Steve Jobs, Sam Altman, and Human Agency

Two quotes and some thoughts

Something I think about from time to time is just how much agency we have over our lives and the impact we can have on the world.

Sam Altman once wrote:

A big secret is that you can bend the world to your will a surprising percentage of the time — most people don’t even try, and just accept that things are the way that they are.

People have an enormous capacity to make things happen. A combination of self-doubt, giving up too early, and not pushing hard enough prevents most people from ever reaching anywhere near their potential.¹

There are two important factors here. You need to decide to do something and then you need to do it.

I think part of why so many people are resigned to the way their lives are and don’t try to change things, is that they don’t realize how much their actions actually make a difference.

Steve Jobs talked about this phenomenon in a 1994 interview:

When you grow up, you tend to get told that the world is the way it is, and your life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family life, have fun, save a little money.

But that’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact, and that is: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it. You can influence it. You can build your own things that other people can use.

…

That’s maybe the most important thing, to shake off this erroneous notion that life is there and you’re just going to live in it, versus embrace it. Change it. Improve it. Make your mark upon it. I think that’s very important … Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.²