How to Be More Agentic
True agency is an unruly psychological trait. It’s the willingness to act without explicit validation, instruction, or even permission. It’s the meme “you can just do things,” knowing that “you can poke life, and something will pop out the other side.” It’s a venture capitalist with no academic background founding the most important AI lab in histo... See more
Agency Is Eating the World
I think of finding high-leverage work as having two interrelated components:
- Agency: i.e. some combination of the initiative/proactiveness to try to make things happen, and relentlessness and resourcefulness to make sure you’ll succeed.
- Taste: you need a good intuition for what things will and won’t work well to try. Taste is important both “in the
Ben Kuhn • Impact, agency, and taste
And it’s really easy to miss this point. It’s easy to always think “I can do this tomorrow” or “this is not a priority” or “this would never work”. And it’s hard, because sometimes those thoughts are correct. But I find that, unless I put in active effort, I’m the kind of person who’ll always have those thoughts. I’ll never actually act upon my goa... See more
Neel Nanda • Mini Blog Post 3: Become a Person Who Actually Does Things
• Aim to be effective, but unpredictable. That is, you want to act in a way that AIs have trouble modeling or imitating. That makes you irreplaceable.
Kevin Kelly • 101 Additional Advices
