10 ms·

How to Be More Agentic

293 points by danboarder 3y ago

Podgajski 3y ago
[flagged]
- gumby 3y ago
  Luck happens to those who let it. Random opportunity comes along, you happen to be in a position to take advantage of it, and you happen to see it as it arrives.
  - Podgajski 3y ago
    What’s with all the woo hoo here on HN? The very definition of the word luck goes against your “frame it on the wall” feely good saying. “success or failure apparently brought by chance rather than through one's own actions.” but I guess you’re also saying that people who get cancer are just letting it happen? Maybe they should’ve investigated the edges. You see there are two types of luck, good luck and bad luck. How do you know if by increasing your good luck in one area you’re not increasing your bad luck in another?
    - thfuran 3y ago
      "Apparently" doesn't mean "actually".
      - Podgajski 3y ago
        so what? That doesn’t change what I’m saying.
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
        thfuran 3y ago
        So that definition you keep posting doesn't say what you're saying it says. That which is apparently not caused by one's actions might, in fact, be largely caused by one's actions. Yes, there are things that are not in your ability to control and perhaps you could call that "true luck", but even your given definition admits labeling things that can be affected by personal actions as luck.
    - stpe 3y ago
      It is a numbers game. And by increasing the number of chances to "play", you increase the probability of scoring (i.e. "increase your luck surface area"). > How do you know if by increasing your good luck in one area you’re not increasing your bad luck in another? I think you do know. Eat healthy and move => most likely will increase the probability of be able to be more active at an older age. Build and launch projects => increase the probability of building a profitable business (but if doing that makes you burnout - sure, you could say you increased your "bad luck" from a health perspective)
    - broscillator 3y ago
      In these comments your agency is entirely aimed at negativity. In order to justify this you reframe it as realism. It's kind of like walking outside with your attention constantly focused on the fact that you might step on dog shit. If you do this, your agency is pulled away from appreciating a beautiful flower, or interchanging smiles with a pretty person, or seeing a hundred dollar bill off to the side. The fact that it is true that you can step on dog shit doesn't make it more true than the fact that most of the time you don't step on dog shit, and that you have the agency to walk and go around as if you weren't going to step on dog shit today.
      - Podgajski 3y ago
        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 behold there was a winning lottery ticket that someone misplaced. What I am saying over and over again is increasing your odds of success. Does not change your luck. Just like you cannot change the fact if a coin lands on heads or tails. You have zero agency in that outcome.
        broscillator 3y ago
        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.
        Podgajski 3y ago
        > 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.
    - whstl 3y ago
      Respectfully, I find your definition of luck more "woo woo" than everyone else's. I might be misunderstanding your point, but other people are treating luck as mere chance or odds, while you seem to me to be treating it as something binary that sounds a bit like "destiny" or "predeterminism".
      - Podgajski 3y ago
        Yes, at any point in time, you can be lucky or unlucky. By changing the odds of an outcome, you’re not changing your luck, you’re changing the odds. Even having 99.999% certainty you can still be unlucky and land in that percent. Probability is not deterministic. And what determines the outcome? Luck.
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
    - bsdpufferfish 3y ago
      > The very definition of the word luck Maybe you can define it for us.
    - the_only_law 3y ago
      > What’s with all the woo hoo here on HN? It’s mostly pseudo-intellectual posturing. Code monkeys desperately striving for some perceived superiority.
  - brudgers 3y ago
    Being in position to take advantage of opportunities is the luckiest thing that can happen to someone. Lucky for us, it's turtles all the way down.
- yamrzou 3y ago
  You can directly control the amount of luck you receive: “Your Luck Surface Area, is directly proportional to the degree to which you do something you're passionate about combined with the total number of people to whom this is effectively communicated.” How to increase your luck surface area (2010) — https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25968751 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25968751
  - Podgajski 3y ago
    The very definition of the word luck goes against what you’re saying. “success or failure apparently brought by chance rather than through one's own actions.” This is a saying that sounds good, but makes no sense. For example, how do you change your luck of getting a coin to flip 90% of the time on tails? So you would say that one was lucky if they flipped a coin 10 times and nine times out of 10 It landed on tails when they needed it to land on tails. But you know what? If they needed it to land on heads those nine out of 10 times they would be unlucky. What you all are talking about is not luck, it’s opportunity. You can increase your opportunity, but your luck never changes.
    - abadpoli 3y ago
      > You can increase your opportunity, but your luck never changes. Exactly. Congrats, you have realized what the point of the article is.
      - Podgajski 3y ago
        No, I didn’t miss the point of the article, I’m expressing the fact that she totally negates luck in anyone’s life circumstances, that it is all about agency. After all, you have to have some amount of luck to have agency in the first place.
        abadpoli 3y ago
        Ok never mind you did entirely miss the point of the article. Shame.
- zer00eyz 3y ago
  There is that old lottery promo "you can't win if you don't play". There is this quote: "You miss one hundred percent of the shots you don't take. Even though there is only a 1-5% probably of scoring". There is the saying 9 times down 10 times up. Getting lucky is a function of trying, as well. Saying you have to get "lucky" isn't about luck, it's about a mentality of keep at it.
  - Podgajski 3y ago
    Playing the lottery versus not playing the lottery doesn’t change your luck, it changes your odds. If two people play the lottery the same amount of times and one person wins way more than the other, You would say one person was luckier than the other.
    - stvltvs 3y ago
      The meaning of the word lucky has shifted over time as we stopped believing that certain people have things go their way more often than average because fate, the gods, or whatever favors them.
      - riwsky 3y ago
        I had stopped believing in fate, too—until I learned that (popular astrology app) Co-Star makes heavy use of Haskell[1]. So since they got my horoscope to compile, it’s probably correct. [1]: https://www.costarastrology.com/why-haskell https://www.costarastrology.com/why-haskell
- FredPret 3y ago
  That’s a losing attitude. To make the most of life, you’ve got to take charge of it, luck or no.
  - Podgajski 3y ago
    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?
    - FredPret 3y ago
      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.
      - Podgajski 3y ago
        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.
        FredPret 3y ago
        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.
        Podgajski 3y ago
        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?
- samstave 3y ago
  >Oh, and being rich helps your agency quite a lot. I inherited my agency from my father. Really? Wow how lucky! Yeah, so no I run the largest Private Wealth Management Agency in the tri-state area.
- inglor_cz 3y ago
  Few people are constantly unlucky, like, day after day after day. Most of our lives are stochastic enough that luck and bad luck, on average, balance out. A random walk in both directions. "Oh, and being rich helps your agency quite a lot." - Yeah, if you can manage your wealth, but if a stupid person somehow gets a lot of money, my bet would be on them losing those in spectacular way within a few years.
  - kwhitefoot 3y ago
    > Few people are constantly unlucky, But quite a few people feel constantly unlucky. And for some this distorts their behaviour in such a way as to make them even unluckier.
    - Podgajski 3y ago
      [flagged]
- ponector 3y ago
  Success is always based on luck. With hard work you can increase your odds to win, but anyway it is about the luck. Anyone who is successful by your standards was lucky enough to born free in a good wealthy society. They could born and live as slaves in Africa and work for food and shelter without any chances to be successful.
- kwhitefoot 3y ago
  Louis Pasteur would disagree: "Chance favours the prepared mind"
  - Podgajski 3y ago
    Are you sure you want to be quoting Louis Pasteur on this topic? For my recollection, he seem to have created a lot of his own luck out of thin air.
- beckingz 3y ago
  On average your luck cancels out.
mark_l_watson 3y ago
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.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
samstave 3y ago
>“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 3y ago
  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 3y ago
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 3y ago
  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 3y ago
    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 3y ago
      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 3y ago
      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.
g-w1 3y ago
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-examples-of-doing-agentic-things https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/umJmRfcJndY3Gsr36/concrete-e...
takinola 3y ago
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 3y ago
  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.
- blueyes 3y ago
  She talked about physical reads as an edge and gave two aspects of finding the edge. a) she put herself in a room with her adversaries, the other poker players, and paid attention to how their behavior correlated with their hands b) she brought up what she noticed and was discounted by other players. These are two excellent components of an edge: 1) primary data and repeated experience 2) watching the consensus reject that data Data scientists go through a stage called EDA, or exploratory data analysis, where they just play around and look at the shape of data. From that, they can begin to form conjectures and dig further to validate or refute their hypothesis. Cate was doing that IRL.
munchler 3y ago
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 3y ago
  "Is that like a person having a tell?" Yes, same thing.
  - munchler 3y ago
    Why would other pros say “nuh-uh, that’s not a thing”? I thought the concept of a tell was widely known.
    - danenania 3y ago
      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 3y ago
        So it’s perhaps more like there’s a local minimum before you reach the global maximum.
        danenania 3y ago
        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.
hiAndrewQuinn 3y ago
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 3y ago
  Care to share what you're working towards?
  - hiAndrewQuinn 3y ago
    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 3y ago
      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 3y ago
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 3y ago
  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- 3y ago
  I wondered the same. Seems very difficult for a person with low self-confidence to act on these recommendations.
  - meowkit 3y ago
    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 3y ago
  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 3y ago
  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.
- giant_fern 3y ago
  Self-confidence is helpful alongside agency, but I think it's a totally different concept. Agency is about self-awareness and realizing that you have a choice. Lack of agency means going along with the default, societal script or what is handed to you even if it is not a good option for you. One example is dropping out of a university program, even if you are capable of graduating. There is a strong social expectation that you finish, but maybe you don't like it, or your time is better spent elsewhere. Agency is that realization that you can choose.
blueyes 3y ago
This piece about how she lives, by her husband Sasha, is also great: https://sashachapin.substack.com/p/things-you-learn-dating-cate-hall https://sashachapin.substack.com/p/things-you-learn-dating-c...
- Podgajski 3y ago
  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.
- bongripper 3y ago
  >I told her that she was a really inspiring person, and that I would keep her in my life indefinitely whether or not we ended up together Whats wrong with men
Podgajski 3y ago
[flagged]
- rco8786 3y ago
  You got flagged bc you’re a jerk about it. For what it’s worth. If you come to disagree and have a civil discussion that’s typically fine. But your posts are condescending and needlessly inflammatory.
  - Podgajski 3y ago
    Dude, I’m on the edges. You know that uncomfortable place where no one likes to go. Just because you don’t like what I’m saying doesn’t mean I’m being a jerk about it. And if you can point out anything specific in a comment that was flagged, I would appreciate it.
    - rco8786 3y ago
      I don’t even know what that means
  - johnchristopher 3y ago
    I don't think so. There are a lot of people in these kind of threads that always try to redefine words to fit their world view (which is more often than not the just world hypothesis in a nutshell). It's typical of the american/wantrepreneur mentality and bias. Downvotes are performative and it's useless to go against the current in this case.
- anthomtb 3y ago
  What holds more significance - something written by the women's husband almost a year ago, or something written by the woman herself a few days ago?
  - Podgajski 3y ago
    Maybe you could just take a look at her Twitter bio! “Born lucky” https://twitter.com/catehall https://twitter.com/catehall This aversion to the effect of luck is just making me realize how deluded many people are in the tech industry. And how they fell under the spell of lucky people who are successful, telling you it’s not about luck.
ilaksh 3y ago
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 3y ago
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 3y ago
  Cate believe success is all about luck. She said it herself. https://sashachapin.substack.com/p/things-you-learn-dating-cate-hall https://sashachapin.substack.com/p/things-you-learn-dating-c...
  - rco8786 3y ago
    What is your purpose with these posts?
    - Podgajski 3y ago
      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 3y ago
        > 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.
arijo 3y ago
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 https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/43909278-alexandre-gomes
- blackbear_ 3y ago
  Not a book worm myself but I found this one really enlightening: https://www.amazon.com/Mindset-Psychology-Carol-S-Dweck/dp/0345472322 https://www.amazon.com/Mindset-Psychology-Carol-S-Dweck/dp/0...
zubairq 3y ago
I need to do this as well… Pretty amazing article. I end up doing a mix of autopilot and other stuff
febeling 3y ago
> 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 3y ago
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 3y ago
  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).
hyperthesis 3y ago
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 3y ago
> 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 3y ago
  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 3y ago
> 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 3y ago
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.
- kirso 3y ago
  For some the real greatness is to be involved in a more than one discipline.
- thecrims0nchin 3y ago
  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 3y ago
  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).
- mabcat 3y ago
  It's often said that to be outstanding, you should master two different fields then work at the intersection of those fields. For a lot of people the model of "real greatness" is Leonardo, who mastered about 7 fields. To even get close to that you need to be the sort of person who changes fields every 5 years or so. I think this temperament is relatively fixed, perhaps because it's a feature of some kinds of neurodivergence. If ND and innate ability are both fixed, what you need to reach greatness is a bag of tricks like the author has so you optimise the many parts of personality and behaviour that are not fixed. What I think is sad about modern times is, it's increasingly difficult and impractical to make a career change into a regulated profession. You can switch to CS, painting, or poker any old time. But if you're not a doctor by the time you're 40, forget about it. I bump into many people who are interested in medicine and would be great at it, but the switching cost is insurmountable. A shame because there's so much greatness to unlock at the intersection of CS, medical research, and clinical practice.
beastman82 3y ago
I've never understood seemingly successful people who feel the need to brag. I think it must be some kind of Midwest modesty
babyshake 3y ago
Was anyone else surprised to learn that this article is not in fact about AI agents?
AtlasBarfed 3y ago
I really miss n-gate, they would have richly savaged this post.
- the_only_law 3y ago
  Does anyone know what happened to it?
  - AtlasBarfed 3y ago
    I think he got tired of it. It was clearly a one man show.
a_c 3y ago
Side topic, I understand "agency/agentic" means "taking matter at own hand" but I have problem understanding why. In principal-agent problem [1], an agent is someone acting on principal's behalf. Conflicts arise when the doer, the agent, has more influence to the result, which the result may not align with that of a principal. Shouldn't having more "agency" means acting on people's behalf on steroids? Why one would want to have more "agency" instead of "being your own principal"? [1]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_proble...
- dambi0 3y ago
  Does your confusion arise because you are generalising a specific definition of agency.
- ssivark 3y ago
  Agreed that it's confusing. In case it helps, the concepts you're conflating are "agent-y" as an adjective (i.e. agent-like, for others) and "agency" the abstract noun for the quality of being a good agent for oneself.
tesdinger 3y ago
> a massive edge was available in the form of physical reads, but almost entirely ignored No. The word poker face exists for a reason. Everyone knew about the importance of physical reads.
bongripper 3y ago
There are some interesting points in there, but the author sounds like a bit of a narcissistic jerk. > In many contexts, the way to get good feedback is to give people a way to provide it anonymously. Anything else creates friction by layering on social dynamics. To get honest feedback, you want to make it as comfortable as possible for people to give it. You also want to make it easy to find -- I have a link to my feedback form in my Twitter bio, and get a few comments a week through it. > I imagine resistance from some people on the grounds that anonymity frees people to be assholes, but in my experience they rarely are. 90% of what I get in my inbox is either nonsense or nice -- I get lots of “keep up the good work!” type messages So 10% are assholes, and the rest are "nonsense" or nice - does she get any actual criticism in her "feedback inbox" (kind of a strange concept in my opinion in itself)? Also, all of the accomplishments she bragged about in the intro are from business. Impressive as they may be, it seems a bit narrow minded to be only focusing on that part of life when recounting what you are most proud of.
coolThingsFirst 3y ago
Overstepping and getting pummeled by rejections hurts a LOT. For me it’s not something i can laugh it off.
97-109-107 3y ago
Anyone here finding hard to balance politeness and what the author calls courting rejections?
- Towaway69 3y ago
  Sandwich tactic: first the good, then the bad and finally a bit more good. But yes, the balance between being polite and being honest is hard, there is no the right way since it depends on who you are talking to.

293 points by danboarder 3y ago

Podgajski 3y ago

[flagged]

gumby 3y ago
Luck happens to those who let it. Random opportunity comes along, you happen to be in a position to take advantage of it, and you happen to see it as it arrives.
- Podgajski 3y ago
  What’s with all the woo hoo here on HN? The very definition of the word luck goes against your “frame it on the wall” feely good saying. “success or failure apparently brought by chance rather than through one's own actions.” but I guess you’re also saying that people who get cancer are just letting it happen? Maybe they should’ve investigated the edges. You see there are two types of luck, good luck and bad luck. How do you know if by increasing your good luck in one area you’re not increasing your bad luck in another?
  - thfuran 3y ago
    "Apparently" doesn't mean "actually".
    - Podgajski 3y ago
      so what? That doesn’t change what I’m saying.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - thfuran 3y ago
        So that definition you keep posting doesn't say what you're saying it says. That which is apparently not caused by one's actions might, in fact, be largely caused by one's actions. Yes, there are things that are not in your ability to control and perhaps you could call that "true luck", but even your given definition admits labeling things that can be affected by personal actions as luck.
  - stpe 3y ago
    It is a numbers game. And by increasing the number of chances to "play", you increase the probability of scoring (i.e. "increase your luck surface area"). > How do you know if by increasing your good luck in one area you’re not increasing your bad luck in another? I think you do know. Eat healthy and move => most likely will increase the probability of be able to be more active at an older age. Build and launch projects => increase the probability of building a profitable business (but if doing that makes you burnout - sure, you could say you increased your "bad luck" from a health perspective)
  - broscillator 3y ago
    In these comments your agency is entirely aimed at negativity. In order to justify this you reframe it as realism. It's kind of like walking outside with your attention constantly focused on the fact that you might step on dog shit. If you do this, your agency is pulled away from appreciating a beautiful flower, or interchanging smiles with a pretty person, or seeing a hundred dollar bill off to the side. The fact that it is true that you can step on dog shit doesn't make it more true than the fact that most of the time you don't step on dog shit, and that you have the agency to walk and go around as if you weren't going to step on dog shit today.
    - Podgajski 3y ago
      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 behold there was a winning lottery ticket that someone misplaced. What I am saying over and over again is increasing your odds of success. Does not change your luck. Just like you cannot change the fact if a coin lands on heads or tails. You have zero agency in that outcome.
      - broscillator 3y ago
        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.
        Podgajski 3y ago
        > 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.
  - whstl 3y ago
    Respectfully, I find your definition of luck more "woo woo" than everyone else's. I might be misunderstanding your point, but other people are treating luck as mere chance or odds, while you seem to me to be treating it as something binary that sounds a bit like "destiny" or "predeterminism".
    - Podgajski 3y ago
      Yes, at any point in time, you can be lucky or unlucky. By changing the odds of an outcome, you’re not changing your luck, you’re changing the odds. Even having 99.999% certainty you can still be unlucky and land in that percent. Probability is not deterministic. And what determines the outcome? Luck.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
  - bsdpufferfish 3y ago
    > The very definition of the word luck Maybe you can define it for us.
  - the_only_law 3y ago
    > What’s with all the woo hoo here on HN? It’s mostly pseudo-intellectual posturing. Code monkeys desperately striving for some perceived superiority.
- brudgers 3y ago
  Being in position to take advantage of opportunities is the luckiest thing that can happen to someone. Lucky for us, it's turtles all the way down.
yamrzou 3y ago
You can directly control the amount of luck you receive: “Your Luck Surface Area, is directly proportional to the degree to which you do something you're passionate about combined with the total number of people to whom this is effectively communicated.” How to increase your luck surface area (2010) — https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25968751 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25968751
- Podgajski 3y ago
  The very definition of the word luck goes against what you’re saying. “success or failure apparently brought by chance rather than through one's own actions.” This is a saying that sounds good, but makes no sense. For example, how do you change your luck of getting a coin to flip 90% of the time on tails? So you would say that one was lucky if they flipped a coin 10 times and nine times out of 10 It landed on tails when they needed it to land on tails. But you know what? If they needed it to land on heads those nine out of 10 times they would be unlucky. What you all are talking about is not luck, it’s opportunity. You can increase your opportunity, but your luck never changes.
  - abadpoli 3y ago
    > You can increase your opportunity, but your luck never changes. Exactly. Congrats, you have realized what the point of the article is.
    - Podgajski 3y ago
      No, I didn’t miss the point of the article, I’m expressing the fact that she totally negates luck in anyone’s life circumstances, that it is all about agency. After all, you have to have some amount of luck to have agency in the first place.
      - abadpoli 3y ago
        Ok never mind you did entirely miss the point of the article. Shame.
zer00eyz 3y ago
There is that old lottery promo "you can't win if you don't play". There is this quote: "You miss one hundred percent of the shots you don't take. Even though there is only a 1-5% probably of scoring". There is the saying 9 times down 10 times up. Getting lucky is a function of trying, as well. Saying you have to get "lucky" isn't about luck, it's about a mentality of keep at it.
- Podgajski 3y ago
  Playing the lottery versus not playing the lottery doesn’t change your luck, it changes your odds. If two people play the lottery the same amount of times and one person wins way more than the other, You would say one person was luckier than the other.
  - stvltvs 3y ago
    The meaning of the word lucky has shifted over time as we stopped believing that certain people have things go their way more often than average because fate, the gods, or whatever favors them.
    - riwsky 3y ago
      I had stopped believing in fate, too—until I learned that (popular astrology app) Co-Star makes heavy use of Haskell[1]. So since they got my horoscope to compile, it’s probably correct. [1]: https://www.costarastrology.com/why-haskell https://www.costarastrology.com/why-haskell
FredPret 3y ago
That’s a losing attitude. To make the most of life, you’ve got to take charge of it, luck or no.
- Podgajski 3y ago
  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?
  - FredPret 3y ago
    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.
    - Podgajski 3y ago
      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.
      - FredPret 3y ago
        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.
        Podgajski 3y ago
        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?
samstave 3y ago
>Oh, and being rich helps your agency quite a lot. I inherited my agency from my father. Really? Wow how lucky! Yeah, so no I run the largest Private Wealth Management Agency in the tri-state area.
inglor_cz 3y ago
Few people are constantly unlucky, like, day after day after day. Most of our lives are stochastic enough that luck and bad luck, on average, balance out. A random walk in both directions. "Oh, and being rich helps your agency quite a lot." - Yeah, if you can manage your wealth, but if a stupid person somehow gets a lot of money, my bet would be on them losing those in spectacular way within a few years.
- kwhitefoot 3y ago
  > Few people are constantly unlucky, But quite a few people feel constantly unlucky. And for some this distorts their behaviour in such a way as to make them even unluckier.
  - Podgajski 3y ago
    [flagged]
ponector 3y ago
Success is always based on luck. With hard work you can increase your odds to win, but anyway it is about the luck. Anyone who is successful by your standards was lucky enough to born free in a good wealthy society. They could born and live as slaves in Africa and work for food and shelter without any chances to be successful.
kwhitefoot 3y ago
Louis Pasteur would disagree: "Chance favours the prepared mind"
- Podgajski 3y ago
  Are you sure you want to be quoting Louis Pasteur on this topic? For my recollection, he seem to have created a lot of his own luck out of thin air.
beckingz 3y ago
On average your luck cancels out.

mark_l_watson 3y ago

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.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

samstave 3y ago

>“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 3y ago
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 3y ago

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 3y ago
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 3y ago
  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 3y ago
    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 3y ago
    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.

g-w1 3y ago

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-examples-of-doing-agentic-things https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/umJmRfcJndY3Gsr36/concrete-e...

takinola 3y ago

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 3y ago
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.
blueyes 3y ago
She talked about physical reads as an edge and gave two aspects of finding the edge. a) she put herself in a room with her adversaries, the other poker players, and paid attention to how their behavior correlated with their hands b) she brought up what she noticed and was discounted by other players. These are two excellent components of an edge: 1) primary data and repeated experience 2) watching the consensus reject that data Data scientists go through a stage called EDA, or exploratory data analysis, where they just play around and look at the shape of data. From that, they can begin to form conjectures and dig further to validate or refute their hypothesis. Cate was doing that IRL.

munchler 3y ago

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 3y ago
"Is that like a person having a tell?" Yes, same thing.
- munchler 3y ago
  Why would other pros say “nuh-uh, that’s not a thing”? I thought the concept of a tell was widely known.
  - danenania 3y ago
    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 3y ago
      So it’s perhaps more like there’s a local minimum before you reach the global maximum.
      - danenania 3y ago
        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.

hiAndrewQuinn 3y ago

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 3y ago
Care to share what you're working towards?
- hiAndrewQuinn 3y ago
  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 3y ago
    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 3y ago

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 3y ago
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- 3y ago
I wondered the same. Seems very difficult for a person with low self-confidence to act on these recommendations.
- meowkit 3y ago
  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 3y ago
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 3y ago
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.
giant_fern 3y ago
Self-confidence is helpful alongside agency, but I think it's a totally different concept. Agency is about self-awareness and realizing that you have a choice. Lack of agency means going along with the default, societal script or what is handed to you even if it is not a good option for you. One example is dropping out of a university program, even if you are capable of graduating. There is a strong social expectation that you finish, but maybe you don't like it, or your time is better spent elsewhere. Agency is that realization that you can choose.

blueyes 3y ago

This piece about how she lives, by her husband Sasha, is also great: https://sashachapin.substack.com/p/things-you-learn-dating-cate-hall https://sashachapin.substack.com/p/things-you-learn-dating-c...

Podgajski 3y ago
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.
bongripper 3y ago
>I told her that she was a really inspiring person, and that I would keep her in my life indefinitely whether or not we ended up together Whats wrong with men

Podgajski 3y ago

[flagged]

rco8786 3y ago
You got flagged bc you’re a jerk about it. For what it’s worth. If you come to disagree and have a civil discussion that’s typically fine. But your posts are condescending and needlessly inflammatory.
- Podgajski 3y ago
  Dude, I’m on the edges. You know that uncomfortable place where no one likes to go. Just because you don’t like what I’m saying doesn’t mean I’m being a jerk about it. And if you can point out anything specific in a comment that was flagged, I would appreciate it.
  - rco8786 3y ago
    I don’t even know what that means
- johnchristopher 3y ago
  I don't think so. There are a lot of people in these kind of threads that always try to redefine words to fit their world view (which is more often than not the just world hypothesis in a nutshell). It's typical of the american/wantrepreneur mentality and bias. Downvotes are performative and it's useless to go against the current in this case.
anthomtb 3y ago
What holds more significance - something written by the women's husband almost a year ago, or something written by the woman herself a few days ago?
- Podgajski 3y ago
  Maybe you could just take a look at her Twitter bio! “Born lucky” https://twitter.com/catehall https://twitter.com/catehall This aversion to the effect of luck is just making me realize how deluded many people are in the tech industry. And how they fell under the spell of lucky people who are successful, telling you it’s not about luck.

ilaksh 3y ago

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 3y ago

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 3y ago
Cate believe success is all about luck. She said it herself. https://sashachapin.substack.com/p/things-you-learn-dating-cate-hall https://sashachapin.substack.com/p/things-you-learn-dating-c...
- rco8786 3y ago
  What is your purpose with these posts?
  - Podgajski 3y ago
    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 3y ago
      > 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.

arijo 3y ago

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 https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/43909278-alexandre-gomes

blackbear_ 3y ago
Not a book worm myself but I found this one really enlightening: https://www.amazon.com/Mindset-Psychology-Carol-S-Dweck/dp/0345472322 https://www.amazon.com/Mindset-Psychology-Carol-S-Dweck/dp/0...

zubairq 3y ago

I need to do this as well… Pretty amazing article. I end up doing a mix of autopilot and other stuff

febeling 3y ago

> 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 3y ago

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 3y ago
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).

hyperthesis 3y ago

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 3y ago

> 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 3y ago
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 3y ago

> 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 3y ago

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.

kirso 3y ago
For some the real greatness is to be involved in a more than one discipline.
thecrims0nchin 3y ago
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 3y ago
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).
mabcat 3y ago
It's often said that to be outstanding, you should master two different fields then work at the intersection of those fields. For a lot of people the model of "real greatness" is Leonardo, who mastered about 7 fields. To even get close to that you need to be the sort of person who changes fields every 5 years or so. I think this temperament is relatively fixed, perhaps because it's a feature of some kinds of neurodivergence. If ND and innate ability are both fixed, what you need to reach greatness is a bag of tricks like the author has so you optimise the many parts of personality and behaviour that are not fixed. What I think is sad about modern times is, it's increasingly difficult and impractical to make a career change into a regulated profession. You can switch to CS, painting, or poker any old time. But if you're not a doctor by the time you're 40, forget about it. I bump into many people who are interested in medicine and would be great at it, but the switching cost is insurmountable. A shame because there's so much greatness to unlock at the intersection of CS, medical research, and clinical practice.

beastman82 3y ago

I've never understood seemingly successful people who feel the need to brag. I think it must be some kind of Midwest modesty

babyshake 3y ago

Was anyone else surprised to learn that this article is not in fact about AI agents?

AtlasBarfed 3y ago

I really miss n-gate, they would have richly savaged this post.

the_only_law 3y ago
Does anyone know what happened to it?
- AtlasBarfed 3y ago
  I think he got tired of it. It was clearly a one man show.

a_c 3y ago

Side topic, I understand "agency/agentic" means "taking matter at own hand" but I have problem understanding why. In principal-agent problem [1], an agent is someone acting on principal's behalf. Conflicts arise when the doer, the agent, has more influence to the result, which the result may not align with that of a principal. Shouldn't having more "agency" means acting on people's behalf on steroids? Why one would want to have more "agency" instead of "being your own principal"? [1]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_proble...

dambi0 3y ago
Does your confusion arise because you are generalising a specific definition of agency.
ssivark 3y ago
Agreed that it's confusing. In case it helps, the concepts you're conflating are "agent-y" as an adjective (i.e. agent-like, for others) and "agency" the abstract noun for the quality of being a good agent for oneself.

tesdinger 3y ago

> a massive edge was available in the form of physical reads, but almost entirely ignored No. The word poker face exists for a reason. Everyone knew about the importance of physical reads.

bongripper 3y ago

There are some interesting points in there, but the author sounds like a bit of a narcissistic jerk. > In many contexts, the way to get good feedback is to give people a way to provide it anonymously. Anything else creates friction by layering on social dynamics. To get honest feedback, you want to make it as comfortable as possible for people to give it. You also want to make it easy to find -- I have a link to my feedback form in my Twitter bio, and get a few comments a week through it. > I imagine resistance from some people on the grounds that anonymity frees people to be assholes, but in my experience they rarely are. 90% of what I get in my inbox is either nonsense or nice -- I get lots of “keep up the good work!” type messages So 10% are assholes, and the rest are "nonsense" or nice - does she get any actual criticism in her "feedback inbox" (kind of a strange concept in my opinion in itself)? Also, all of the accomplishments she bragged about in the intro are from business. Impressive as they may be, it seems a bit narrow minded to be only focusing on that part of life when recounting what you are most proud of.

coolThingsFirst 3y ago

Overstepping and getting pummeled by rejections hurts a LOT. For me it’s not something i can laugh it off.

97-109-107 3y ago

Anyone here finding hard to balance politeness and what the author calls courting rejections?

Towaway69 3y ago
Sandwich tactic: first the good, then the bad and finally a bit more good. But yes, the balance between being polite and being honest is hard, there is no the right way since it depends on who you are talking to.