1. High Agency is the most under-discussed personality trait.
It's the sense that the story given to you by other people about what you can do is just that - a story.
And that you have control over the story.
I keep examples in my notes called "The High Agency Library"...
2. @EricRWeinstein opened the portal of "High Agency". It's one of those ideas that once you see it, you can't unsee it.
It appears to combine the following 3 things into one mega trait:
1. Resourcefulness
2. Skepticism towards "best practices"
3. Locus of control
3. The best 2 questions I've found for identifying high agency thought & individuals:
Thiel Question: How can you achieve your 10-year goal in 6 months?
Bezos Question: If I was stuck in a 3rd world prison and had to call someone to get me out, who would I call?
4. Josh Waitzkin argues that "Good weather" and "Bad weather" is one of the first low agency conditioning mechanisms.
Most parents - "It's bad weather. We can't go outside"
Josh Waitzkin - "It's a beautiful rainy day. Let's go outside"
Josh uses the weather to teach agency.
5. The greatest minds of their generation used to carry their suitcases until 1970s.
Crazy thought: We put a man on the moon before we put wheels on luggage.
Everyone just passively accepted carrying suitcases as being the best practice - because everyone else accepted it.
6. One thought experiment to guarantee a sleepless night:
"Where am I carrying luggage today?"
What is the stupid idea we've passively accepted because society does it?
7. The High-agency individual often outperforms bureaucratic low-agency organizations.
The FBI and CIA couldn't identify the founder of the Silk Road (black market drug empire) - despite billion-dollar resources.
A solo IRS inspector searching on Google did.
8. Dick Fosbury is an iconic example of High agency.
He was an average high jumper that won a gold medal by changing the rules of the game.
He was mocked before the games for looking like a camel. Now his method is the universal way of doing the high jump.
9. Hiroji Satoh was the worst player on the Japanese table tennis team. He then became the world champion
How? Adding foam to his bat changed the ball's trajectory
The low-agency crowd will mock the high-agency individual but ultimately joins once the crowd deems it acceptable
10. Elon has many critics - but nobody can criticize his agency
Example of this was how he caught an internal Tesla leaker
Musk sent identical emails to each employee - but with a unique spacing identifier. Once the email got leaked, he could identify exactly who leaked it
11. Despite being a billionaire, Mark Cuban designs his environment so he's always learning. He leaves textbooks on Machine Learning around his house.
He also taught himself to slam dunk at 37 years of age.
High Agency fight against entropy.
12. Arnold Schwarzenegger may have the most consistent output of high agency across many decades.
How many attempts at life would it take to do what he did in 1?1000 attempts?
"How can I criticise this guy, I'm still on my 2nd attempt at Rosetta Stone Spanish" - Bill Burr 😂
13. Extreme example of high agency: Ruben Carter.
Wrongly imprisoned for murder. He refused to wear prison clothes or use privileges like the prison yard -- as that would be giving his agency away
After 19 years learning law to argue his innocence, he was finally released
14. UFC champion Francis Ngannou failed 6 times trying to cross the border. Each time he would get dropped off in the Sahara Desert to die
He finally hacked his way in by using people's leftover internet cafe to research how foil would prevent radars from seeing him
15. The most extreme high agency example is Vrba & Wetzler
They escaped Auschwitz. Walked 80 miles in stolen suits. They carried the first-ever report on the gas chambers to allied forces
They reportedly saved 200,000 people from the Holocaust
16. The current education system is the perfect breeding ground for low-agency thinking.
You force children to sit down for 18 years, study something set by someone else, ask to go the bathroom, and get a score based on how well you adhered to the rules.
17. I think the first step of going from low agency to high(er) agency is to assume you're low agency and society is trying to constantly make you low agency.
Everyone assumes they'd be the German in 1930's to stand up to the Nazi's -- and it's the assumption that is dangerous.
18. The next step is to assume that everybody else is still figuring it out.
It's an endless loop of the emperor's new clothes, and everyone is naked.
5 years from now everyone you admire will look back at their present-day self and cringe.
19. Last but not least, watch this video.
A picture paints a thousand words, and a video can paint a thousand pictures.
This is high agency at its peak. And watch how the low agency crowd goes from judgmental to joining in, once everyone else has deemed it acceptable.
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