Agency
unoptimal and
Agency
unoptimal and
Learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed.... See more
David Foster Wallace,
Interrogate your influences.
We all have favourite influencers and influences - people we know, celebrities, artists, friends, writers, and uh, influencers. Books, TV shows, movies. Most of the time we’re happy just to accept that those are the people and things we admire and seek to emulate. But what artistic careers show us is the importance of p
... See moreRoughly, agency is the capacity to act to satisfy some preference. This breaks down into three parts: 1. The capacity to act. 2. Possessing preferences over outcomes of those actions. 3. Being able to choose to use the former to satisfy the latter.
But there is tremendous power in defining ideals, even if they ultimately remain out of reach. Considering all that is at stake, we have to at least try.