Learning to exercise agency - by David R. MacIver
What is agency? How does agency work? Can you get better at it? It's actually doing stuff that gets you what you want, IDK, and maybe respectively. Here are some useful distinctions and observations that might help.
Hey, you want to read a newsletter post in which I mostly provide a bunch of semi-novel conceptual distinctions? Well, if you don’t, you can stop reading. That’s exercising your agency, which is what this post is about. Exactly what constitutes agency seems to be a subject of active debate. I’m going to try to sketch out roughly what I think of as agency, but I don’t intend this to be a super precise definition or the definitive word on it. Roughly, agency is the capacity to act to satisfy some preference. This breaks down into three parts: The capacity to act. Possessing preferences…
related reading
- How to be more agentic - by Cate Hall - Useful Fictionsusefulfictions.substack.com
- How to Practice the Skill of Agencysubstack.com
- How to be more agentic - by Cate Hall - Useful Fictionsusefulfictions.substack.com
- Agency begets agency — LessWronglesswrong.com
- On agencysubstack.com
- High Agency in 30 Minutes - George Mackhighagency.com
- agency: it's only humansundusalfe.substack.com
- Seven ways to become unstoppably agentic — LessWronglesswrong.com
- Enjoying the feeling of agencymindingourway.com
- Can You Just Do Things?—Asteriskasteriskmag.com
- Agency begets agency — LessWronglesswrong.com
- On agency - by Henrik Karlsson and Johanna Karlssonhenrikkarlsson.xyz