The Importance of Sidekicks

For what it’s worth, I endorse this aesthetic and apologize for any role I played in causing people to focus too much on the hero thing. You need a lot of nonheroes per hero and I really want to validate the nonheroes but I guess I feel like I don’t know how, or like it’s not my place to say because I didn’t make the same sacrifices… or what feels to me like it ought to be a sacrifice, only maybe it’s not.

I suspect this is a consequence of the situation that rationalists often feel alone. Not necessarily alone as people (although that also happens), but alone as rationalists. Before I found LW, I was in a situation where I had a few friends, but probably none of them would be interested in the kind of debates we have on LW.

If there is only one person in the whole Shire who cares about destroying the ring, would we want that person to be Frodo or Samwise? Frodo would probably try the mission alone, even if less efficiently. Samwise would probably settle for the second best mission, for a mission where he could find a hero to follow.

In different situations different traits are required. In a situation where the individuals are isolated, we would probably want every individual to be a hero, because heroes can act in isolation. On the other hand, in a functional community, having a few highly efficient heroes is probably better than having too many heroes with low efficiency.

So maybe we could use the presence of integrated sidekicks as a measure of health of the community.

This reminds me of some unhealthy behavior I have seen in Mensa: people who have spent so much time in their lives trying to prove their intelligence, that when they finally find a group of their peers, all they can do is continue signalling their intelligence by solving yet another meaningless puzzle, over and over again. Similarly, I guess many wannable rationalists have spent too much time in their lives trying to be the only sane person facing the crazy world, that we may have a problem updating to cooperation with other people who share similar values. It is difficult to cooperate optimally with other rationalists, if we never had an opportunity to learn this behavior in the past.

Two different types of sidekicks need to be distinguished: second in command, and assistant.

A second in command is someone who can at need temporarily take charge when the leader is absent or incapacitated, and at other times be engaged with the leader doing the same work, but leaving most of the initiative to the leader. Samwise is a second in command.

An assistant is not in the chain of command. Nick Bostrom is looking for an assistant, not a second in command.

If you're at all familiar with the SCA, one of the three peerage orders is that of the Pelican: http://www.sca.org.au/pelicans/ it awards people for outstanding service (seriously, to get one, you have to have run many events over a decade, and worked damn hard making people happy to get it). You are unlikely to get one unless you consistently, and sustainedly want to serve the needs of others for long period of time.

You strike me as potential Pelican material...

Note: The fact that this community (the SCA) consistently gives accolades for service is, I think, one of the reasons why it is so successful at being a Community.

By contrast, the other two peerages: Chivalry (for sword fighting) and Laurels (for making cool stuff) are both "Look what I did/made" orders... full of heroes (the former more than the latter, in my mind). Which is great and necessary and really cool... but without the Pelicans, the Society as a whole wouldn't exist.

My suggestion: adopt and help sustain a community of rationalists near you.

I'm trying to understand why I have a strong aversive reaction to this sort of discussion. If I'm honest, I feel worried that people who identity as "sidekicks" risk being exploited by those who identity as "heroes". A healthy community will tend to discourage this sort of taxonomy in various ways in order to avoid the risk of abuse, but the core members of the rationality movement seem to not recognize the social necessity of doing this.

And yet the response is not "maybe invoking the hero archetype at every possible opportunity is a bad idea", but rather doubling down on the idea that the leading figures of our movements should be modeled as genuine Lord-of-the-rings heroes. And since not everyone can bring themselves to believe that they are Frodo, we decide that invoking another high-fantasy archetype is the right solution?!

I think an interesting related meme is "leadership as service". This idea certainly existed in the Boy Scouts when I was in high school, and a related idea of "management as service" exists in at least some good tech companies.

I don't personally like the "hero" narrative that much but I am highly ambitious and willing to do things even if no one else is doing them. Nevertheless, in fact, as a result of this, I often end up in what might seem like "sidekick roles". I've oftentimes taken on logistical tasks even though it's easy to argue that my comparative advantage is elsewhere. Why? Because if I don't, then some important thing won't get done, and that's all that matters. This is what I think Eliezer means when he refers to "heroic responsibility", and I think you among all people I've met exemplify this the most. So that's one interesting observation.

Another observation in my personal experience is that it's extremely difficult to take a "hero" role in more than one thing at once, simply because it's too time-consuming. I have several causes that I contribute my time to, but in many cases my ability to do so is limited by someone else willing to take the lead and spearhead the project. But again interestingly, that person often ends up performing "sidekick-like" tasks while I am more free to focus on creating value directly. I think this again inverts the narrative: who do we call the "hero" and who do we call the "sidekick"? One person is taking the lead but only creating value indirectly by allowing a group of other people to be more productive. The other people are the ones that are directly creating value, but are working within a pre-existing system. I don't know if you think that this relates to the ideas in your post or not, but I thought it was another interesting observation either way.

Great post, as usual! Every time I see your post I anticipate reading it in delight, and am never disappointed. Hope you and Ruby will accomplish great things.

I cannot help but notice that all non-fictional sidekicks you mentioned are female. I tried to think of famous real-life examples of a dependable and trusted companion who makes the hero what he or she is, and had trouble finding more than one or two males. I wonder if this is more or female trait, whether by nature or nurture, or the result of the infamous patriarchy, or maybe I just don't know of many.

Good post.

I wonder if there's a pattern of idea dissemination that goes something like this:

• Someone discovers an idea that seems helpful for them in interacting with the world.

• They find that the more strongly they identify with the idea, the more helpful it is.

• They tell all their friends about the idea, because (a) this is part of identifying with it and (b) they want to help their friends.

• Their friends, being similar people, also find the idea helpful and proceed to spread it similarly.

• The idea gains sufficient traction that it's no longer "this weird idea I had", but the mantra of a (possibly powerful) faction.

• At this point, some people who the idea doesn't sit well with notice the idea (which now has significant psychosocial power) and experience cognitive dissonance.

• At this stage, the idea (hopefully) gets optimized to be more accommodating to those people, and harmony ensues.

In other words, to provide a purely descriptive picture of what may have happened here: Eliezer found the idea of thinking of himself as a hero useful. This idea was helpful for accomplishing his goals. These goals included writing, and this is one of the things he wrote about. People found this writing compelling, and many adopted the idea themselves. The more seriously you take the idea, the better it works, so presentations of the idea coming from people using it successfully tended to present it pretty forcefully. But for those for whom the idea didn't work, the forceful presentation turned them off.

I certainly am not in favor of turning away people who are interested in playing support roles. If you stayed in Ottawa and worked as a nurse for forty years, that'd be a loss as far as I'm concerned. And if you want to ignore everything everyone is saying about being a hero 'cause it's not working for you, that'd be absolutely fine (and maybe even encouraged) by me.

So I appreciate you wrote this post, and hopefully we can find a form of the hero idea that's still powerful and useful while also being non-harmful to you & others. (But, full disclosure, I'm a utilitarian and I don't think we should pretend that we can make all the people happy all of the time--if propagating the forceful version of this meme is what maximizes utility than by definition I'm in favor of doing that. And things may get tricky if there are people who find the idea aversive initially but can benefit from it in the long run. It might be useful to tag some kind of quick self-classification test to the idea... for example, if the idea of playing a support role strongly appeals to you and you find the hero idea aversive, that could be evidence that the hero idea is not helpful for you even in the long term and you're best off ignoring it or reinterpreting it.) (Another thought: maybe we could modify the idea to say "be more of a hero on the margin", which could be less aversive and also potentially more useful even for those who can benefit from ideas of this type. There are probably all sorts of creative possibilities I'm not considering here.)

I think that there can be a difference between being Frodo's Sam, and being a real-life hero's personal assistant/sidekick/support. In the former case, Sam is fighting orcs, hiking through treacherous mountain passes, dealing with Sméagol, etc., which is quite similar to what Frodo is doing; in the latter case, the job of the secretary/personal assistant would be much different from the job of the real-life hero. I would be happy to be Frodo's Sam, but lukewarm about being, say, Bostrom's personal assistant.

Another thought about the sidekick status. I recall this comment by Eliezer, where he says, in part:

If you know yourself for an NPC and that you cannot start such a project yourself, you ought to throw money at anyone launching a new project whose probability of saving the world is not known to be this small.

I could be misreading it, but if you replace "money" with "effort", he basically describes the sideckick role as "NPC". Which rubbed me the wrong way even then. I certainly would not describe you or Brienne as NPCs, no way. I wonder if it's just an unfortunate choice of words.

I am male. I have high testosterone. I love competing and winning. I am ambitious and driven. I like to make a lot of money. I make a lot of money. I prefer the sidekick role.

If someone asks me "King or Prince?" I will respond with Prince every time. Hey, you can still be royalty without the weight of the world on your shoulders. I would still be a hard working Prince, too. If some asks me "Candidate or Campaign Manager?" I'll take Campaign Manager, thank you. If someone asks me "President or Chief of Staff?" well, you know the answer by now.

The more money I make and the more wisdom and experience I acquire, the more people naturally turn to me to lead. And I do it when necessary. I'm even pretty good at it. But, I don't love it. I don't require it. I don't see myself as growing more in that direction.

So. I’m Samwise. If you earn my loyalty, by convincing me that what you’re working on is valuable and that you’re the person who should be doing it, I’ll stick by you whatever it takes, and I’ll make sure you succeed. I don’t have a Frodo right now. But I’m looking for one.

...

For me, finding someone who shared my values, who was smart and rational enough for me to trust him, and who was in a much better position to actually accomplish what I most cared about than I imagined myself ever being, was the best thing that could have happened to me.

Just out of curiousity - is Frodo person implicitly intended to be a romantic partner here? Or can Frodo just be anyone you work closely with? The wording certainly makes it seems seem like a romantic partner. And it could be a spurious trend but I also couldn't help but notice the female skew of all the Samwise's you mentioned, which, given the low grade dominance/submission dynamics often at play between the genders, makes me suspect this even more.

I think nursing is a valid life choice, and I think being a Samwise is a valid choice, and I think wanting to find a romantic partner and take care of them and make their ambitious dreams come true is a valid choice, and I think in general just being a person who isn't actively trying to save the world is a valid life choice. (Mostly because I'm not certain that people who have a burning ambition to save the world are actually contributing that much more than the rest of the population.)

I feel like things get kind of... weird... if these perfectly good traits are recombined into "I want to be in a super-intense relationship with someone who is successfully saving the world". I'm not sure how to describe this - I'd like to try and "save the world" myself with my own little contribution, but I don't want that contribution to be the major reason my partner is drawn to and stays by me. I don't want it to be because my work is "valuable".

If Frodo utterly fails in his ambitions, Samwise-who-wants-to-save-the-world-via-auxiliary-roles aught will hop to a new, better Frodo to support. Can a bond which is essentially based off of someone's propensity to succeed at what they are doing in life really grow to be unconditional? What if Frodo suddenly gets a debilitating disease and can't be a Frodo anymore?

I'm well aware that I might be completely misreading/projecting the intended relationship between Frodo/Samwise here, and feel free to put me in my place if that is the case. But If I presumed rightly, I would say: It's okay, you don't need to conceptualize yourself as a sidekick, - by doing so you're still implicitly buying into the whole comic-book heroism meme, in which you must behave dramatically and drastically in order to be relevant.

It's perfectly alright to just say that you would like to live a simple life of devotion to your partner, patients, friends, family, and community, and that abstract ideas of "saving the world" have nothing to do with it. People like that are the fabric of the society the comic-book types want to protect and enrich in the first place!

Thanks for writing this - one of the more valuable posts IMO that I've seen on LW in a while.

Sort of expanding on what you said, this seems like a specific manifestation of gains-from-trade. I'm very, very happy that there are people who enjoy or are proficient at super-different things than I am because that way I don't have to do the things that I'm bad at or dislike doing unless it's something that I want to learn or get better at.

Also,

...and no one would try to change me. Because oh boy, have people tried to do that. It’s really hard to be someone who just wants to please others, and to be told, basically, that you’re not good enough–and that you owe it to the world to turn yourself ambitious, strategic, Slytherin.

Might be good for some to keep in mind that some politeness and friendliness norms sometimes serve a similar role to ethics in this sense. This sort of stuff and precaution tends to be more important in areas where you don't know a whole lot, such as when you're trying to prescribe actions for others when you know a rather limited amount about them.

Open source projects, especially (or maybe just most saliently for me) software projects, desperately need sidekicks. I write 'desperately' because most such projects die from 'over-forking', i.e. everyone wanting to be the leader (hero) of their own project (adventure).

What I've learned most recently is that being even a moderately competent sidekick is really hard. It takes a lot of work to even be able to contribute without creating lots of extra work for the heroes and their more-devoted sidekicks.

This reminded me of a fantastic and short Ted Talk about followers: http://www.ted.com/talks/derek_sivers_how_to_start_a_movement?language=en#t-1426

This resonated with me. I'm not prone to be the head of leadership, or to be a "hero". I do like being an early follower, however. Someone who can lend strength and support to a cause I see as worthwhile. In the parlance of the Ted Talk, I like to look for lone nuts to turn into leaders by following them. In this way, I like to think of myself as leaning into the role of selection as a follower (such as a Samwise), playing off of variation (all the lone nuts out there), and allowing for favorable evolution (of whatever).

If I read this post correctly, you're iterating the conventional wisdom that team players are not less important or less necessary than star players even though the status is less glamorous. (They are, perhaps, more interchangeable, but also definitely indispensable on much shorter timescales than star players.) Only you are framing it in terms that make it sound as if this was not generally agreed upon by everyone not suffering from the malignant form of ambition.

Nuance matters. "Sidekick" is not meant to refer to actual humans, but to second grade fictional characters. When applied to a human being it turns into an ugly word. It reduces the character/person being referred to into a prop for another. This works well in storytelling: minor characters are not thinking, feeling beings. It is reasonable and appropriate to treat them as if they existed for the purposes of others. But by bringing these connotations into real life, you end up implicitly reinforcing the contagious and intuitive falsehood that there is always a number one and having any other number means you failed. Life can easily be made to look like this, if simplified into a single story, but it's not an accurate or helpful way to look at things.

Your use of the word "sidekick" poisons the entire post for me. I have to suspect I'm not getting the general tone quite right. To me, it's an unhappy post. Not only because other people have consistently and unfairly made you defend being what you are, but because you are still trying to convince yourself that it shouldn't have to be defended. I hope I'm wrong and "sidekick" does not mean to you what it means to me, and that if you ever felt genuinely inadequate because of this in the past that's ended now.

In real life Samwise Gamgee would be, by any reasonable standards, a true full-blown hero. At least I can't see how doing something extraordinary that greatly benefits other people stops being heroic if someone else was also involved and did a little bit more or played a more central or interesting role.

Hmmm, thank you for the posting, it sheds a light on something that I had not seen before. I like a lot of things about the posting, including the standing up part if the hero fucks up. And Samwise is an interesting "sidekick". I think he differs in at least two other aspects from the typical "sidekick" that deserve special emphasis:

First, Samwise is self-sufficient ("competent"). It's not the typical Robin character that needs to get rescued by Batman as a stupid plot ploy. He has his own skills and carries his own weight. The hero/ine might save/rescue the world, but s/he does not save/rescue this sidekick.

Second, Samwise is not a little green wo/man working in the background where no-one can see him/her so that it appears as if the hero/ine did everything on his/her own. Same with the other characters that were mentioned (Witch-king, Black, Vader). They are noticed and they do play a visible role. Not only are they a noticeable character, they have a distinct character.

I think both aspects are underdeveloped in the public perception and unfortunately, there are some "heroes/heroines" who prefer to make their sidekicks appear in need of support, or put them in the background altogether. Hmm, and I also wonder whether you could regard the hero/ine as a sidekick to the overall goal. I mean, it's one thing to see the hero/ine as this great person, but this person is not exactly free either. They have found a cause they devote their life to. So perhaps it's less a different category but more different levels.

One other thing ... I disagree with the comments about the "strong gender overtones" though and was surprised they were mentioned. I get the impression that gender perspectives are way overused and are actually hampering free expression and discussions. It's this pervasive confusion of "what do I think" and "what does it say about gender if I say it". I don't think that "If a man wrote this post, the message would be different.". I mean, it might be for whose who see everything gender related (ideology has this effect), but not for those who think it shouldn't matter. The arguments count, not the (gender of the) person who wrote a text.

Perhaps there are differences where the majority of men vs. the majority of women want to go, but that's only a problem if it's generalized to all men and/or all women. It's the person and his/her character, attributes and skills that count, not the gender. And don't get me started on "patriarchy". There might be many men in leadership positions, but many other men fail at achieving them. And a lot of men are at the bottom (homeless, suicides, etc.). And personally, I think it's a tragedy if ideologies/world views try to pressure anyone into anything they do not want -- whether it's men or women, and whether it's leadership or support.

I've noticed a similar pattern in my own personality, but I've also questioned at times whether it's healthy to be so devoted to someone else's priorities. With different friends who were higher-status than me, I've framed our dynamic in terms of Quixote/Sancho: there was the crazy knight who boldly marched towards trouble, and the little sensible voice trying to ground him in reality. Maybe what this says is that I don't choose my heroes too well.

I was chief editor at my office for one year and I concluded that there's not one fibre of leader material in me. Life got much better when I returned to being a regular editor. After reading this post, I also realize that I find it more fulfilling to get appreciation from my boss than to get appreciation from my coworkers.

So, what should aspiring sidekicks do? Should we openly seek for someone to support and push toward greatness? (I can't imagine many scenarios of that working well.) Should LW set up a network of heroes looking for sidekicks? We need to remember that not all hero/sidekick relationships are ideal. There's Frodo/Sam, but there's also Brain/Pinky, or Hit Girl/Kick-Ass (yes, that's the right order).

I think this is what Anna was getting at when she encouraged me to be a wealthy donor rather than an AI researcher. It's hard to give up the idea of being Michelangelo, being remembered for centuries in history books. But he wouldn't've managed without his patrons.

I'd rather be a hero than a sidekick. But my small contribution to mitigating AI risk has generally been in helping MIRI in whatever way seemed most valuable, rather than inventing my independent way to global utility maximization.

So, what does that make me? A cooperative small-time hero, like one of those obscure minor superhero characters in the comics who occasionally steps up to help the famous ones?

I find myself wanting to suggest that self-described heroes and sidekicks who want a fictional character to compare themselves to pick characters from My Little Pony-- after all, the protagonists are all just so nice!

Specifically, all of the princesses in MLP are nice to everypony, despite the fact that they are all leaders. The princesses treat Shining Armor, the five of the Mane 6 who aren't princesses, Spike, and some relevant side-ponies like friends and equals, even though some of these characters are properly sidekicks. Actually, the show consistently praises "sidekick traits" like humility and agreeableness, which is quite endearing.

I am not ambitious myself, the difference is that I don't care. I don't mind if I don't fit in the LW community, I am here to learn certain things, not to get validation and slaps on the back.

I think many of you are products of American culture and even a certain subset of it. A certain subset, perhaps going back to New England culture, that has this attitude to life that altruism, like giving to charity is something of course everybody does and the only issue is how to do it efficiently, or that ambition means achieving a personal goal of yourself, generally a creative one that changes the world in a positive way. I am a product of a very different culture, where ambition largely means to try to get into the elite that has power, and power is grabbed, not earned, you do not need to deserve it or make up meritocratic stories about how you are a hard worker, rather, the less deserved and earned it is, the more purely crystallized power it is, because it is more clear that you don't need anyone's consent to wield it, and altruism sounds unusual, usually people try to do the opposite and make each other lightly suffer (say, by pimping their wealth around, wearing designer labels near people who cannot afford them) in order to prove their power. In other words, I was raised in Mordor.

Since I figured out that this kind of ambition is both unethical and does not even make one happy, I stopped being ambitious that way, and since I was not raised in the American kind of altruistic-optimistic kind of ambition I have not adopted goals like that - frankly, to me, entrepreneurs who make it their life quest to make better mousetraps look slightly ridiculous because I don't really care that much if others are annoyed by mice or not.

Thus, besides living a common life (office job, family), which obviously takes some amount of ambition, I am content with not being otherwise ambitious and being rather a neutral observer or life.

Maybe this is another personality type, similar to the Sidekick: the Chronicler. See: Astinus of Palanthas.

I can't help to notice that this may be a gender-correlated personality trait:

• All the people you cite that gave you positive advice about being a sidekick are female. In a community which is almost 90% male this seems pretty difficult to get by chance.

• You're a nurse, a typically (~90%) female job. Nurses are natural sidekicks to doctors.

I suppose that the fixation for being a hero of the LW community that makes you feel out of place may be the result of it's mostly young male demographic. Maybe young male nerds are particularly prone to that, since they grow up fantasizing about being Frodo or Luke Skywalker or Harry Potter, and they have an inflated ego due to the "smartest kid in class" effect.

Maybe female nerds are more oriented towards the sidekick role because they are more likely to be biologically programmed to attach themselves to an alpha male rather than seeking dominance/leadership roles for themselves, or maybe females are just more realistic than males about the actual chances of becoming the hero who "saves the world" because they have less testosterone-fuelled hubris of the youth.

What are rationalist heroes supposed to do? And what can “sidekicks” do to help them?

(I ask these questions as someone who’s not that familiar with the rationalist community. I asked them on the Effective Altruism Forum and there was some discussion of them there.)

I'm looking for specific examples, particular ones which aren't already being done and so are available for new heroes to take on.

Ryan Carey said "A hero means roughly what you'd expect - someone who takes personal responsibility for solving world problems. Kind of like an effective altruist." He quoted this passage from HPMOR:

You could call it heroic responsibility, maybe,” Harry Potter said. “Not like the usual sort. It means that whatever happens, no matter what, it’s always your fault. Even if you tell Professor McGonagall, she’s not responsible for what happens, you are. Following the school rules isn’t an excuse, someone else being in charge isn’t an excuse, even trying your best isn’t an excuse. There just aren’t any excuses, you’ve got to get the job done no matter what.” Harry’s face tightened. “That’s why I say you’re not thinking responsibly, Hermione. Thinking that your job is done when you tell Professor McGonagall—that isn’t heroine thinking. Like Hannah being beat up is okay then, because it isn’t your fault anymore. Being a heroine means your job isn’t finished until you’ve done whatever it takes to protect the other girls, permanently.” In Harry’s voice was a touch of the steel he had acquired since the day Fawkes had been on his shoulder. “You can’t think as if just following the rules means you’ve done your duty. –HPMOR, chapter 75.

But in that case doesn't the sort of "sidekick" that Miranda describes count as a hero, because being a sidekick is plausibly one of the best ways that they can contribute to solving the world's problems?

Since this has actually gotten some interested people in my discussion post I'm cross posting it here where it makes more sense:

Reading the Main post on Sidekicks, I considered it worth noting in passing that I'm looking for a sidekick if someone feels that such would be an appropriate role for them.

This is me for those who don't know me: https://docs.google.com/document/d/14pvS8GxVlRALCV0xIlHhwV0g38_CTpuFyX52_RmpBVo/edit

And this is my flowchart/life;autobiography in the last few years: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxADVDGSaIVZVmdCSE1tSktneFU/view

Nice to meet you! :)

For me, finding someone who shared my values, who was smart and rational enough for me to trust him, and who was in a much better position to actually accomplish what I most cared about than I imagined myself ever being, was the best thing that could have happened to me.

Someone is doing what I want done, and they can do it better than me, and I can help.

If you aren't driven by status and dominance, what's the downside?

This concept of Sidekicks lends itself well to the principle of "first follower" by Derek Sivers.

First Follower: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fW8amMCVAJQ&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hO8MwBZl-Vc Derek Sivers Remember the importance of nurturing your first followers, embrace them as equals and make it about the Movement, and not about You. Be Public, be Easy to Follow Leadership is Overglorified. It was the First Follower that transformed the Lone Nut into a Leader. There's no Movement without the First Follower. Courageously follow and show others how to follow. When you find someone doing something great, have the guts to stand up and Join in.

I think there's something in business that is similar to the hero-sidekick dichotomy you suggest. In business, I see people who are great individual contributors, but their career path "upwards" takes them into management, at which they suck. The notion that being good at managing doers is "higher" than doing has a parallel in supposed superiority of heroes to sidekicks. It's not a promotion to go from sidekick to hero: it might very well be an awkward misalignment.

Is there something underlying both of these? It might be something about leader-follower and the prestige that comes with being a leader.

I don't know about this idea. For most of my career, I've tried to be sidekick in the sense of trying to fulfill someone else's goals with say a secondary goal of mine that ties in to that primary goal, but it has always ended up in conflicts, where I couldn't simply bring myself to ignore the hero's stance/decision(and still work with him/her). Is that a good enough reason to try to be a hero? This post still resonates with me, but that doesn't mean am about to go around hero's for whom I can be a sidekick. Majority of the empirical evidence that I've (personal experience) accumulated suggests, that won't really work.

May be the distinction is not as sharp as you think/believe it is?

The link to the post on your personal blog is broken, it should be: http://swimmer963.com/?p=383

This is an awesome, awesome, awesome post! I think you have nailed a few important axis of variance that we usually neglect.

Now, precisely because you are still part of the community and can accept rationalist memes, you are an important sample to learn what the rationalist community is not. At least what it is not necessarily.

Would you, and any other self-identified rationalist sidekick, please fill out this survey?

I am analyzing how personality is related to beliefs about consciousness and memetic affiliations. If only heroes fill out the questionnaire, I may associate traits that are not actually relevant for rationality with rationality.

Personally, I think that the difference you are pointing out ultimately comes down to testosterone, and relatedly, Aspergers.

I self-identify with the role of the hero. But I do so not because I think it's wonderful to struggle for righteousness, but rather because I feel a deep sense of despair when I consider pursuing other options. I'm crushing myself with the weight of heroic responsibility. This is extremely unpleasant, and naturally, makes me a much less effective person.

How can I rewrite my motivations and self-concept to be less distressing for me? How can I convince myself, emotionally and psychologically, to stop trying to be a hero? At this point, it's rather obvious that I'm not actually capable of being one. I would prefer to change my goals than to continue suffering like this.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheChampion

A sidekick has a different status than the hero because they primarily fill auxiliary or submissive tasks in pursuit of the venture. I'm familiar with this status as a technical writer.

I initially started with a grand expectation that I might one day write for a crew of genius software developers working on AI, or Space Exploration, or who-knows-what. If I want these things to happen, why did I not seek the "higher" status for myself?

I've never really had a problem with math or computer science, and all throughout high school I dreamed of being a programmer. I even applied to college as a prospective Computer Science major. But two weeks before courses began, I switched.

The reason was that I could not help but recall that I was not excelling quite as much as those around me were. I did not put in as much effort, I did not do as many math or cs training, and I failed to be exceptional. We had similar starting-abilities and a similar environment, but they had a more singular focus. In contrast, when they were doing their maths and programming exercises I gravitated more towards reading marathons....

So my idea became this: if I try to be a computer scientist myself, I will likely be unable to constrain myself from my reading obsession, and I will fail to be exceptional. But if I make being a computer scientist my main auxiliary hobby and do my best with my natural gift of the written word, then I improve my chances of being in an exceptional venture rather than an ordinary one.

I say all this to say that the "sidekick" role can be a rational way to participate via:

1. I get to be the second stomach. The hero goes through the trouble of digesting the initial material, and I get the benefit of a less fibrous meal.
2. I can't do what the hero can do with a similar exertion of effort. That exertion I can instead use to help the hero and get the goal accomplished.
3. I get to hear the news first. I'm excited and interested.
4. I get a portion of the glory from participating on the hero's journey.

I'm being torn away from my computer before thinking out this comment as thoroughly as I would like to, so I'll be thinking more about it and return later to see if there is anything I need to clarify or add.

I self-identify with the role of the hero. But I do so not because I think it's wonderful to struggle for righteousness, but rather because I feel a deep sense of despair when I consider pursuing other options. I'm crushing myself with the weight of heroic responsibility. This is extremely unpleasant, and naturally, makes me a much less effective person.

How can I rewrite my motivations and self-concept to be less distressing for me? How can I convince myself, emotionally and psychologically, to stop trying to be a hero? At this point, it's rather obvious that I'm not actually capable of being one. I would prefer to change my goals than to continue suffering like this.

Cool how you arrived at this insightful distinction via in the end following up on that nagging feeling.

I wonder whether the hero-sidekick differentiation is a dichotomy or whether these can be independent traits.

I'm predisposed to wonder because I kind of feel both sides of it. Both not exceptionally strongly so. Possibly more the sidekick. trait. I like to make people feel at home. I'm happy to provide for and foster my and other children. Like my mother. I like cooperative team-work. But I even more enjoy to work alone. Fal into the flow. Most time of my life I was the introvert doing/learning my own thing. Driven by curiosity and the wish to change, improve the world (I liked Harrys 'world optimization' quote). Can the world be changed alone? Probably not. But I can still feel a slight tug. And I realized that I can succeed socially even as an introvert. I just need my pauses.

In a way this is related to the question "what pain do you want in your life?" which I aposted as poll](http://lesswrong.com/lw/ksz/polling_thread/b8ol) before.

You might want to look at the recent thread on being a hero, http://lesswrong.com/lw/l6d/a_discussion_of_heroic_responsibility/ , in particular the comments which question the idea. A lot of the reasons why thinking of yourself as a hero are questionable apply to thinking another person is a hero as well.

Is your claim that...

• in theory, there are cases where being the sidekick is the way for you to have the biggest impact?
• in todays world, there are some cases where being the sidekick is the way for you to have the biggest impact?
• in todays world, there are many cases where being the sidekick is the way for you to have the biggest impact?
• while being a sidekick might not be the way for you to have the biggest impact on the world, it is still a way to have a notable impact on the world, and that having a notable impact on the world is still an admirable thing to do?

For the record, I agree with each bullet point except 3.

I think there are strong gender overtones here.

One of the things that comes to mind for me is the "Myth of the lone genius" and, in part, it sounds like you are continuing that myth in your use of the word "hero". A single person doing something to better the world. But I don't think such people actually exist. All of the heroes, all of the geniuses, have near armies of people beneath them that make their impact on the world happen. No single person has that kind of impact.

Very plainly said, if we investigate any person that you identify as "hero" we will find a lot of additional people contributing to the hero's success.

Is it helpful to re-frame the discussion to be, you want to contribute to rather than be contributed to? I think that's a valid distinction that people can make choices on.

But in terms of effective impact upon the globe, I don't think it's possible to accumulate power into a small subset to enact change upon the world. That's essentially what heroes are supposed to be, concentrate power to enact change. Instead, I think change happens through the small contributions of a wide system, where the "hero" is but the symbol, image, or figurehead. It is the breadth of the system that has the true power to change, not the concentrated power of a single individual.

Kenzi said, approximately [I don't remember her exact words]: “What if your aura of destiny didn’t have to be those things? What if you could be like…Samwise, from Lord of the Rings? You’re competent, but most importantly, you’re loyal to Frodo. You’re the reason that the hero succeeds.”

In Australia, something about the way you interacted with people suggested to me that you help people in a completely free way, joyfully, because it fulfills you to serve those you care about, and not because you want something from them… I was able to relax around you, and ask for your support when I needed it while I worked on my classes. It was really lovely… The other surprising thing was that you seemed to act that way with everyone. You weren’t “on” all the time, but when you were, everybody around you got the benefit. I’d never recognized in anyone I’d met a more diffuse service impulse, like the whole human race might be your master. So I suddenly felt like I understood nurses and other people in similar service roles for the first time.

Project this idea to community scale and you have a gift economy.

If you're interested in seeing how 50,000+ people apply this for a week do look into Burning Man