:
| What the heck is a "physical read" in poker? Is that like a
| person having a tell? (Something they do that is unintentionally
| revealing.)
| danenania wrote:
| "Is that like a person having a tell?"
|
| Yes, same thing.
| munchler wrote:
| Why would other pros say "nuh-uh, that's not a thing"? I
| thought the concept of a tell was widely known.
| danenania wrote:
| It's widely known but many pros consider it to be of low
| importance compared with "hand reading", which is more
| about putting someone in a play-style bucket based on the
| hands you observe and then deducing what hand range they
| are likely to hold from their actions in the hand up to
| that point. Physical tells are typically considered as
| unreliable compared to this unless they are really obvious.
| Amateurs tend to overestimate the importance of tells vs.
| hand reading.
| spease wrote:
| So it's perhaps more like there's a local minimum before
| you reach the global maximum.
| danenania wrote:
| Right. If you're already really good at hand reading, you
| might get some extra edge in working to improve your
| physical reads, but otherwise looking for subtle tells
| will probably just make you play even worse.
|
| In elite games, you would assume everyone is an expert at
| hand reading, so it makes sense that physical reads would
| become more important.
| takinola wrote:
| Tells are something you see more of in "movie" poker rather
| than real poker. Most poker guides (as the OP alludes)
| discourage tell based play unless you are playing with
| people you are very familiar with and have studied over
| time. Even then, it's a bit of a crapshoot as opponents can
| use this against you ("did he scratch his temple because he
| has a poor hand or because he wants me to think he has a
| poor hand?")
|
| The one suggestion that I do find helpful is not to look at
| your cards as they are dealt but instead look at your
| opponents' faces as they look at theirs. Sometimes their
| micro-expressions betray them before they regain composure.
| hiAndrewQuinn wrote:
| 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.
| SeanAnderson wrote:
| Care to share what you're working towards?
| hiAndrewQuinn wrote:
| Language learning, endurance biking, weight loss, and
| meditation at this point. (EDIT: some physical wound healing
| too, forgot about that)
|
| Quitting alcohol was also a very similar battle after a
| decade of increasingly severe abuse of it. I had my last
| drink 467 days ago, and for the first 6 months or so
| basically the only things I had the mental fortitude to
| juggle were "don't lose my job" and "don't succumb to the
| bottle". Much easier said than done to willingly remove the
| one coping mechanism you could rely on all throughout NEETdom
| to graduating from a top university with honors, but I did
| it, thank goodness.
| kiba wrote:
| Doing what you want to do is my very definition of being
| agenty. Some of the most difficult thing in the world
| required long duration effort.
| SeanAnderson wrote:
| Is agency closely related to self-confidence?
|
| Most of the points on this list seemed related to that. Not the
| "don't work too hard" bit, but the rest seem in the same
| ballpark.
| fwipsy wrote:
| I think the connotations are a little different. Self-
| confidence can include a sort of complacency (confidence in
| what you're currently doing), whereas agency seems to be more a
| will to figure things out, whatever it takes.
| Sol- wrote:
| I wondered the same. Seems very difficult for a person with low
| self-confidence to act on these recommendations.
| meowkit wrote:
| One of the tips is assume everything is learnable - you can
| learn to be self-confident.
|
| My self-confidence was in the trash during high school. In
| college I had a couple of experiences that gave me
| opportunities to learn to be confident.
|
| The sense of difficulty is a sign of opportunity.
| gregwebs wrote:
| Yes but self confidence works against all this when it doesn't
| come with awareness and humility around what you don't know.
| You need self skepticism about opinions and new knowledge but
| confidence around ability to perform actions.
| layer8 wrote:
| To some degree, but if you find that your agency is impaired by
| a lack of self-confidence, you can start by trying to fake
| self-confidence.
| blueyes wrote:
| This piece about how she lives, by her husband Sasha, is also
| great:
|
| https://sashachapin.substack.com/p/things-you-learn-dating-c...
| Podgajski wrote:
| Reading that it sounds like to me she's unipolar manic. And
| this is coming from someone who knows about it because I have
| bipolar disorder.
|
| This would also possibly describe her drug addiction If the
| drugs weren't drugs that would fuel mania.
| ilaksh wrote:
| I feel like what I actually need to have more agency is just
| money or rich connections that want to give me money. Since I'm
| broke, not very healthy, and isolated, I am just trying to get
| by. My ambition (in some sense) is probably about a billion times
| greater than my means, however.
| motohagiography wrote:
| So refreshing, and timely. Diving into the moat of low status is
| a huge multiplier. Courting rejection is a super power because
| when success is explosive and non-linear, it favours the players
| who make the most attempts, and not the hardest ones.
|
| Timely because it's not just winter, I hit a really hard personal
| low over the last few months. This article reminded me that I do
| hard, scary, and difficult things, and my lows get none of the
| consolations of mediocrity. I do them because once you are good
| at hard things, you get untouchable confidence founded on genuine
| humility of having crossed the moat of low status, which
| translates into other parts of your life. The lows are when you
| lose sight of that, and thank you for helping to put this back in
| perspective.
| Podgajski wrote:
| Cate believe success is all about luck. She said it herself.
|
| https://sashachapin.substack.com/p/things-you-learn-dating-c...
| rco8786 wrote:
| What is your purpose with these posts?
| Podgajski wrote:
| My point is to help you not forget your compassion. All
| this talk about agency is nothing if you don't have the
| luck to go along with it. So if you see someone who's
| homeless, don't talk to them about their agency. Just help
| them.
| pphysch wrote:
| > Just help them.
|
| Trivializing homelessness like this doesn't help, and I
| strongly disagree that "agency is nothing" to unhoused
| people. There are many free resources available, but the
| organizations providing them often don't have the
| capacity to efficiently allocate them to those in need,
| due to difficulties with reach, etc.
|
| Escaping poverty is a function of others' generosity
| (luck) but also agency; you can't do it without some
| amount of self-belief and proactivity and exposing
| yourself to opportunities for aid. But it's very
| difficult and a lot of people give up.
| Podgajski wrote:
| I'm homeless. And I never said agency is nothing. I am
| saying that luck is everything. For instance, I'm unlucky
| to be a man who is homeless.
| thecrims0nchin wrote:
| They didn't say 'agency is nothing', you took that out of
| context. They said 'talk about agency is nothing without
| luck'
|
| It's like me saying a bowl of soup is useless without a
| spoon. And you go quote me as, "a bowl of soup is
| useless".
|
| You are arguing with yourself
| arijo wrote:
| Anyone recommends a good book on this subject?
|
| Also, I'm always looking for book worms to follow on Goodreads,
| so here is my Goodreads link in case you want to join me there!
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/43909278-alexandre-gomes
| zubairq wrote:
| I need to do this as well... Pretty amazing article. I end up
| doing a mix of autopilot and other stuff
| febeling wrote:
| > My rule is never to take instructions on how hard I should work
| from someone who hasn't burned out before
|
| I love this piece!
| SeanAnderson wrote:
| This article really spoke to me, but, ironically, I am concerned
| about my ability to put it into practice.
|
| I feel like there are areas of my life I have extreme agency over
| and others I have no agency over. I hate it because the areas I
| feel I lack agency in run counter to my sense of self. Things I
| struggle to do don't feel like things I should struggle to do. I
| wonder if this is something I learned when I was young?
|
| Some examples:
|
| * I live on my own in SF. I moved to California after college and
| confidently left my small hometown without much support.
|
| * I've led teams of engineers in fast-paced startup environments
| and gotten us to exceptional results. I wouldn't bat an eye at
| interviewing technical executives.
|
| * I've quit my job, repeatedly, without backups in place, to
| pursue technical side projects that sound meaningful to me until
| I run ~out of money.
|
| * I've led groups of 50+ people through week-long music
| festivals, coordinating all the people, money, accommodations,
| etc.
|
| * I can confidently speak to large groups of people without
| feeling self-conscious.
|
| * I've travelled alone, internationally, for work and everything
| went great and without cause for concern.
|
| And yet...:
|
| * I learned to drive at 32. I'm still "scared" of the concept,
| don't own a vehicle, and haven't integrated driving into my
| lifestyle.
|
| * I can make a down-payment on a house, but continue to rent
| because it sounds big and scary to do such a thing.
|
| * I "fall into" relationships and jobs rather than actively
| evaluating my wants, pursuing them, contrasting varying options,
| etc.
|
| * I would never dream of travelling alone, internationally, by
| myself just to do a thing. It sounds scary doing it for myself,
| but doing it for work sounds trivial.
|
| * I'm very prone to overthinking situations and trying to solve
| them in my head before taking a small, tangible step forward with
| physical actions. This feels similar to lacking agency -- like I
| would trust myself to gain agency but only once I'm confident
| I've seen where taking action will take me.
|
| Sometimes I feel like I don't understand myself because I feel
| like all of these issues should be in the same class. I've done
| things others feel are challenging, but struggle to apply that
| same mindset to tasks I know others find trivial. Does this mean
| I am lacking in agency? Does this mean I just have weird
| standards for myself? Or is it something else entirely?
| jamilton wrote:
| IMO, everything in your "and yets" except relationships and
| overthinking sound like ordinary preferences, rather than lack
| of agency. Like, if you actively want to change those
| preferences and haven't, maybe that's less agentic, but they
| seem reasonable to me. Although I'm biased because I share some
| of those traits.
|
| And the other two I would personally consider in meaningfully
| different categories than your successes, so maybe they're just
| not in line with your strengths (yet).
| throwaway98797 wrote:
| anything external is possible
|
| anything internal is impossible
|
| ie make money ez
|
| lose weight impossible
|
| got to be some kind of psych issue
| collin_of_this wrote:
| Perhaps agency is less one single 'meta-skill' than a bunch of
| domain specific 'micro-skills'. E.g., strategic thinking in a
| tech company leadership roll is one skill (or set of skills),
| strategic thinking in the context of a personal relationship is
| another skill (or set of skills); managing fear in the context
| of public speaking is one skill (or set of skills), managing
| fear in the context of driving is another skill (or set of
| skills).
|
| Sometimes skills that seem superficially similar are
| surprisingly non-transferable and context specific.
|
| Ultimately, I think that the most generally applicable advice
| is getting feedback from others, getting an outside view,
| blindspot fuzzing, etc. Bottlenecks are usually not the obvious
| things, because usually the obvious things have been tried,
| without success. [That is, until the obvious thing is so
| obvious that everyone assumes it has been tried before without
| actually trying it. In which case it is again non-obvious!]
|
| Personally, I have found that in personal relationships, a
| fairly effective strategy to get "unstuck" is to take actions
| that seem bizarre, unimaginable, or otherwise far outside the
| distribution of my ordinary responses. I do this because
| usually if I feel stuck, or there is some unpleasant dynamic,
| then a part of that dynamic that keeps it going is my actions,
| which are based in what I tend to do. If I find myself in the
| 3rd, 4th, or 5th iteration of something unpleasant that I feel
| like has played out before, I'll do something far outside the
| distribution of my ordinary actions, and it has a much better
| chance of getting me unstuck (though, it still might only be a
| 1%-10% chance of getting me unstuck per random action).
|
| Perhaps there is some sort of general algorithm in that for
| getting unstuck. A sort of exhaustive process of elimination,
| with some sort of outside generativity, and some feedback loops
| grounded in reality, that is one's best chance at escaping
| local optima.
| overengineer wrote:
| I am feeling the same way. It makes me get confused about
| myself a lot. I think it is ok that, I can fear from or fail at
| things that are easy for other people while something that is
| hard for the most people can be trivial for me.
| hyperthesis wrote:
| It's easier to exercise daily, but I make better progress if I
| rest alternate days.
|
| It's easier to keep working, but I do my best thinking during a
| nap.
| vaylian wrote:
| > Someone recently asked me how one might go about learning
| charisma, and the answer was really boring: by reading a few
| books, watching many hours of charismatic people interacting with
| others, and adopting a few of their habits.
|
| Any recommendations for books?
| algas wrote:
| The classic is How To Win Friends and Influence People by Dale
| Carnegie -- highly recommended. If you're young and looking for
| something more helpful in romance, watch Before Sunrise.
| da39a3ee wrote:
| > and the number one female poker player in the world
|
| If the author was that then contrary to the thesis of their blog
| post they are an outlier in that they have unusually high raw
| mental power / intelligence in at least some dimensions of
| intelligence. This means that, in fact, other people cannot
| follow in their footsteps because those other people are not
| lucky enough to have a brain like hers. The reason they don't
| have a brain as good as hers might be genetics but is much more
| likely to be that they didn't have educated parents with books on
| the shelves who established a culture and expectations of
| academic achievement. In other words, sorry, but TFA is the same
| tired old right wing bullshit / American Dream crap of anyone can
| pull themselves up by their bootstraps if they work hard enough.
| (And I'm saying that as a wokery-hating centre-rightist!)
| adfisgnio1234 wrote:
| I think this post does a great job of arguing against its own
| thesis. This woman was apparently the rank one poker player in
| the world. She obviously has great natural ability and works hard
| at what she does. So why doesn't she stick with anything for
| longer than a few years? Why has she had an impressive start to
| four or five different careers without following through on any
| of them to real greatness?
|
| She believes, or wants us to believe, that her personality has
| helped her overcome her modest abilities. Instead it seems that
| her immense natural ability has overcome a personality that
| should by all rights have led her to ruin.
| thecrims0nchin wrote:
| I think you see moving around careers as a failure of some
| type. I disagree and see that as success, so there is no
| "arguing against your own thesis".
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| There has to be a high correlation between people who get bored
| and move on and people who can learn things fast (either by
| technique/personality or raw iq points or both).
| beastman82 wrote:
| I've never understood seemingly successful people who feel the
| need to brag. I think it must be some kind of Midwest modesty
| babyshake wrote:
| Was anyone else surprised to learn that this article is not in
| fact about AI agents?
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