Pride
From the Merriam-Webster English dictionary:
Arrogance: an attitude of superiority manifested in an overbearing manner or in presumptuous claims or assumptions
Confidence: a feeling or consciousness of one's powers or of reliance on one's circumstance
Pride:
reasonable self-esteem. confidence and satisfaction in oneself
pleasure that comes from some relationship, association, achievement, or possession that is seen as a source of honor, respect, etc.
exaggerated self-esteem
a source of pride : a person or thing that makes you feel proud
archaic : ostentatious or showy display
archaic: the most active, thriving, or satisfying stage or period
Present
I have, far too late and right on time, submitted my first first author paper. It is mine. It is also other people's. It is a result of my toil and my advisor's heroic efforts. I "should" have submitted a first author paper before. In this case, should is not a statement of imposter syndrome, but rather a statement about the difference between who I am versus who I aspire to be.
When is Pride excessive? When is it sufficient? The Siren Song of the internet whispers that pride can have no excess, that delusional self confidence is good, that you and your consumption are fine as you are. It is well known that ambition requires self-confidence. I would argue that ambition often requires plenty of pride, and even a touch of arrogance. Arrogance to believe yourself better than your peers and predecessors, able to do what they could not.
I should have submitted a first author paper before because I think that the field that I work in is both the most important current field of study and in a bubble. I believe that I have learned enough to create knowledge of quality, in a body of knowledge whose value is enormous yet overstated.
I should have pushed myself harder sooner, I think, but I lacked belief in myself. I lacked confidence. I lacked direction. I lacked pride. But I am proud of what I accomplished last week, and for that I am thankful.
Past
A confession: in a weird way creating a piece of work wholly my own that I think is any good is more meaningful to me than getting into grad school. I worked on many of my own projects, and many I thought were good, but never both at once. I lost faith in my own projects in undergrad, and didn't end up submitting them anywhere. The grass is always greener on the other side. The accomplishments one does not have seem the most glaring. Confidence allowed me to get through, tell myself that I was focusing on building skills instead of executing. But I lacked the Pride to truly believe in that. The ability to do something that was exciting to even people not immediately involved in my subfield: that was a source of pride.
I've taken a step on the way to having more of that. Not the first, not that last. For better or worse, confidence and pride are difficult to acquire but near impossible to shake. I think this is the source of much discontent to the aspiring: the gap between what we believe we can do on an intellectual level and we know how to do, either positive or negative. The gap between intellectual confidence and egocentric pride. The most obvious one is the gap between taste and creative ability. But this applies to many other things. I think one of the difficulties of dating in the modern world is that there is a huge gap between the kind of person we see ourselves as deserving of and our ability to figure out the necessary actions to date those people. No one is born with rizz, and some of us think we deserve more (or less) than we do. The mistake, of course, is to think anyone deserves anything, that preferences both within and without are to be societally defined instead of independently discovered.
Humility is perhaps overrated1. Sometimes you know something other people don’t, and inaction because of insufficient faith in yourself relative to others can be damaging. Epistemic humility, that the world is vast and your knowledge of it pathetic, is not. It is critical to have confidence while having the belief you may be wrong, and while you cannot go around questioning your beliefs all the time its important to occasionally go through the act of checking yourself thoroughly when it is easy to do so. Read the ICJ ruling.
In short, what I have learned is that is valuable to know yourself as well as you can, check yourself often, and respect those around you.
Future
In the long run, to be proud of who I am requires more than pride in myself or my abilities, but pride in what I accomplished. As a nerd with a well managed savior complex, the options are absolutely expansive but relatively slim. My current position is promising but precarious. Prestigious, but pretend. I believe is both the most important technology of the future will be artificial intelligence, but that it is overinvested2 in, both in terms of people and money. I think it is still worth pursuing, but caution is important. Current best guesswork: Academia will be (and already is) already overloaded, and academic positions will not grow at the rate they have been growing. Most research labs will start to die as either (a) this technology becomes hard to protect, and competition causes a race to the bottom killing R&D profits, or (b) this technology becomes dependent on data and those with a lead (OAI and Google) never let go. Had I less pride, I would probably be looking for an escape. Had I more pride, I would dismiss the possibility of my failure to secure a future out of hand, even if it would be largely due to external factors. But I think that though this game will have far fewer winners than what VCs hope for, there will be many and there will be enormous underexploration of socially good but unprofitable use cases of the technology. I think I can pull of picking the right moment to take the plunge before the diving board collapses. If not, I think I'll be able to swim out of the wreckage and find something else worth doing.
This depends heavily on your social circle. In technology, humility is underrated. In academia, overrated. On the internet? Underrated when applied to oneself, Overrated when applied to others
I think there is a decent chance I am wrong on this, but if I am wrong on this we will have to deal with at least mass unemployment. In that world, I don’t think I would be extremely enthused about working in commercial AI applications.