(I don’t necessarily agree with QC’s interpretation of what was going on as people talked about “agency”—I empathize some, but empathize also with e.g. Kaj’s comment in a reply that Kaj doesn’t recognize this at from Kaj’s 2018 CFAR mentorship training, did not find pressures there to coerce particular kinds of thinking).
My point in quoting this is more like: if people don’t have much wanting of their own, and are immersed in an ambient culture that has opinions on what they should “want,” experiences such as QC’s seem sorta like the thing to expect. Which is at least a bit corroborated by QC reporting it.
I’m not sure if this is a disagreement or supporting evidence, but: I remember you saying you didn’t want to teach SPARC kids too much [word similar to agency but not quite that. Maybe good at executing plans?], because they’d just use it to [coerce] themselves more. This was definitely before covid, maybe as far back as 2015 or 2016. I’m almost certain it was before QC even joined CFAR. It was a helpful moment for me.
A related tweet by Qiaochu:
(I don’t necessarily agree with QC’s interpretation of what was going on as people talked about “agency”—I empathize some, but empathize also with e.g. Kaj’s comment in a reply that Kaj doesn’t recognize this at from Kaj’s 2018 CFAR mentorship training, did not find pressures there to coerce particular kinds of thinking).
My point in quoting this is more like: if people don’t have much wanting of their own, and are immersed in an ambient culture that has opinions on what they should “want,” experiences such as QC’s seem sorta like the thing to expect. Which is at least a bit corroborated by QC reporting it.
I’m not sure if this is a disagreement or supporting evidence, but: I remember you saying you didn’t want to teach SPARC kids too much [word similar to agency but not quite that. Maybe good at executing plans?], because they’d just use it to [coerce] themselves more. This was definitely before covid, maybe as far back as 2015 or 2016. I’m almost certain it was before QC even joined CFAR. It was a helpful moment for me.