About hyper-ambitious individuals

Just some random thoughts I got today after hearing the latest episode of King of Kings from Hardcore history. From its definition of an ambitious The earnest desire for some kind of desire or distinction, such as power, honor, fame or wealth, and the willingness to strive for its attainment.

I have the intuition that remarkable individuals are born, sure. But they are also blessed by a set of circumstances that allowed them to develop their ambition to their full potential.

Before the information age, coined from the “Sovereign Individual”, it feels like the places where this person could appear were always constraints to what civilization happened to be in the eye of the hurricane. There are countless examples of this: Alexander the Great, Xerxes, Julius Cesar to name a few.

This is because even extremely ambitious individuals are constrained by the local maxima they believe plausible, therefore crippling their expectations.

Now in the information age, these hyper-ambitious individuals aren’t only constrained to where they live but rather have the possibility of learning what everyone else at the top of civilization knows, which in theory should make the likelihood of an extraordinary individual appearing from wherever. I’m not sure this is the case though.