Likability

One-line definition: The pursuit of others’ approval — “a jail” when it becomes the primary thing you optimize for, crowding out creative output and conviction.

How sources describe it

• John Mulaney: “likability is a jail” — borrowed by Alex Karp for his essay on agreeableness vs. creative output.
• Alex Karp: a “culture of agreeableness… can move institutions away, not toward, creative output.”
• Lao Tzu (via Twitter): “care about what other people think and you will always be their prisoner.”
• Steve Jobs to Jony Ive: wanting people to like you is vanity that competes with caring about “the work.”
• Kyle’s nuance: there’s “plenty of room for likability” in low-stakes social life; the danger is letting it govern conviction. Credibility + conviction can overpower likability (Brie Wolfson’s caveat: don’t weaponize this into being difficult for its own sake).

Where it shows up

• Conviction-Led Contrarianism — the foil to deviance and the Layer 1 dependency.
• Conviction-Led Contrarianism - Research — research notes.

Related concepts

• Deviance — defined partly as “a willingness to disregard likability.”
• Dependencies — Layer 1 dependencies are largely phantom likability concerns.
• Contrarianism — disregarding the crowd’s approval is the precondition for holding a contrarian position.
• Conviction-Led Contrarianism — frames likability as the Layer 1 foil that credibility and conviction must overpower.
• Alex Karp — argues a “culture of agreeableness” moves institutions away from creative output.
• Steve Jobs — told Jony Ive that wanting to be liked is vanity competing with caring about “the work.”
• Jony Ive — recipient of Jobs’s framing of likability as a rival to the work.
• Brie Wolfson — caveats that conviction over likability shouldn’t be weaponized into being difficult for its own sake.