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Good and Important moral question!<br>
<br>
In my opinion there are multiple dimensions to ambition and
getting things done.<br>
<br>
Religious people tend to have a "He's got the hold world in his
hands" (so I don't have to do anything, God will do it all for me)
attitude. Obviously, a big killer of ambition there. Every 0ne
becomes just a spectator, watching and waiting for divine
intervention from above, with zero ambition to do anything but
worship and wallow in whatever that is - thinking God has already
made everything perfect or is maybe the perfect plan for some
"Godly ways" which we can't comprehend.<br>
<br>
Most religions are also very hierarchical, leading to a similar "I
don't need to think for myself, nor do I need to take any
ambition, i just need to do what my superiors or the guy at the
top, tell me to do, and wait for them to do it all." This of
course extends into many corporate systems. I work at 3M, a very
hierarchical institution, and it drives me crazy at how bottle
necked that organization is. Almost nobody has any ambition to do
anything, outside of what their manager tells them to do. And the
organization fosters that kind of thinking. And even if you do
take such ambition, management tends to think you're failing,
because your not doing 100% only what they want you to do. In
that kind of bottle necked management system, only the top 1 or 2
most important things get done, leaving everything else a
miserable, terrible, never gets done mess, and nobody can
communicate institution wide.<br>
<br>
Another most important of all issue is large scale co-operation.
This is where religious people blow away liberal humanistic type
loners. Even your question seems to ignore this. In my opinion
so many transhumanists have the Jules Vern type attitude so many
Sci-Fi heros have, that they can do it all themselves, damn the
rest of the world - let them rot in hell, for all I care. My way
or the highway. This is why large church organization rule the
world, while humanists are just seen as lonely winners and
sinners, never doing anything significant at all, contributing to
what the rest of the world is doing.<br>
<br>
In reality, you can't do anything significant, alone. Maybe make
it around the world in 80 days, but big wop. Yet, as soon as you
can just find enough people that want the same thing you do,
heaven and earth will move to make it happen, regardless of how
motivated any of the millions of individuals are or aren't.<br>
<br>
Then of course there is what should you and the crowd be motivated
about? Intelligent liberals, of course shine, above religious
types, in this regard. In fact, their moral intelligence is what
makes them independent and liberal in the first place. But for
people not blessed with such great DNA/environment..., often time
they are far better in a religion, than trying to know, for
themselves, what they should be motivated to do. And even the
most morally intelligent person, is he, alone, the best possible
at knowing what is right and wrong to be ambitiously working
towards achieving? Shold we be putting everything into getting to
the center of the earth, or is that, for the time being , a big
moral waste of time, while people are still heading to rotting in
the hell that is the grave? Wouldn't the smartest, most morally
achieved person, do far better, on all moral decisions, if he
could select a huge set of who he considered experts, on any
particular issue, and then survey for what the expert consensus
way to act was, on all important moral issues? And also wouldn't
he be far more wise if he could have a concise and quantitative
representation of why that was, for reference (without having to
read 20K+ peer reviewed documents on the subject)? Here, large
scale co-operation and diversity, also helps any individual be far
more wise than even the most wise individual, alone, can be, on
all important issues.<br>
<br>
Also, religions have bread us to think it is immoral to tell
anyone else what we want, that only what God wants is all
important, and any deviation we have from that is "wordy",
mistaken, immoral, and deserving of hell / excommunication /
firing. Taking this inbred programming is why hierarchies are
still the only capable large organizations.<br>
<br>
So, in my opinion, the most important 'ambition' is simply being
motivated to find out and express exactly what you want to
everyone. And to do so in a way that you can find others that
agree with you, in an open survey consensus building way. You
also need to know, concisely and quantitatively, what everyone
else wants, so you can be sure to not get in their way, especially
any minority, while also seeking what you want with everyone else
that wants the same.<br>
<br>
Once you find enough people that want the same thing you want,
heaven and earth will move to make it happen, regardless of how
ambitious anyone is or isn't beyond that. If you can know,
concisely and quantitatively, what everyone wants, wars will
cease, political debate will stop, and everyone will finally
become very focused and ambitiously motivated to co-operate and
get exactly that for everyone as efficiently and justly as
possible. And of course finding out, concisely and
quantitatively, what everyone wants, is what the open survey
system at Canonizer.com is all about. And if that's not the best
way to find out what everyone wants and believes, let's find
something better.<br>
<br>
You can't just have ambition, you need to have a vision of where
that ambition should take not just you, but everyone. Once you
have that clear vision, everything else, including ambition, will
just happen.<br>
<br>
Brent Allsop<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
On 1/20/2013 7:26 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote:<br>
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<blockquote cite="mid:50FBFEA0.2060900@aleph.se" type="cite">
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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 19/01/2013 21:19, Stefano Vaj
wrote:<br>
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cite="mid:CAPoR7a5U0W5LYBWoJGwZ=ZQttdnL4kWBuaorT+wfzGA5M92_bA@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
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<pre wrap="">Any other ideas of how to instil grand ambition in people? Force them to read a bit of Rand, Nietzsche or von Braun?
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap="">Not sure about Rand, but Nietzsche and von Braun have been my idols
since age 14... :-)
</pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
It would be interesting to see when great ambition is founded in
life. I have a suspicion that it is pretty common for kids to
develop it at an early age, but it would be good to analyse the
necessary preconditions and triggers. People have been looking at
the life histories of exceptional people checking for
preconditions of talent blossoming, but I don't know if the same
thing has been done for ambition. (I did not find much in PubMed,
at least; see below)<br>
<br>
I have never been much for idols, but clearly reading sf at an
early age filled me with the idea that one *could* be amazingly
ambitious - the heroes of Jules Verne, the epic projects of
classic hard sf, finally the cosmological re-engineering of Dyson
and Tipler. The key thing was the realization that the universe is
enormous, yet there exist actions that allow you to leverage
things to ever greater scales. So I just set out to make myself
into some kind of scientist-hero able to do that, pursuing
self-enhancement, learning and networking. I just wish more people
did that kind of attempted life -shaping. <br>
<br>
<br>
Some relevant papers:<br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22545622">https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22545622</a><br>
On the value of aiming high: the causes and consequences of
ambition.<br>
<blockquote>"Results indicated that <span class="highlight"
style="background-color:">ambition</span> was predicted by
individual differences-conscientiousness, extraversion,
neuroticism, and general mental ability-and a socioeconomic
background variable: parents' occupational prestige. <span
class="highlight" style="background-color:">Ambition</span>,
in turn, was positively related to educational attainment,
occupation prestige, and income. <span class="highlight"
style="background-color:">Ambition</span> had significant
total effects with all of the endogenous variables except
mortality."<br>
</blockquote>
<a moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/1963-03848-001">http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/1963-03848-001</a><br>
Some family determinants of ambition. <br>
Again, family education and family stability seemed relevant.
However, I suspect the ambition they looked for were merely aiming
at a prestigious occupation, not changing the world. <br>
<br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22180878">https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22180878</a><br>
Ambition gone awry: the long-term socioeconomic consequences of
misaligned and uncertain ambitions in adolescence.<br>
This one shows that having aspirations that are in line with
reality is helpful, at least when it comes to occupational status.
<br>
<br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21921915">https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21921915</a><br>
The evolution of overconfidence.<br>
This is an argument why we are all a bit overconfident on average.
But overconfidence is not the same as ambition.<br>
<br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19070437">https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19070437</a><br>
Why are modern scientists so dull? How science selects for
perseverance and sociability at the expense of intelligence and
creativity.<br>
Argues that modern science selects strongly for intelligence and
conscientiousness, when it should be selecting for intelligence
and psychoticism (the personality trait) if it wants to break new
ground.<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Anders Sandberg,
Future of Humanity Institute
Oxford Martin School
Faculty of Philosophy
Oxford University </pre>
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</pre>
</blockquote>
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