Discussing High Agency

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So, what do you mean by High Agency?

Neal

I had a little look into it and it seems to be something, really, about being able to achieve, let’s say, a goal, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be a goal, but let’s say achieve goal and be able to shape the environment so that it’s possible to achieve that goal and then also overcome the pushback towards it. 

What got me thinking was that neurologically there also has to be some kind of compass or some kind of serotoninurgic response or whatever so that you can actually overcome these surprises, you can overcome these blockers or constraints, or whatever it is, and actually find a path through.

So maybe it’s a mix of a sort of explorative thinking, lateral thinking, but also having that confidence to just be able to push a headway, and to be able to go the roundabout way.

So that’s why I found it quite intriguing as a term. Not too many people have been using a term or thinking about it or writing about it, it’s actually quite difficult to find much about it. So, first of all, I was wondering what is it, is it actually a thing – does it exist?

Matt Gwyther

There’s links! It threads in a bit of antifragility, doesn’t it, and adapting to shocks, and sort of improving that on the reap towards some kind of goal or vision, or part of that.

And then there’s the dopaminurgic stuff, like how do you look to lay the path of the constraints and restrictions to your own attention, and have a decent sort of dopaminergic drive to and be motivated.

So there’s a bit of that, those threads in there as well. There’s probably some personalities that I know you were sharing some interesting things about, what is it, about the origins of genius and stuff like that as well, and what is it.

Neal 

Yeah, I’ve not read through it yet. That’s something that I’m going to have to take a look at (A reference to the book, Genius)

Matt 

It must be something in that as well, because presumably high agency people are probably more likely to make breakthroughs or combine different elements and adapt to the environment to produce something of lasting value.

Neal 

And that makes us back to creativity as well.

Matt 

There was something in there. There was like a degree of disagreeableness, a degree of narcissism as well in order to be sort of confident in your vision and keep pushing through.

Neal 

The closest word that I could come up with was having a degree of rascality. 

Matt

Right, interesting. 

Neal

And, you know, that’s funny because Richard Claydon mentioned about having a look at low status characters (because in the example I originally used, it was actually an example of a criminal being high agency)

and maybe the trickster can create pockets of high agency within a very constrained and regulated space.

Matt

I’m thinking about another point: who would you go to for opinions as well. Maybe there’s a sort of agency opinion community that’s lacking in things that are outsiders. That’s another game network.

Neal

It’s beautiful insight actually, a high agency community, a high agency ‘thought-community’. Even if you think about that example of having that high agency to realise that the wall is weaker than the door, so you just cut through the wall to get in!

But then if you also apply that same thinking to the paradigm shift to realise that we have smash through it – and that was part of one of our principles, to sort of smash through these paradigms, but having the agency to realise that we might not attack it like this, we might go about it the other way.

Matt

Yeah, I love that. I was talking to Reese a bit about it. He’s coming to the end of his book and he’s sort of trying to think about trying to get out there bit more and connect with people but struggling to find groups that seem interesting enough or where there might be individuals that are thinking outside the box and especially if you’re creative and you’re working on quite an individualized vision for something like really really doing that and you have to have that level of confidence and sort of arrogance with it as well and think this might change something cultural and it’d be something like quite a big bet – high risk big bet – but then how do you find other people that are doing something similar you can benefit from in a certain way. And he mentioned this guy Theodore Zeldin I think I’m recommending one of his books a while ago – a French author – he created something called Conversation Clubs, he’s telling me about and I don’t know if they’re still running but basically they’ve kept together people that are interesting and just getting them in a room in a conversation

Just sort of what we’re trying to do as well, what we’re doing together, and then it links something else that spoke to the guy from the Unreal Charity, he’s a film producer, filmmaker, a documentary, and he was interested in the AI stuff, but he’s like, how do you find these niches of people that are doing really interesting stuff, like, real creatives pushing the boundaries, doing novel new things with technology, and not just regurgitating what 90% of people will be doing.

Exactly. Yeah, was talking to Reece about it, like I said, maybe this is a time to do that, like subculture movements that came out of different times, different technologies or art forms, came from people being pissed off or feeling like they haven’t got a forum to go and meet people in the same space, so they created their own.

Neal 

That’s exactly it, you don’t wait for Moses to come down the mountain for the ten commandments, you write them yourself.

Matt 

That’s the side of my agency, I guess, to do stuff.