Agency, as I see it, is an amalgamation of two skills, or mental dispositions: autonomy and efficacy.

1. Agency requires the capacity to formulate autonomous goals in life—the capacity to dig inside and figure out what wants to happen through you, no matter how strange or wrong it seems to others. In other words, it requires autonomy (which was what I

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High agency is such an important idea because the more agency an individual or society has -- the more problems they can solve.

High agency can be a confusing idea to understand because it’s not just one idea. It’s a combination of three distinct skills rarely found together:

1. Clear thinking


2. Bias to action


3. Disagreeability