1/N Why does Silicon Valley produce disproportionately more ambitious ideas than anywhere else, yet Denmark is the happiest country?— Paras Chopra (@paraschopra) October 26, 2017
2/N First, ambition is by definition is a moving target. What was ambitious 10 years back is probably easy today.— Paras Chopra (@paraschopra) October 26, 2017
3/N people who have ambitious ideas are on a treadmill. They need to embed themselves in a context where that treadmill is worth it— Paras Chopra (@paraschopra) October 26, 2017
Valley creates myths and stories that make this treadmill worth it. TechCrunch, Hacker News play a big role here— Paras Chopra (@paraschopra) October 26, 2017
5/N It also provides me with feedback loops where my beliefs that value ambition over comfort get validated.— Paras Chopra (@paraschopra) October 26, 2017
6/N it also pre-selects ambitious people by requiring them to immigrate. America is a country of immigrants, California more so— Paras Chopra (@paraschopra) October 26, 2017
7/N Think about it: if you value ambition over any other aspect (family, community, friends, morality), where would you go?— Paras Chopra (@paraschopra) October 26, 2017
8/N This is not to say, people in valley don’t value other aspects. But above all hey have to be ambitious to thrive there.— Paras Chopra (@paraschopra) October 26, 2017
9/N while ambition is good for creating value in the world, it’s a plain fact that it’s an aberration of human behaviour.— Paras Chopra (@paraschopra) October 26, 2017
10/N in hunter gatherer societies we evolved, only a few were ambitious explorers. Rest are ok with human-scale activities: gossiping, etc— Paras Chopra (@paraschopra) October 26, 2017
11/N early on all these ambitious people were spread out and didn’t know about each other. Internet and immigration brings them together— Paras Chopra (@paraschopra) October 26, 2017
12/N Ambitious communities aren’t necessarily happier, but they prevail over gosspiers. That’s why value creation and wealth concentrates— Paras Chopra (@paraschopra) October 26, 2017
13/N Human brain is wired to derive happiness when it is around a safe and trustworthy group.— Paras Chopra (@paraschopra) October 26, 2017
14/N Small, homogenous countries with sufficient resources and safety but less wealth gap are happy in a primordial, hunter-gatherer sense— Paras Chopra (@paraschopra) October 26, 2017
15/N ambition requires dissatisfaction as a pre-requisite. So it follows value creators wont ever be done with their work.— Paras Chopra (@paraschopra) October 26, 2017
16/N in the globalised world, even satisfied societies / people will be required to do what doesn’t come naturally do them: ‘be ambitious’— Paras Chopra (@paraschopra) October 26, 2017
17/N Taxi drivers who are comfortable will need to learn data science because someone created value through self driving tech— Paras Chopra (@paraschopra) October 26, 2017
18/N So fundamentally the question is not whether ambition is good, it’s whether there’s an alternative to being ambitious?— Paras Chopra (@paraschopra) October 26, 2017