Agency
Ideas around agency, aka the sense of control that you feel in your life + your capacity to influence your own thoughts and behavior
unoptimal and
Agency
“A people or a class which is cut off from its own past is far less free to choose and to act as a people or a class than one that has been able to situate itself in history.” - John Berger
tomcritchlow.com • Ways of Seeing
The simple individualistic humanist frame treats the person as the seat of agency, the atomic unit of moral responsibility and choice-making.
I want you to see the limits of this model. Agency exists at micro- and macro-scales, the “person” is just one step on the ladder.
I want you to see the limits of this model. Agency exists at micro- and macro-scales, the “person” is just one step on the ladder.
Tweets From Richard D. Bartlett · @RichDecibels • Tweet
You are the machine that fuels everything else in your life.
Paying attention to the mindset that drives that machine, is simply one of the most important things you can do.
Every move, every decision, every action will rest on that. Be sure it is as optimal as it can be.
Dr. Julie Gurnertwitter.comThe most successful entrepreneurs and business people aren’t necessarily the smartest. But the managerial tracks that have fueled the upper-middle class have been fed by a credentialed cognitive elite. I expect those priorities to shift toward agency, adaptability, and demonstrated value creation.
Jeff Giesea • Agency is the new superpower
The first step towards being “high agency” is always the same. You cannot take effective action towards bending the world to your desire until you know, in detail, what it is that you desire.
Emmett Shearx.comsari and
Even if you work inside the system, you don’t need to let the system work inside of you. And if you summon up the boldness to go in a different direction, others might even surprise you by following along.
"Multitasking Isn't Progress—It's What Wild Animals Do for Survival"
Musings on agency part 2:
Find your feedback loops (gradients) that feel like eating chocolate ice cream.
But also find your feedback loops that also feel like doing an insanely hot sweat lodge with a group of good friends that have your back.
Christopher Smederx.comthread
On the one end, you have fully reflexive agency in which you act spontaneously to satisfy your preferences, on the other end you have total obedience to some authority who tells you how to be happy, and in the middle is prompted agency.
David R. MacIver • Learning to exercise agency
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
PhilPapers
excellent work by C. Thi Nguyen