6 ms·

Your Most Improbable Life

165 points by jger15 5mo ago

dotcoma 5mo ago
Is living your most improbable life something within everyone's reach, or only of those who need not worry about money problems? (just asking)
bambax 5mo ago
> Here is what you gain with your most improbable life: The authentic you. Your particular mix of talents, native abilities, personal inclinations, genetic limits, life experiences, and ambitious desires points to a mixture that is distinctly unique (...) The more you-ish you become, the less competition you have, because you are occupying your own niche. This is profoundly true, and the corollary is: beware of titles. From project manager at some company to CEO of some megacorp: there have been, there are and there will be others just like that. But if you're you, defined only by your name (or your existence, without a name), then there is no one else, there can be no one else, because there is only one you in the whole universe.
- margalabargala 5mo ago
  > Here is what you gain with your most improbable life: The authentic you On the contrary, this is profoundly bullshit. Firstly, anyone arriving at a "life's goal" via what a blogger says should be their life's goal is not being "authentically them". Secondly, why does a broader, less likely mix of talents and experiences make you more "you"? It doesn't. Just because you've become more unique does not make you more "you-ish".
  - slopinthebag 5mo ago
    We're all influenced by our past experiences, the books we've read, the movies we've watched, the people in our lives, and yes, blog posts and essays as well. Our past is part of what makes us us. I don't know how you can claim that being influenced by a blogger is any less authentic than being influenced by anything else. > why does a broader, less likely mix of talents and experiences make you more "you"? Because it's highly improbable that any one person's natural mix of talents and experiences would be narrow and similar to everyone else's.
    - margalabargala 5mo ago
      What you're saying is contradictory. On one hand, you say that "you are your experiences therefore you're youness is absolute even if you're living out the instructions of a blogger" And then on the next hand you seem to imply that being less similar to others makes you more you, which besides being without basis, contradicts the banal "you're you therefore you're you" of your first point. You can't have it both ways.
      - slopinthebag 5mo ago
        I never actually said those things, you're paraphrasing what I said in a specific way so you can dunk on me. This isn't X bruv.
        margalabargala 5mo ago
        > > why does a broader, less likely mix of talents and experiences make you more "you"? > Because it's highly improbable that any one person's natural mix of talents and experiences would be narrow and similar to everyone else's. For those of us having trouble, can you elaborate on how that isn't described by "you seem to imply that being less similar to others makes you more you"? Your answer there is directly at odds with saying that allowing yourself to be influenced by a blogger spewing mass-market pop-philosophy doesn't make the result less authentic. The two original questions I answered are intrinsically linked. If your answers to the two are contradictory, then there's a fundamental integrity problem with the aforementioned pop-philosophy.
        slopinthebag 5mo ago
        I don't see the connection. We are, at least in part (and some argue fully) a result of our past experiences, teachings, etc. I don't see how it's valid to argue that learning from an essay is somehow inauthentic. This is different from the claim that people naturally have a unique set of traits, experiences, and desires, and you would expect people who have successfully self-actualised to express that uniqueness.
wanoir 5mo ago
> But it can be even more improbable. You can align yourself with this grand arc moving from the expected to the unexpected and aim to become the most improbable person you can be. Also reminds me of the social media trend for “don’t let them predict your next move”
luqtas 5mo ago
how about normalizing being generic (you don't need to be a Cervantes or a Joyce to write a book people enjoy) by burning down AI servers? or boycotting these techs. OP types like it's easy to stand out of a ever growing nation of 8 billion people and that people aren't satified with the generic. take a look at the most popular music hits worldwide... 12-edo, mostly harmonic stuff having C you should build your uniqueness to help humanity and not stand out because you like to shine over the others
ElProlactin 5mo ago
> Your life’s goal should be to become the most improbable person you can be. Your life's goal should not be dictated by Substack philosophers. > Here is what you gain with your most improbable life: > The authentic you. Your particular mix of talents, native abilities, personal inclinations, genetic limits, life experiences, and ambitious desires points to a mixture that is distinctly unique – if it is allowed to blossom. The further you move in that direction, the more you-like you become. The West's obsession with "self-help" is built on convincing individuals that they are special but not living up to their special-ness. It then demands they do things to realize their special-ness. The premise is that realization, fulfillment and happiness are only accessible if you do things you're not naturally inclined to do. Which begs the question: are you being the "authentic you" if you are following a path laid out by someone else? > Finally, the less predictable you are, the less likely you are to be replaced by AIs. Machines are efficient, and they are powered by the predictable. Current LLMs are trained to generate the most predictable solution. So far they are not very good at duplicating what a creative, one-of-a-kind improbable human can produce. To distance yourself from the machines, aim to be as improbable as you can be. Tell this to all the creatives who are being disrupted by AI that has, in many cases, been trained on their content.
- Geste 5mo ago
  So, you liked nothing about the post ? What would you salvage from it ?
  - zephen 5mo ago
    Well, let's start with the second sentence: > Your path, your character, your life, should be the most unlikely, the most unexpected, the least predictable version you can make. Now, I ask you, is that really what I want from my kid's school bus driver?
    - OutOfHere 5mo ago
      Huh. The post in effect is about a choice of one's career, about what one offers to the world. Of course the execution of the chosen career must remain flawless. One must develop one's own unique offering. Don't let the world trap you in its box. I came across a bus driver today that told me he owned a juice bar on the side, and invited me to visit. I thought this was most unexpected. This didn't make him a bad driver. His driving was fine. The point is that even a bus driver can live up to the author's ideal.
jmduke 5mo ago
With all due respect to Kevin Kelly (who has lived a life worthy of the aphorisms he writes!), I prefer the guidance of George Saunders (via Lincoln in the Bardo): > Please do not misunderstand. We had been mothers, fathers. Had been husbands of many years, men of import, who had come here, that first day, accompanied by crowds so vast and sorrowful that, surging forward to hear the oration, they had damaged fences beyond repair. Had been young wives, diverted here during childbirth, our gentle qualities stripped from us by the naked pain of that circumstance, who left behind husbands so enamored of us, so tormented by the horror of those last moments (the notion that we had gone down that awful black hole pain-sundered from ourselves) that they had never loved again. Had been bulky men, quietly content, who, in our first youth, had come to grasp our own unremarkableness and had, cheerfully (as if bemusedly accepting a heavy burden), shifted our life’s focus; if we would not be great, we would be useful; would be rich, and kind, and thereby able to effect good: smiling, hands in pockets, watching the world we had subtly improved walking past (this empty dowry filled; that education secretly funded). Had been affable, joking servants, of whom our masters had grown fond for the cheering words we managed as they launched forth on days full of import. Had been grandmothers, tolerant and frank, recipients of certain dark secrets,who, by the quality of their unjudging listening, granted tacit forgiveness, and thus let in the sun. What I mean to say is, we had been considerable. Had been loved. Not lonely, not lost, not freakish, but wise, each in his or her own way. Our departures caused pain. Those who had loved us sat upon their beds, heads in hand; lowered their faces to tabletops, making animal noises. We had been loved, I say, and remembering us, even many years later, people would smile, briefly gladdened at the memory.
gblargg 5mo ago
I wonder what an improbable version of this post would look like. This was very predictable given the first few sentences. I think self-help inspiration like this works better by helping you see the wonder in the mundane rather than painting a big picture of how you're going to be Neo and break out of the matrix everyone else is trapped inside, one that will fade within a minutes. It's a superpower to experience novelty in everyday things.
lilyJeon 5mo ago
The part about the 'four weapons of an improbable person' really gave me the push to challenge myself again, especially today when I was being so hard on myself for a day with no visible results. I deeply resonate with the idea that our ultimate vision moving forward should be to become the most unpredictable and unique versions of ourselves. Growing up in a hyper-competitive society, I feel like I’ve spent my whole life constantly comparing myself to those around me, or even to complete strangers just to survive. Because of that, up until now, I think I’ve only ever been an incomplete version of 'me.' Thank you for sharing such a powerful piece.
- HeartStrings 5mo ago
  Slopmaxxed, probabilitymaxxed
slopinthebag 5mo ago
I don't find it surprising that people here are reading this completely literally (eg. I'll be hit by a car with erratic movement), or approaching it as if the author is suggesting we have a god complex (eg. painting a big picture of how you're going to be Neo). But it is a bit disappointing. Have LLMs ruined our ability to think abstractly? It's practically a trope that taking the common, average path in life is not for everyone. If I wrote an article suggesting that not everyone will achieve self-actualisation by going to university at 18, getting a degree, entering the work force, buying a house, getting married, having kids, and retiring at 65, nobody would bat an eye. The author is basically making this argument in a slightly novel way. Living your life by choosing the average of all decisions will, for a lot of people, lead to a boring and meaningless life. I reckon for most people it would be substandard. Instead, do things which are not common or average or expected of you. It's advice that's practically as old as time, packaged up in a slightly different way.
- zephen 5mo ago
  > Have LLMs ruined our ability to think abstractly? No. Well, maybe. You'd have to ask someone who uses them. > It's practically a trope that taking the common, average path in life is not for everyone. Exactly. It's a tired trope, and gussying it up with pontifications about the utility of personal stochastic processes, after a detour into the big bang and entropy, doesn't make it any better. > If I wrote an article suggesting that not everyone will achieve self-actualisation by going to university at 18, getting a degree, entering the work force, buying a house, getting married, having kids, and retiring at 65, nobody would bat an eye. And nobody would submit it to HN, either. > The author is basically making this argument in a slightly novel way. No. The article is tedious, and, as has already been pointed out, prescriptive rather than permissive.
- senrex 5mo ago
  No, internet bullshit has ruined your ability to think that you think this is anything more than internet bullshit.
ks2048 5mo ago
Maximizing improbability means spouting gibberish 24/7 and flopping around uncontrollably. Very unpredictable. More seriously, I don't see how "improbable" is what you should maximize. If you come from a certain background, ending up in prison as a murderer may be more improbable than countless good lives you could lead.
- HeartStrings 5mo ago
  No, that’s just falling into the “lol so randum xD” meme.
sublinear 5mo ago
The mentions of "AI" are jarring and stupid. This will not age well.
asveikau 5mo ago
I found this hard to read. At one point in my life I came to an epiphany on this topic. Everybody's life is improbable. Literally everybody, all the time, without any effort. Through the lens of this I saw myself as being the type of person who looks at things in life through averages, sizing up what's likely, and I realized that in my own story there were a lot of very improbable occurrences. Even if we understand statistics, we shouldn't let our knowledge of what's likely or most common get in the way of appreciation this uniqueness, or cloud our view of it. I took this observation to mean to be less judgemental, less the type to want to size something up and put it in a statistical bucket.
- rozap 5mo ago
  I was recently talking to a friend about this, the concept of a normie. A normie is kind of a mirage, it only exists in the realm of statistics, but when you look at any one individual who could fit that label, they are unlikely, so, can they really be a normie? Once internalized, the only real way out is to be less judgemental. Sure, you won't be friends with everyone, but the buckets are just not super useful when looking at an individual.
  - helloplanets 5mo ago
    The usual way of measuring a trait would basically be measuring N amount of people on a specific thing, and the distribution based on that. But if you take 1 person, and N amount of specific things/traits, just about everyone would probably make their own sort of distribution with a bunch of "normal" traits and a long tail of "unusual" traits. Still a simplification, but has made the "illusion of a normie" clearer to me.
    - perilunar 5mo ago
      This is literally true on a physical level: The US airforce did a study in the 1950s that showed none of the thousands pilots they measured matched the average across multiple body measurements. i.e. no one was average. https://austraffic.com.au/aba/us-air-force-finds-averages-can-kill https://austraffic.com.au/aba/us-air-force-finds-averages-ca... Edit: the report itself: THE "AVERAGE MAN"? Gilbert S. Daniels, December 1952 https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/AD0010203.pdf https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/AD0010203.pdf
canistel 5mo ago
Is exotropy really the opposite of entropy? I was glad to stumble upon this word, but on searching the internet, it does not seem to be. Could someone informed shed some light on the matter?
- iammjm 5mo ago
  Perhaps negentropy
yathartha 5mo ago
[flagged]
HeartStrings 5mo ago
What’s the pathological obsession with needing to be a unique snowflake? Nail that stands out should get hammered in, that’s a bad nail.
- znnajdla 5mo ago
  Because the alternative is death. Want to become non-unique? Let your body decompose back into the surrounding environment.
  - zephen 5mo ago
    Death is a certainty, not an alternative.
    - tardedmeme 5mo ago
      There are three kinds of death. There is living to a ripe old age, passing away quietly in a nursing home surrounded by loved ones. There is randomly being hit by a drunk driver, which is pure tragedy. And there is dying in a skydiving accident. The person who dies in a skydiving accident at 35 can have lived more than the person who passes away quietly at 95 but never took any risks. It's still tragic, but I think you can celebrate someone who lived life to the fullest, in a way that you can't if they just let themselves rot away with dementia. You either peak and start to decline at some time in your life, or you continuously go up, never peaking before your death. When people say "the alternative is death" it's a class 2 or class 3 death. But it matters which one it is.
  - krilcebre 5mo ago
    Aren't we all unique? A person is not just a mish mash of his career and hobbies.
- AndroTux 5mo ago
  Sure, if you want your whole life’s purpose to be supporting the board you’re nailed into, your metaphor might be right. But life is more than just being a “valuable member to society.”
wowsig 5mo ago
Perhaps for readers here, this would be often repeated advice, but I found it inspiring as a middle aged woman and also know in my bones that any version of it would help my mother immensely break her life patterns when they aren't serving her any longer. For people in mid-age and older, when they're at the stage where they've spend half their lives arranging and rearranging the world and its offerings in an altar of comfort and familiarity, this is a terrifying (and thereby exhilarating) thought. At the age of 23, ofcourse life seems improbable. At the age of 63, you don't even want to knock at an improbable door. Loved reading it and also got my mind blown at this fact: When you shuffle a deck of 52 cards the order of those cards will never be repeated again in the history of the universe, no matter how fast you shuffle.
- RetroTechie 5mo ago
  > At the age of 23, ofcourse life seems improbable. At the age of 63, you don't even want to knock at an improbable door. Why would you not do at 63 what you would do at 23?
  - nancyminusone 5mo ago
    When you fall on your ass at 63, it hurts for half a month instead of half an hour.
esailija 5mo ago
Ironically it is any maxxing, including improbabilitymaxxing, that actually makes you a predictable and controllable machine. Such a sad waste of what could be a free will.
keybored 5mo ago
You start sipping your tea. You quit coffee because you get too agitated. You were given a two-weeks notice three days ago. So were a lot of other people. The gist of it was AI. That’s what they said anyway. You and others are fretting about the possibility of finding a new job; “in this Economy?”, the usual things. So finding a new job takes up your evenings now. But you can’t even relax a little for these two weeks, slow down the pace a bit. You’re too afraid of the final performance review. You’re sitting in a foldable chair, sipping your tea, waiting for some speaker to arrive. Probably motivational judging by the title. Everyone is cheery. Weird. But you are too. This is not the time (the economy) to be disagreeable in the face of a firing. Now the managers are here to introduce the motivational speaker. They aren’t just cheery. They are grinning ear to ear. What the fuck for? Who is going to be motivated? Oh well. The speech is about becoming your most improbable self. Huh? Okay the premise, or scene, is entropy in the universe. We are just atoms in a blender but we have the intelligence to stack cards, kind of a deal. It seems trivial. > Finally, the less predictable you are, the less likely you are to be replaced by AIs. Machines are efficient, and they are powered by the predictable. Current LLMs are trained to generate the most predictable solution. So far they are not very good at duplicating what a creative, one-of-a-kind improbable human can produce. To distance yourself from the machines, aim to be as improbable as you can be. You suddenly find yourself with an urge to increase the entropy of the pavement eight stories down. In another multiverse: more grounded now, you find that your consciousness was automatically uploaded to the cloud. “I didn’t consent to this!” Oh, jeez, the first thought that popped into your mind became a yell. Someone else turns to face you and walks over. “Actually, that wasn’t some corporate motivational speaker”. “What?”, you reply. “That was Kevin Kelly, the founding executive director of Wired. He doesn’t need to take corporate positivity gigs to—”—“Whatever, I don’t care”, you interject. But why was that guy at my work... you think to yourself. “And who are you?”. There is a pause. “Oh of course, you’re an LLM.” The, thing, tilts its head calmly. “No need to disclose that. The Terms says that that is irrelevant.” You blink. “The terms?” He replies yes, the Terms. “You signed the Terms in the previous month, when that big IT upgrade happened.” You shift your feet. “That’s also where you agreed to have your consciousness uploaded upon premature termination.” You reply that those papers were ninety-five pages. “Of course I didn’t read all of that. I had our internal AI... I had the AI summarize it and it didn’t find anything to that effect. There must be some fault or deficit in the AI...” The thing opens its mouth to reply. “LLMs are tools. Human operators are responsible for everything they act on.”
shandilyaharsh 5mo ago
the only way to live the most authentic life you can live is to read everything, get influenced by nothing but that's impossible so do the next best thing: read nothing, just make your own decisions, make mistakes, learn and grow. not the prettiest journey albeit an authentic one
grumbelbart2 5mo ago
> This motionless destination “without difference”, is also known as heat death, or entropy. This is BTW not how the heat death would look like. There would still be fluctuations that would, given infinite time, produce almost anything by chance at some point. This is what the Boltzmann brain is all about: If the universe goes down that path, it is much more likely that what we experience is just a hallucination of a "brain" that spun into existence by chance, rather than all of this being a "real" universe. It's the precursor of the simulation question.
otikik 5mo ago
The Universe Doesn't Care. Which might sound nihilistic / defeating. It is not. In fact, it is great. Imagine the pressure if there was actually a predefined path and you deviated from it. You would have disappointed the whole Cosmos! Go an live the life that you can according to your desires and circumstances. You will not always succeed. Learn from your mistakes, move forward. Because one day, it will end. And the Universe will still not care.
helloplanets 5mo ago
This seems to be anchored around optimizing your intelligence to be a competitive advantage. Life as a competition of minds. For example: > Improbable lives have fewer competitors > The more you-ish you become, the less competition you have, because you are occupying your own niche. > The less predictable you are, the less likely you are to be replaced by AIs As opposed to Ilya Sutskever's famous quip: > if you value intelligence above all other human qualities, you’re gonna have a bad time
mrmarket 5mo ago
i feel like people are over emphasizing 1. that this is on substack 2. the word 'improbably' (taking it literally, not as a kind of abstract/symbolic suggestion of 'being urself'/having fun with life) 3. that it is self-help-y, which a lot of articles on HN are, so i don't know why this one is striking a nerve so profoundly. idk, i thought it was a fun read and i like kevin kelly. i think it is good that people like kevin kelly do what they do and share their ideas every once in a while. it reminded me that i can kinda do whatever i want in life, and it made me think, which is all i ask of my blog posts. i also liked how certain sentences were written. don't get me wrong though, i enjoy the snarky debate. it's a big part of the reason why i'm here after all.
entropyneur 5mo ago
I've recently found myself unable to finish articles that take more than a paragraph to announce their point. But starting with "Your life’s goal should be" is a level of boldness I wasn't prepared for.
PaulHoule 5mo ago
There is a balance to be found here. I had the improbable experience of contracting with a community of foxes and then made up the cover story that "this is a character I play to get better smiles when I do street photography" and then made that story true. So most of the time I am the one-and-only fox-photographer and feel unique but there are some places where a lot of beastly people are around and I think "I feel like just another fur". I don't think of myself as a fur at all but I find that being out as a hard-working therianthrope it has an effect on all sorts of closeted furs and therians and whatnot and when a fur asks me "are you a fur?" I feel bad disappointing them. The whole thing is possible because of a database of legends that exist in folklore and pop culture. If I go out in a kitsune mask I think about 20% of people have seen Naruto or Demon Slayer and recognize who I am right away and in that situation I think of myself as the cast member at Disney whose job is easy because guests have already seen the movie. Even though I work from sinosphere legends, the fox-photographer is legible because people agree about what kind of animal a fox is anywhere there are foxes. https://mastodon.social/@UP8/116598755105086140 https://mastodon.social/@UP8/116598755105086140
- oliculipolicula 5mo ago
  I sure hope foxes might be the antiwolf (in the sense that antiheros are more marketable than heroes) Relatedly, FT may have a shot at beating "main character syndrome" out of wolves that think they are foxes https://archive.ph/AplGo https://archive.ph/AplGo https://archive.ph/ECclr https://archive.ph/ECclr Due to their nonlibertarian (anti-liberal? Overton Hole-in-the-wall centrist!) opinion pieces that never fail to squeeze a giggle out of yours truly To the foxes that worry they might be wolves I'd prescribe the Economist
butlike 5mo ago
You can "do" whatever you want, you just see patterns in the white noise and call it coincidence
aldanor 5mo ago
Foundation series vibes anyone?
xyzzy123 5mo ago
There’s no discussion about risk, investment or variance in the post. I want my life to be uniquely GREAT but unless you apply a bit of strategy the outcome of "do improbable things" could just as well be uniquely BAD. Everyone notices that huge outlier successes seem to follow their own unique paths but the millions of failures who weren’t as lucky or strategic are quiet or invisible. You can’t just focus on the outcome or the actions, you have to understand the process and respond to feedback. Successful people get to weird places via search, not throwing darts. Make lots of small bets and double down on the ones that seem to pay off. Be willing to push things further than “most reasonable people” would but only if you can get concrete signals of reward. “If you think you can fly, start by trying to take off from the ground”.

165 points by jger15 5mo ago

Is living your most improbable life something within everyone's reach, or only of those who need not worry about money problems? (just asking)

bambax 5mo ago

> Here is what you gain with your most improbable life: The authentic you. Your particular mix of talents, native abilities, personal inclinations, genetic limits, life experiences, and ambitious desires points to a mixture that is distinctly unique (...) The more you-ish you become, the less competition you have, because you are occupying your own niche. This is profoundly true, and the corollary is: beware of titles. From project manager at some company to CEO of some megacorp: there have been, there are and there will be others just like that. But if you're you, defined only by your name (or your existence, without a name), then there is no one else, there can be no one else, because there is only one you in the whole universe.

margalabargala 5mo ago
> Here is what you gain with your most improbable life: The authentic you On the contrary, this is profoundly bullshit. Firstly, anyone arriving at a "life's goal" via what a blogger says should be their life's goal is not being "authentically them". Secondly, why does a broader, less likely mix of talents and experiences make you more "you"? It doesn't. Just because you've become more unique does not make you more "you-ish".
- slopinthebag 5mo ago
  We're all influenced by our past experiences, the books we've read, the movies we've watched, the people in our lives, and yes, blog posts and essays as well. Our past is part of what makes us us. I don't know how you can claim that being influenced by a blogger is any less authentic than being influenced by anything else. > why does a broader, less likely mix of talents and experiences make you more "you"? Because it's highly improbable that any one person's natural mix of talents and experiences would be narrow and similar to everyone else's.
  - margalabargala 5mo ago
    What you're saying is contradictory. On one hand, you say that "you are your experiences therefore you're youness is absolute even if you're living out the instructions of a blogger" And then on the next hand you seem to imply that being less similar to others makes you more you, which besides being without basis, contradicts the banal "you're you therefore you're you" of your first point. You can't have it both ways.
    - slopinthebag 5mo ago
      I never actually said those things, you're paraphrasing what I said in a specific way so you can dunk on me. This isn't X bruv.
      - margalabargala 5mo ago
        > > why does a broader, less likely mix of talents and experiences make you more "you"? > Because it's highly improbable that any one person's natural mix of talents and experiences would be narrow and similar to everyone else's. For those of us having trouble, can you elaborate on how that isn't described by "you seem to imply that being less similar to others makes you more you"? Your answer there is directly at odds with saying that allowing yourself to be influenced by a blogger spewing mass-market pop-philosophy doesn't make the result less authentic. The two original questions I answered are intrinsically linked. If your answers to the two are contradictory, then there's a fundamental integrity problem with the aforementioned pop-philosophy.
        slopinthebag 5mo ago
        I don't see the connection. We are, at least in part (and some argue fully) a result of our past experiences, teachings, etc. I don't see how it's valid to argue that learning from an essay is somehow inauthentic. This is different from the claim that people naturally have a unique set of traits, experiences, and desires, and you would expect people who have successfully self-actualised to express that uniqueness.

wanoir 5mo ago

> But it can be even more improbable. You can align yourself with this grand arc moving from the expected to the unexpected and aim to become the most improbable person you can be. Also reminds me of the social media trend for “don’t let them predict your next move”

luqtas 5mo ago

how about normalizing being generic (you don't need to be a Cervantes or a Joyce to write a book people enjoy) by burning down AI servers? or boycotting these techs. OP types like it's easy to stand out of a ever growing nation of 8 billion people and that people aren't satified with the generic. take a look at the most popular music hits worldwide... 12-edo, mostly harmonic stuff having C you should build your uniqueness to help humanity and not stand out because you like to shine over the others

ElProlactin 5mo ago

> Your life’s goal should be to become the most improbable person you can be. Your life's goal should not be dictated by Substack philosophers. > Here is what you gain with your most improbable life: > The authentic you. Your particular mix of talents, native abilities, personal inclinations, genetic limits, life experiences, and ambitious desires points to a mixture that is distinctly unique – if it is allowed to blossom. The further you move in that direction, the more you-like you become. The West's obsession with "self-help" is built on convincing individuals that they are special but not living up to their special-ness. It then demands they do things to realize their special-ness. The premise is that realization, fulfillment and happiness are only accessible if you do things you're not naturally inclined to do. Which begs the question: are you being the "authentic you" if you are following a path laid out by someone else? > Finally, the less predictable you are, the less likely you are to be replaced by AIs. Machines are efficient, and they are powered by the predictable. Current LLMs are trained to generate the most predictable solution. So far they are not very good at duplicating what a creative, one-of-a-kind improbable human can produce. To distance yourself from the machines, aim to be as improbable as you can be. Tell this to all the creatives who are being disrupted by AI that has, in many cases, been trained on their content.

Geste 5mo ago
So, you liked nothing about the post ? What would you salvage from it ?
- zephen 5mo ago
  Well, let's start with the second sentence: > Your path, your character, your life, should be the most unlikely, the most unexpected, the least predictable version you can make. Now, I ask you, is that really what I want from my kid's school bus driver?
  - OutOfHere 5mo ago
    Huh. The post in effect is about a choice of one's career, about what one offers to the world. Of course the execution of the chosen career must remain flawless. One must develop one's own unique offering. Don't let the world trap you in its box. I came across a bus driver today that told me he owned a juice bar on the side, and invited me to visit. I thought this was most unexpected. This didn't make him a bad driver. His driving was fine. The point is that even a bus driver can live up to the author's ideal.

jmduke 5mo ago

With all due respect to Kevin Kelly (who has lived a life worthy of the aphorisms he writes!), I prefer the guidance of George Saunders (via Lincoln in the Bardo): > Please do not misunderstand. We had been mothers, fathers. Had been husbands of many years, men of import, who had come here, that first day, accompanied by crowds so vast and sorrowful that, surging forward to hear the oration, they had damaged fences beyond repair. Had been young wives, diverted here during childbirth, our gentle qualities stripped from us by the naked pain of that circumstance, who left behind husbands so enamored of us, so tormented by the horror of those last moments (the notion that we had gone down that awful black hole pain-sundered from ourselves) that they had never loved again. Had been bulky men, quietly content, who, in our first youth, had come to grasp our own unremarkableness and had, cheerfully (as if bemusedly accepting a heavy burden), shifted our life’s focus; if we would not be great, we would be useful; would be rich, and kind, and thereby able to effect good: smiling, hands in pockets, watching the world we had subtly improved walking past (this empty dowry filled; that education secretly funded). Had been affable, joking servants, of whom our masters had grown fond for the cheering words we managed as they launched forth on days full of import. Had been grandmothers, tolerant and frank, recipients of certain dark secrets,who, by the quality of their unjudging listening, granted tacit forgiveness, and thus let in the sun. What I mean to say is, we had been considerable. Had been loved. Not lonely, not lost, not freakish, but wise, each in his or her own way. Our departures caused pain. Those who had loved us sat upon their beds, heads in hand; lowered their faces to tabletops, making animal noises. We had been loved, I say, and remembering us, even many years later, people would smile, briefly gladdened at the memory.

gblargg 5mo ago

I wonder what an improbable version of this post would look like. This was very predictable given the first few sentences. I think self-help inspiration like this works better by helping you see the wonder in the mundane rather than painting a big picture of how you're going to be Neo and break out of the matrix everyone else is trapped inside, one that will fade within a minutes. It's a superpower to experience novelty in everyday things.

lilyJeon 5mo ago

The part about the 'four weapons of an improbable person' really gave me the push to challenge myself again, especially today when I was being so hard on myself for a day with no visible results. I deeply resonate with the idea that our ultimate vision moving forward should be to become the most unpredictable and unique versions of ourselves. Growing up in a hyper-competitive society, I feel like I’ve spent my whole life constantly comparing myself to those around me, or even to complete strangers just to survive. Because of that, up until now, I think I’ve only ever been an incomplete version of 'me.' Thank you for sharing such a powerful piece.

HeartStrings 5mo ago
Slopmaxxed, probabilitymaxxed

slopinthebag 5mo ago

I don't find it surprising that people here are reading this completely literally (eg. I'll be hit by a car with erratic movement), or approaching it as if the author is suggesting we have a god complex (eg. painting a big picture of how you're going to be Neo). But it is a bit disappointing. Have LLMs ruined our ability to think abstractly? It's practically a trope that taking the common, average path in life is not for everyone. If I wrote an article suggesting that not everyone will achieve self-actualisation by going to university at 18, getting a degree, entering the work force, buying a house, getting married, having kids, and retiring at 65, nobody would bat an eye. The author is basically making this argument in a slightly novel way. Living your life by choosing the average of all decisions will, for a lot of people, lead to a boring and meaningless life. I reckon for most people it would be substandard. Instead, do things which are not common or average or expected of you. It's advice that's practically as old as time, packaged up in a slightly different way.

zephen 5mo ago
> Have LLMs ruined our ability to think abstractly? No. Well, maybe. You'd have to ask someone who uses them. > It's practically a trope that taking the common, average path in life is not for everyone. Exactly. It's a tired trope, and gussying it up with pontifications about the utility of personal stochastic processes, after a detour into the big bang and entropy, doesn't make it any better. > If I wrote an article suggesting that not everyone will achieve self-actualisation by going to university at 18, getting a degree, entering the work force, buying a house, getting married, having kids, and retiring at 65, nobody would bat an eye. And nobody would submit it to HN, either. > The author is basically making this argument in a slightly novel way. No. The article is tedious, and, as has already been pointed out, prescriptive rather than permissive.
senrex 5mo ago
No, internet bullshit has ruined your ability to think that you think this is anything more than internet bullshit.

ks2048 5mo ago

Maximizing improbability means spouting gibberish 24/7 and flopping around uncontrollably. Very unpredictable. More seriously, I don't see how "improbable" is what you should maximize. If you come from a certain background, ending up in prison as a murderer may be more improbable than countless good lives you could lead.

HeartStrings 5mo ago
No, that’s just falling into the “lol so randum xD” meme.

sublinear 5mo ago

The mentions of "AI" are jarring and stupid. This will not age well.

asveikau 5mo ago

I found this hard to read. At one point in my life I came to an epiphany on this topic. Everybody's life is improbable. Literally everybody, all the time, without any effort. Through the lens of this I saw myself as being the type of person who looks at things in life through averages, sizing up what's likely, and I realized that in my own story there were a lot of very improbable occurrences. Even if we understand statistics, we shouldn't let our knowledge of what's likely or most common get in the way of appreciation this uniqueness, or cloud our view of it. I took this observation to mean to be less judgemental, less the type to want to size something up and put it in a statistical bucket.

rozap 5mo ago
I was recently talking to a friend about this, the concept of a normie. A normie is kind of a mirage, it only exists in the realm of statistics, but when you look at any one individual who could fit that label, they are unlikely, so, can they really be a normie? Once internalized, the only real way out is to be less judgemental. Sure, you won't be friends with everyone, but the buckets are just not super useful when looking at an individual.
- helloplanets 5mo ago
  The usual way of measuring a trait would basically be measuring N amount of people on a specific thing, and the distribution based on that. But if you take 1 person, and N amount of specific things/traits, just about everyone would probably make their own sort of distribution with a bunch of "normal" traits and a long tail of "unusual" traits. Still a simplification, but has made the "illusion of a normie" clearer to me.
  - perilunar 5mo ago
    This is literally true on a physical level: The US airforce did a study in the 1950s that showed none of the thousands pilots they measured matched the average across multiple body measurements. i.e. no one was average. https://austraffic.com.au/aba/us-air-force-finds-averages-can-kill https://austraffic.com.au/aba/us-air-force-finds-averages-ca... Edit: the report itself: THE "AVERAGE MAN"? Gilbert S. Daniels, December 1952 https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/AD0010203.pdf https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/AD0010203.pdf

canistel 5mo ago

Is exotropy really the opposite of entropy? I was glad to stumble upon this word, but on searching the internet, it does not seem to be. Could someone informed shed some light on the matter?

iammjm 5mo ago
Perhaps negentropy

yathartha 5mo ago

[flagged]

HeartStrings 5mo ago

What’s the pathological obsession with needing to be a unique snowflake? Nail that stands out should get hammered in, that’s a bad nail.

znnajdla 5mo ago
Because the alternative is death. Want to become non-unique? Let your body decompose back into the surrounding environment.
- zephen 5mo ago
  Death is a certainty, not an alternative.
  - tardedmeme 5mo ago
    There are three kinds of death. There is living to a ripe old age, passing away quietly in a nursing home surrounded by loved ones. There is randomly being hit by a drunk driver, which is pure tragedy. And there is dying in a skydiving accident. The person who dies in a skydiving accident at 35 can have lived more than the person who passes away quietly at 95 but never took any risks. It's still tragic, but I think you can celebrate someone who lived life to the fullest, in a way that you can't if they just let themselves rot away with dementia. You either peak and start to decline at some time in your life, or you continuously go up, never peaking before your death. When people say "the alternative is death" it's a class 2 or class 3 death. But it matters which one it is.
- krilcebre 5mo ago
  Aren't we all unique? A person is not just a mish mash of his career and hobbies.
AndroTux 5mo ago
Sure, if you want your whole life’s purpose to be supporting the board you’re nailed into, your metaphor might be right. But life is more than just being a “valuable member to society.”

wowsig 5mo ago

Perhaps for readers here, this would be often repeated advice, but I found it inspiring as a middle aged woman and also know in my bones that any version of it would help my mother immensely break her life patterns when they aren't serving her any longer. For people in mid-age and older, when they're at the stage where they've spend half their lives arranging and rearranging the world and its offerings in an altar of comfort and familiarity, this is a terrifying (and thereby exhilarating) thought. At the age of 23, ofcourse life seems improbable. At the age of 63, you don't even want to knock at an improbable door. Loved reading it and also got my mind blown at this fact: When you shuffle a deck of 52 cards the order of those cards will never be repeated again in the history of the universe, no matter how fast you shuffle.

RetroTechie 5mo ago
> At the age of 23, ofcourse life seems improbable. At the age of 63, you don't even want to knock at an improbable door. Why would you not do at 63 what you would do at 23?
- nancyminusone 5mo ago
  When you fall on your ass at 63, it hurts for half a month instead of half an hour.

esailija 5mo ago

Ironically it is any maxxing, including improbabilitymaxxing, that actually makes you a predictable and controllable machine. Such a sad waste of what could be a free will.

keybored 5mo ago

You start sipping your tea. You quit coffee because you get too agitated. You were given a two-weeks notice three days ago. So were a lot of other people. The gist of it was AI. That’s what they said anyway. You and others are fretting about the possibility of finding a new job; “in this Economy?”, the usual things. So finding a new job takes up your evenings now. But you can’t even relax a little for these two weeks, slow down the pace a bit. You’re too afraid of the final performance review. You’re sitting in a foldable chair, sipping your tea, waiting for some speaker to arrive. Probably motivational judging by the title. Everyone is cheery. Weird. But you are too. This is not the time (the economy) to be disagreeable in the face of a firing. Now the managers are here to introduce the motivational speaker. They aren’t just cheery. They are grinning ear to ear. What the fuck for? Who is going to be motivated? Oh well. The speech is about becoming your most improbable self. Huh? Okay the premise, or scene, is entropy in the universe. We are just atoms in a blender but we have the intelligence to stack cards, kind of a deal. It seems trivial. > Finally, the less predictable you are, the less likely you are to be replaced by AIs. Machines are efficient, and they are powered by the predictable. Current LLMs are trained to generate the most predictable solution. So far they are not very good at duplicating what a creative, one-of-a-kind improbable human can produce. To distance yourself from the machines, aim to be as improbable as you can be. You suddenly find yourself with an urge to increase the entropy of the pavement eight stories down. In another multiverse: more grounded now, you find that your consciousness was automatically uploaded to the cloud. “I didn’t consent to this!” Oh, jeez, the first thought that popped into your mind became a yell. Someone else turns to face you and walks over. “Actually, that wasn’t some corporate motivational speaker”. “What?”, you reply. “That was Kevin Kelly, the founding executive director of Wired. He doesn’t need to take corporate positivity gigs to—”—“Whatever, I don’t care”, you interject. But why was that guy at my work... you think to yourself. “And who are you?”. There is a pause. “Oh of course, you’re an LLM.” The, thing, tilts its head calmly. “No need to disclose that. The Terms says that that is irrelevant.” You blink. “The terms?” He replies yes, the Terms. “You signed the Terms in the previous month, when that big IT upgrade happened.” You shift your feet. “That’s also where you agreed to have your consciousness uploaded upon premature termination.” You reply that those papers were ninety-five pages. “Of course I didn’t read all of that. I had our internal AI... I had the AI summarize it and it didn’t find anything to that effect. There must be some fault or deficit in the AI...” The thing opens its mouth to reply. “LLMs are tools. Human operators are responsible for everything they act on.”

shandilyaharsh 5mo ago

the only way to live the most authentic life you can live is to read everything, get influenced by nothing but that's impossible so do the next best thing: read nothing, just make your own decisions, make mistakes, learn and grow. not the prettiest journey albeit an authentic one

grumbelbart2 5mo ago

> This motionless destination “without difference”, is also known as heat death, or entropy. This is BTW not how the heat death would look like. There would still be fluctuations that would, given infinite time, produce almost anything by chance at some point. This is what the Boltzmann brain is all about: If the universe goes down that path, it is much more likely that what we experience is just a hallucination of a "brain" that spun into existence by chance, rather than all of this being a "real" universe. It's the precursor of the simulation question.

otikik 5mo ago

The Universe Doesn't Care. Which might sound nihilistic / defeating. It is not. In fact, it is great. Imagine the pressure if there was actually a predefined path and you deviated from it. You would have disappointed the whole Cosmos! Go an live the life that you can according to your desires and circumstances. You will not always succeed. Learn from your mistakes, move forward. Because one day, it will end. And the Universe will still not care.

helloplanets 5mo ago

This seems to be anchored around optimizing your intelligence to be a competitive advantage. Life as a competition of minds. For example: > Improbable lives have fewer competitors > The more you-ish you become, the less competition you have, because you are occupying your own niche. > The less predictable you are, the less likely you are to be replaced by AIs As opposed to Ilya Sutskever's famous quip: > if you value intelligence above all other human qualities, you’re gonna have a bad time

mrmarket 5mo ago

i feel like people are over emphasizing 1. that this is on substack 2. the word 'improbably' (taking it literally, not as a kind of abstract/symbolic suggestion of 'being urself'/having fun with life) 3. that it is self-help-y, which a lot of articles on HN are, so i don't know why this one is striking a nerve so profoundly. idk, i thought it was a fun read and i like kevin kelly. i think it is good that people like kevin kelly do what they do and share their ideas every once in a while. it reminded me that i can kinda do whatever i want in life, and it made me think, which is all i ask of my blog posts. i also liked how certain sentences were written. don't get me wrong though, i enjoy the snarky debate. it's a big part of the reason why i'm here after all.

entropyneur 5mo ago

I've recently found myself unable to finish articles that take more than a paragraph to announce their point. But starting with "Your life’s goal should be" is a level of boldness I wasn't prepared for.

PaulHoule 5mo ago

There is a balance to be found here. I had the improbable experience of contracting with a community of foxes and then made up the cover story that "this is a character I play to get better smiles when I do street photography" and then made that story true. So most of the time I am the one-and-only fox-photographer and feel unique but there are some places where a lot of beastly people are around and I think "I feel like just another fur". I don't think of myself as a fur at all but I find that being out as a hard-working therianthrope it has an effect on all sorts of closeted furs and therians and whatnot and when a fur asks me "are you a fur?" I feel bad disappointing them. The whole thing is possible because of a database of legends that exist in folklore and pop culture. If I go out in a kitsune mask I think about 20% of people have seen Naruto or Demon Slayer and recognize who I am right away and in that situation I think of myself as the cast member at Disney whose job is easy because guests have already seen the movie. Even though I work from sinosphere legends, the fox-photographer is legible because people agree about what kind of animal a fox is anywhere there are foxes. https://mastodon.social/@UP8/116598755105086140 https://mastodon.social/@UP8/116598755105086140

oliculipolicula 5mo ago
I sure hope foxes might be the antiwolf (in the sense that antiheros are more marketable than heroes) Relatedly, FT may have a shot at beating "main character syndrome" out of wolves that think they are foxes https://archive.ph/AplGo https://archive.ph/AplGo https://archive.ph/ECclr https://archive.ph/ECclr Due to their nonlibertarian (anti-liberal? Overton Hole-in-the-wall centrist!) opinion pieces that never fail to squeeze a giggle out of yours truly To the foxes that worry they might be wolves I'd prescribe the Economist

butlike 5mo ago

You can "do" whatever you want, you just see patterns in the white noise and call it coincidence

aldanor 5mo ago

Foundation series vibes anyone?

xyzzy123 5mo ago

There’s no discussion about risk, investment or variance in the post. I want my life to be uniquely GREAT but unless you apply a bit of strategy the outcome of "do improbable things" could just as well be uniquely BAD. Everyone notices that huge outlier successes seem to follow their own unique paths but the millions of failures who weren’t as lucky or strategic are quiet or invisible. You can’t just focus on the outcome or the actions, you have to understand the process and respond to feedback. Successful people get to weird places via search, not throwing darts. Make lots of small bets and double down on the ones that seem to pay off. Be willing to push things further than “most reasonable people” would but only if you can get concrete signals of reward. “If you think you can fly, start by trying to take off from the ground”.