Agency

It has become hard to be intentional about the future — to imagine and shape the worlds we want to live in — because the modern state rarely assumes any role in doing that or in encouraging us to do it either.

In ordinary language, we frequently speak of machinery or ideas ‘doing’ things in our lives. But they do nothing. People – human persons – produce, operate and apply their creations. The problem with assigning agency, even informally, to the nonhuman is that this disguises the strength of human control, limited though it is in other respects. It... See more

The opposite to reflexive agency is prompted agency - agency which only becomes available given some prompt to action. “That does seem like a problem. Have you tried solving it?” is my only-half-joking prompt I use with people: It’s something that highlights the failure of agency, in a way that makes people aware that action is an option available

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Value capture occurs when an agent’s values are rich and subtle; they enter a social environment that presents simplified — typically quantified — versions of those val-ues; and those simplified articulations come to dominate their practical reasoning. Examples include becoming motivated by FitBit’s step counts, Twitter Likes and Re-tweets,... See more

Giving kids the agency to follow their own curiosity seems right for a lot of obvious reasons: it will make them happier, intrinsic motivation will fuel them to learn more, it keeps the youthful flame burning instead of extinguishing it with routine...But it’s also important for a less obvious reason, one that will be even more important as things... See more