Lately, I’ve been contemplating agency and the factors that limit it. Agency is a value currently in vogue among rationalists, post-rationalists, and Bay Area denizens. LessWrong defines agency as “the property of effectively acting within an environment to achieve one’s goals.” My current definition: “Taking action believed to lead to accomplishment.”
I like being provisionally precise with definitions, and words like accomplishment, achievement, and success are frequently used interchangeably, with the latter dominating the consciousness of those seduced by self-help gurus. Here is my current set of definitions:
Accomplishment. Attaining something desired through commitment.
Achievement. A significant accomplishment.
Success. The recognition of achieving something.
Given these definitions, agency is acting with the belief that one can attain something by committing to it. Agency is a Stoic value, as it encourages one to focus on what is under their control—taking action, self-belief, and commitment—unlike success, which requires something outside of one’s control, mainly recognition from others.
As argued in “Self-Help Is Dead, Got Wisdom Instead?”, agency is culturally becoming a new focal value, replacing success. A new trend seems to be agency-maxxing, exemplified by
’s blog, which offers advice such as cultivating a high agency information diet by being mindful of what you pay attention to and adopting a high agency habit by focusing on specific goals over vague ambitions.All good, but those who read their share of self-help will be familiar with such advice, now repackaged with “high agency” as the superordinate value. The agency-maxxers risk making the same mistake as self-help gurus and hustle narcissists do with the values of success and discipline: they fail to acknowledge virtue.
Agency is a value, not a virtue. As noted in “The Most Boring Value” entry about discipline, virtue is a value that is always good:
I understand virtue as a value that is always good. Being disciplined is not always good; it can be foolish, something the self-help gurus fail to tell you. Foolish discipline is overworking until burnout, “crushing” workouts that reliably lead to injury, and going on a starvation diet because “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.”
Similarly, one can be foolishly agentic, applying their agency in ways that get them caught running on endless status treadmills, compromising their health or ethics in the process. Those fixated on this value often chase the latest tech developments, from Web3 to LLMs, cultivating a cult-like obsession. Still, agency is essential for virtue, making it crucial to understand what limits it.
Confusion about the true nature of agency is inherently limiting. When people misunderstand agency, they make category errors, mistaking accomplishment for success and falsely elevating it to the status of a virtue, which leads them to chase empty status symbols. Moreover, some may prefer that you lack agency altogether.
A powerful method of curtailing someone’s agency is to pressure them—often through culture war shaming—into prematurely adopting a political stance. Politics is the exercise of power, and if shame-induced boundaries constrain one’s ability to exercise it, agency will be limited.
However, the most limiting factor is the desire to appear right or avoid appearing wrong. The former captures those who get egoic highs from signaling their intelligence, while the latter feel shame because they cannot. Both are playing the wrong game, originating from the schoolification of reality, which established an invisible status hierarchy around “being right.”
Of course, within the confines of multiple-choice tests, being right can be measured, but in the adventure of daily living, one does not have measurable access to determine if they are right. This value of being right, which is ultimately unknowable in what matters most—navigating life—morphs into the more realizable task of appearing right, creating bullshit personalities in the process. One can appear right without ever knowing if they are truly right, which is the essence of bullshit.
Appearing right limits agency because it creates coherent illusions rather than living with confusing realities. Individuals focusing on appearing right stay within the parameters of popular opinion, avoiding the risk of exploring new perspectives that could reveal how the world truly operates. This focus leads to shallow knowledge, thought conformity, and smart-sounding platitudes that prompt others to performatively nod in agreement.
Being agentic is a gritty journey of trial and error, non-glamorous, and does not result in gold stars. The last thing one needs to be agentic is to appear right in contexts where being right cannot be accurately assessed. One needs to risk being wrong, which also means appearing wrong—a prospect that often translates to appearing stupid, one of the greatest fears in our culture.
“If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.” - Epictetus
To overcome this fear, be willing to appear stupid. Appear like a fucking idiot. Ask the dumbest-sounding questions. Play the opposite game everyone else is playing. Our role model here is Forrest Gump. By conventional standards, he is “stupid,” yet as the film reveals, he is exceptionally agentic. His accomplishments include being a football star, war hero, ping pong champion, shrimp business owner, long-distance runner, and becoming wealthy from his investments.
The lesson of this film isn’t in its realism but is encapsulated in Gump’s life motto: “stupid is as stupid does,” meaning one is ultimately judged by their actions, not by how smart they sound. Appearing stupid is disarming; it not only forces others to “explain it like I am five,” which is excellent for actual learning, but it also exposes them. It reveals their actual knowledge, which might trigger them, and more importantly, it uncovers whatever they are trying to sell you.
Intentions become transparent in the presence of those brave enough to appear stupid, something our collective agency depends on.
Previous Less Foolish entries to help overcome hangups related to intelligence: