alt Hacker NewsYour Most Improbable Life
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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.
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.
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
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
You can "do" whatever you want, you just see patterns in the white noise and call it coincidence
> 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.
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
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.
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.
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
> 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”
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?
Is living your most improbable life something within everyone's reach, or only of those who need not worry about money problems? (just asking)
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.
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.
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.
The mentions of "AI" are jarring and stupid. This will not age well.
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.”
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.
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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.
> 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.