The Core Problem With Ambitious Objectives

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The core problem with the ambitious objectives then is that in many cases trying harder won't help you achieve the outcomes you're seeking. You can't be so tied to your vision of accomplishment that you're not open to the unexpected and unplanned. It's called deception. And it's a fundamental problem of all complex problems. The fact that we rely so much on these assessments in metrics is very deceiving, which is actually going to lead to a dead end.

Artificial intelligence researcher and author Kenneth Stanley has argued that “as soon as you create an objective, you ruin your ability to reach it.” So what should you consider when thinking about your objectives, and what will set you up for success? On this episode Stanley discusses how to set the right objectives for your life, why we’re too tied to accomplishments, what role accountability plays in our education system, the value of peer review, why transformative innovations are always counter intuitive, and so much more. Stanley is the co–author of Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned: The Myth of the Objective, as well as the former Head of Core AI Research at Uber AI and the Open-Endedness Team Leader at OpenAI. He has also served as the Charles Millican Professor in Computer Science at University of Central Florida.

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