One of my habits while driving is to attempt to model the minds of many of the drivers around me (in situations of light traffic). One result is that when someone does something unexpected, my first reaction is typically “what does he know that I don’t?” rather than “what is that idiot doing?”. From talking to other drivers, this part of my driving seem abnormal.
In this sense, I model my parents strongly as agents–I have close to 100% confidence that they will do whatever it takes to solve a problem for me.
One of the frequent complaints about the ‘agent’ concept space, and the “heroic responsibility” concept in particular, is that it rarely seems to take into account people’s spheres of responsibility. Are your parents the sort of people who would be able to solve anyone’s problem, or are they especially responsible for you? Are other people that seem to be NPCs to you just people that don’t care enough about you to spend limited cognitive (and other) resources on you and your problems?
With people who I model as agents, I’m more likely to invoke phrases like “it was your fault that X happened” or “you said you would do Y, why didn’t you?” The degree to which I feel blame or judgement towards people for not doing things they said they would do is almost directly proportional to how much I model them as agents. For people who I consider less agenty, whom I model more as complex systems, I’m more likely to skip the blaming step and jump right to “what are the things that made it hard for you to do Y? Can we fix them?”
Do you get more of what you want by blaming people or assigning fault?
One of the frequent complaints about the ‘agent’ concept space, and the “heroic responsibility” concept in particular, is that it rarely seems to take into account people’s spheres of responsibility. Are your parents the sort of people who would be able to solve anyone’s problem, or are they especially responsible for you? Are other people that seem to be NPCs to you just people that don’t care enough about you to spend limited cognitive (and other) resources on you and your problems?
My younger self didn’t get this. I remember being surprised and upset that my parents, who would always help me with anything I needed, wouldn’t automatically also help me help other people when I asked them. For example, my best friend needed somewhere to stay with her one-year-old, and I was living with my then-boyfriend, who didn’t want to share an apartment with a toddler. I was baffled and hurt that my parents didn’t want her staying in my old bedroom, even if she paid rent! I’d taken responsibility for helping her, and they had responsibility for helping me, so why not?
Now I know that that’s not how most people behave, and that if it was, it might actually be quite dysfunctional.
Do you get more of what you want by blaming people or assigning fault?
One of the frequent complaints about the ‘agent’ concept space, and the “heroic responsibility” concept in particular, is that it rarely seems to take into account people’s spheres of responsibility. Are your parents the sort of people who would be able to solve anyone’s problem, or are they especially responsible for you? Are other people that seem to be NPCs to you just people that don’t care enough about you to spend limited cognitive (and other) resources on you and your problems?
I agree with this. I keep being a little puzzled over the frequent use of the “agenty” term at LW, since I haven’t really seen any arguments establishing why this would be a useful distinction to make in the first place. At least some of the explanations of the concept seem mostly like cases of correspondence bias (I was going to link an example here, but can’t seem to find it anymore).
I keep being a little puzzled over the frequent use of the “agenty” term at LW, since I haven’t really seen any arguments establishing why this would be a useful distinction to make in the first place.
Here is my brief impression of what the term “agenty” on LW means:
An “agent” is a person with surplus executive function.
“Executive function” is some combination of planning ability, willpower, and energy (only somewhat related to the concept in psychology). “Surplus” generally means “available to the labeler on the margin.” Supposing that people have some relatively fixed replenishing supply of executive function, and relatively fixed consistent drains on executive function, then someone who has surplus executive function today will probably have surplus executive function tomorrow, or next week, or so on. They are likely to be continually starting and finishing side projects.*
The practical usefulness of this term seems obvious: this is someone you can delegate to with mission-type tactics (possibly better known as Auftragstaktik). This ability makes them good people to be friends with. Having this ability yourself both makes you better able to achieve your goals and makes you a more valuable friend, raising the quality of the people you can be friends with.
*Someone who has lots of executive function, but whose regular demands take all of it, will have lots of progress in their primary work but little progress on side projects. Someone whose demands outstrip their supply is likely to be dropping balls and burning out.
Does anyone happen to know of reliable ways for increasing one’s supply of executive function, by the way? I seem to run out of it very quickly in general.
Does anyone happen to know of reliable ways for increasing one’s supply of executive function, by the way? I seem to run out of it very quickly in general.
There are a handful of specific small fixes that seem to be helpful. For example, having a capture system (which many people are introduced to by Getting Things Done) helps decrease cognitive load, which helps with willpower and energy. Anti-akrasia methods tend to fall into clusters of increasing executive function or decreasing value uncertainty / confusion. A number of people have investigated various drugs (mostly stimulants) that boost some component.
I get the impression that, in general, there are not many low hanging fruit for people to pick, but it is worth putting effort into deliberate upgrades.
After joining the military, where executive function on demand is sort of the meta-goal of most training exercises, i found that having a set wardrobe actually saves a great deal of mental effort. You just don’t realize how much time you spend worrying about clothes until you have a book which literally has all the answers and can’t be deviated from. I know that this was also a thing that Steve Jobs did- one ‘uniform’ for life. President Obama apparently does it as well. http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacquelynsmith/2012/10/05/steve-jobs-always-dressed-exactly-the-same-heres-who-else-does/
There are a number of other things i’ve learned for this which are maybe worth writing up as a separate post. Not sure if that’s within the purview of LW though.
I agree, though it’s always been interesting to me how the tiniest details of clothing become much clearer signals when eveybody’s almost the same. Other military practices that I think conserve your energy for what’s important:
-Daily, routinized exercise. Done in a way that very few people are deciding what comes next.
-Maximum use of daylight hours
-Minimized high-risk projects outside of workplace (paternalistic health care, insurance, and in many cases, housing and continuing education.)
It’s plausible to me that a much higher proportion of peeps than is generally realized operate substantially better on different sleep schedules to what a 9-5 job forces, in which case enforced maximal (or at least, greater) use of daylight hours is possibly taking place on a societal (global?) level, though not as strongly as in militaries.
This is plausible to me, too. I’ve had very productive friends with very different rhythms.
But I suspect far more people believe they operate best staying up late and sleeping late than actually do. There’s a reason day shifts frequently outperform night shifts given the same equipment. And we know a lot of people suffer health-wise on night shift.
I don’t think one forced sleep schedule outperforming another is strong evidence that forced schedules are better than natural schedules.
Edit: Also, depending on geography, time of year and commute a 9-5 job may force one to get up some time before dawn and/or stay up some time after dark.
I’m going the opposite way: Paying more attention to non-formulaic outfits, after years of {{varying only within one or two very circumscribed formulas, or even wearing one of exactly the same few set outfits for months—or more—at a time}}. So far it’s interesting figuring things out, but it’s increasing wardrobe load, and if I continue expanding my collection, it could become substantially more expensive than what I was doing before.
The dialectic outside view suggests I’ll end up settling down a bit and going back to a more repetitive approach, but with a greater number of variables (e.g. introducing variables for level of formality, weather, audience, tone-fancied-on-given-day, etc.) and items from which to choose.
someone who has surplus executive function today will probably have surplus executive function tomorrow, or next week, or so on. They are likely to be continually starting and finishing side projects.
Mostly. I’m trying to make the concept precise and transparent; saying “an agent is a person who gets stuff done” leaves the mechanism by which they get things done opaque, and most of the posts discussing agency seem to have a flavor of “an agent is a person who gets my stuff done” (notably including the possibility that the speaker is not an agent in that sense).
In today’s German army, the Bundeswehr, the term “Auftragstaktik” is considered an incorrect characterization of the concept; instead “Führen mit Auftrag” (“leading by mission”) is used.
This before the article actually defines “the concept” except by introducing it as “Auftragstaktik”.
I don’t know if it’s a useful way to think, but it’s the way I do think in practice, and not necessarily because of reading Less Wrong; I think that’s just where I found words for it. And based on the conversation I mentioned, other people also think like this, but using different criteria than mine. Which is really interesting. And after reflecting on this a bit and trying to taboo the term “agenty” and figure out what characteristics my brain is looking at when it assigns that label, I probably will use it less to describe other people.
In terms of describing myself, I think it’s a good shorthand for several characteristics that I want to have, including being proactive, which is the word I substitute in if I’m talking to someone outside Less Wrong about my efforts at self-improvement.
when someone does something unexpected, my first reaction is typically “what does he know that I don’t?” rather than “what is that idiot doing?”. From talking to other drivers, this part of my driving seem abnormal.
For me that depends on what this “unexpected” is. For example, if I see a car in the next lane and ahead of me start to slightly drift into my lane, my reaction is that I know what this idiot is doing—he is about to switch lanes and he doesn’t see me. On the other hand, if a car far ahead hits the brakes and I don’t know why—there my reaction is “he knows something I don’t”...
I do the same sort of thinking about the motivations of other drivers, but it seems strange to me to phrase the question as “what does he know that I don’t?” More often than not, the cause of strange driving behaviors is lack of knowledge, confusion, or just being an asshole.
Some examples of this I saw recently include
1) a guy who immediately cut across two lanes of traffic to get in the exit lane, then just as quickly darted out of it at the beginning of the offramp;
2) A guy on the freeway who slowed to a crawl despite traffic moving quickly all around him;
3) That guy who constantly changes lanes in order to move just slightly faster than the flow of traffic.
I’m more likely to ask “what do they know that I don’t?” when I see several people ahead of me act in the same way that I can’t explain (e.g. many people changing lanes in the same direction).
One of my habits while driving is to attempt to model the minds of many of the drivers around me (in situations of light traffic). One result is that when someone does something unexpected, my first reaction is typically “what does he know that I don’t?” rather than “what is that idiot doing?”. From talking to other drivers, this part of my driving seem abnormal.
One of the frequent complaints about the ‘agent’ concept space, and the “heroic responsibility” concept in particular, is that it rarely seems to take into account people’s spheres of responsibility. Are your parents the sort of people who would be able to solve anyone’s problem, or are they especially responsible for you? Are other people that seem to be NPCs to you just people that don’t care enough about you to spend limited cognitive (and other) resources on you and your problems?
Do you get more of what you want by blaming people or assigning fault?
My younger self didn’t get this. I remember being surprised and upset that my parents, who would always help me with anything I needed, wouldn’t automatically also help me help other people when I asked them. For example, my best friend needed somewhere to stay with her one-year-old, and I was living with my then-boyfriend, who didn’t want to share an apartment with a toddler. I was baffled and hurt that my parents didn’t want her staying in my old bedroom, even if she paid rent! I’d taken responsibility for helping her, and they had responsibility for helping me, so why not?
Now I know that that’s not how most people behave, and that if it was, it might actually be quite dysfunctional.
I don’t think so.
Agreed.
Then it seems particularly dangerous to do that with people you consider especially valuable.
I agree with this. I keep being a little puzzled over the frequent use of the “agenty” term at LW, since I haven’t really seen any arguments establishing why this would be a useful distinction to make in the first place. At least some of the explanations of the concept seem mostly like cases of correspondence bias (I was going to link an example here, but can’t seem to find it anymore).
Here is my brief impression of what the term “agenty” on LW means:
An “agent” is a person with surplus executive function.
“Executive function” is some combination of planning ability, willpower, and energy (only somewhat related to the concept in psychology). “Surplus” generally means “available to the labeler on the margin.” Supposing that people have some relatively fixed replenishing supply of executive function, and relatively fixed consistent drains on executive function, then someone who has surplus executive function today will probably have surplus executive function tomorrow, or next week, or so on. They are likely to be continually starting and finishing side projects.*
The practical usefulness of this term seems obvious: this is someone you can delegate to with mission-type tactics (possibly better known as Auftragstaktik). This ability makes them good people to be friends with. Having this ability yourself both makes you better able to achieve your goals and makes you a more valuable friend, raising the quality of the people you can be friends with.
*Someone who has lots of executive function, but whose regular demands take all of it, will have lots of progress in their primary work but little progress on side projects. Someone whose demands outstrip their supply is likely to be dropping balls and burning out.
Okay, now that does sound like a useful term.
Does anyone happen to know of reliable ways for increasing one’s supply of executive function, by the way? I seem to run out of it very quickly in general.
There are a handful of specific small fixes that seem to be helpful. For example, having a capture system (which many people are introduced to by Getting Things Done) helps decrease cognitive load, which helps with willpower and energy. Anti-akrasia methods tend to fall into clusters of increasing executive function or decreasing value uncertainty / confusion. A number of people have investigated various drugs (mostly stimulants) that boost some component.
I get the impression that, in general, there are not many low hanging fruit for people to pick, but it is worth putting effort into deliberate upgrades.
After joining the military, where executive function on demand is sort of the meta-goal of most training exercises, i found that having a set wardrobe actually saves a great deal of mental effort. You just don’t realize how much time you spend worrying about clothes until you have a book which literally has all the answers and can’t be deviated from. I know that this was also a thing that Steve Jobs did- one ‘uniform’ for life. President Obama apparently does it as well. http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacquelynsmith/2012/10/05/steve-jobs-always-dressed-exactly-the-same-heres-who-else-does/
There are a number of other things i’ve learned for this which are maybe worth writing up as a separate post. Not sure if that’s within the purview of LW though.
I agree, though it’s always been interesting to me how the tiniest details of clothing become much clearer signals when eveybody’s almost the same. Other military practices that I think conserve your energy for what’s important:
-Daily, routinized exercise. Done in a way that very few people are deciding what comes next.
-Maximum use of daylight hours
-Minimized high-risk projects outside of workplace (paternalistic health care, insurance, and in many cases, housing and continuing education.)
It’s plausible to me that a much higher proportion of peeps than is generally realized operate substantially better on different sleep schedules to what a 9-5 job forces, in which case enforced maximal (or at least, greater) use of daylight hours is possibly taking place on a societal (global?) level, though not as strongly as in militaries.
This is plausible to me, too. I’ve had very productive friends with very different rhythms.
But I suspect far more people believe they operate best staying up late and sleeping late than actually do. There’s a reason day shifts frequently outperform night shifts given the same equipment. And we know a lot of people suffer health-wise on night shift.
I don’t think one forced sleep schedule outperforming another is strong evidence that forced schedules are better than natural schedules.
Edit: Also, depending on geography, time of year and commute a 9-5 job may force one to get up some time before dawn and/or stay up some time after dark.
I also intuit that most people do best on a non-forced sleep schedule; I don’t think that many people know how to have a unforced schedule.
I’d be interested to see this in Discussion.
I’m going the opposite way: Paying more attention to non-formulaic outfits, after years of {{varying only within one or two very circumscribed formulas, or even wearing one of exactly the same few set outfits for months—or more—at a time}}. So far it’s interesting figuring things out, but it’s increasing wardrobe load, and if I continue expanding my collection, it could become substantially more expensive than what I was doing before.
The dialectic outside view suggests I’ll end up settling down a bit and going back to a more repetitive approach, but with a greater number of variables (e.g. introducing variables for level of formality, weather, audience, tone-fancied-on-given-day, etc.) and items from which to choose.
As requested.
http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/il7/military_rationalities_and_irrationalities/
Awesome!
Stimulants, exercise and the removal of chronic stress.
That sounds like ways of reducing the demand, not increasing the supply.
“Spending it better” is one option, but not the one that I want.
They are not. Each of those increase the supply of executive function.
Stimulants.
Exercise.
Chronic stress.
Lumosity’s new game “Train of Thought” might do it.
Obligatory: http://wondermark.com/638/
I sympathize more with that than I would prefer.
(Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back analyzing the effects of day-of-week & hour-of-day on spaced repetition memory recall.)
Would that be a synonym of “has his shit together” and “gets stuff done”?
Mostly. I’m trying to make the concept precise and transparent; saying “an agent is a person who gets stuff done” leaves the mechanism by which they get things done opaque, and most of the posts discussing agency seem to have a flavor of “an agent is a person who gets my stuff done” (notably including the possibility that the speaker is not an agent in that sense).
From the Wikipedia article you link:
This before the article actually defines “the concept” except by introducing it as “Auftragstaktik”.
I don’t know if it’s a useful way to think, but it’s the way I do think in practice, and not necessarily because of reading Less Wrong; I think that’s just where I found words for it. And based on the conversation I mentioned, other people also think like this, but using different criteria than mine. Which is really interesting. And after reflecting on this a bit and trying to taboo the term “agenty” and figure out what characteristics my brain is looking at when it assigns that label, I probably will use it less to describe other people.
In terms of describing myself, I think it’s a good shorthand for several characteristics that I want to have, including being proactive, which is the word I substitute in if I’m talking to someone outside Less Wrong about my efforts at self-improvement.
For me that depends on what this “unexpected” is. For example, if I see a car in the next lane and ahead of me start to slightly drift into my lane, my reaction is that I know what this idiot is doing—he is about to switch lanes and he doesn’t see me. On the other hand, if a car far ahead hits the brakes and I don’t know why—there my reaction is “he knows something I don’t”...
I do the same sort of thinking about the motivations of other drivers, but it seems strange to me to phrase the question as “what does he know that I don’t?” More often than not, the cause of strange driving behaviors is lack of knowledge, confusion, or just being an asshole.
Some examples of this I saw recently include 1) a guy who immediately cut across two lanes of traffic to get in the exit lane, then just as quickly darted out of it at the beginning of the offramp; 2) A guy on the freeway who slowed to a crawl despite traffic moving quickly all around him; 3) That guy who constantly changes lanes in order to move just slightly faster than the flow of traffic.
I’m more likely to ask “what do they know that I don’t?” when I see several people ahead of me act in the same way that I can’t explain (e.g. many people changing lanes in the same direction).