Okay, thanks for the update and of course the idea of measuring agentness, while simultaneously being careful not to apply the halo effect to agentness, is fundamentally sound. I would propose treating the perceived agentness of a certain person as a belief, so that it can be updated quickly with well-known rationalist patterns when the shift moves to another domain.
Let us take the example of a person who is very agenty in managing relationships but bad at time management, as given in your post. In this case, I would observe that this person displays high levels of agentness in managing relationships. However, this does not equate to high agentness in other fields; yet it may be an indication of an overall trend of agentness in his life. Therefore if his relationship agentness level is 10 I might estimate a prior of his agentness at any random domain to be, say, 6.
Now, suppose I observe him scheduling his tasks with a supposed agentness of 6 and he screws it up completely, because of an inherent weakness which I didn’t know about in that domain. After the first few times he was late I could lower my belief probability that his agentness in that domain (time management) is actually 6, and increase the probability of the belief that it is 3, for instance, plus a slight increase in the numbers adjacent (2 and 4).
However, cached thoughts do interest me. We have seen clearly that cached thoughts can act against agentness; but in my opinion the correct path is to make cached thoughts for agentness. Say you discover that in situation X, given Y and Z, A is almost always(or a sufficiently high percentage chance) the most agenty option. Then you can use your system 2 to train your system 1 into storing this pattern, and in future situations you will reflex perform A, with the slow-down consideration given depending on how high the chance that the agenty option is not A after all times its disutility and so on.
I would say that cached thoughts are very interesting phenomena, being able to control the first actions of a human being(and the actions that we, being impulsive creatures, normally take first), and that with proper training it might even be possible to use them for good.
I like your suggestion of treating the perceived agenty-ness of a certain person as a belief! Perhaps there can be a scale/scorecard developed to evaluate someone’s agenty-ness on different life domains. And we can even give feedback/training to others on their agenty-ness to help them update their beliefs about and skills in certain areas. For example, with your description of someone who is frequently late, that person can be encouraged to develop a specific focus to avoid planning fallacy.
So there might be fine-grained ways of dealing with specific challenges in specific life domains. We at Intentional Insights have actually been thinking of various ways of training people to improve their agency in specific life domains, and having scales/scorecards for specific domains, along with strategies for dealing with that specific domain, might be a useful product. Good suggestion there, thanks!
Okay, thanks for the update and of course the idea of measuring agentness, while simultaneously being careful not to apply the halo effect to agentness, is fundamentally sound. I would propose treating the perceived agentness of a certain person as a belief, so that it can be updated quickly with well-known rationalist patterns when the shift moves to another domain.
Let us take the example of a person who is very agenty in managing relationships but bad at time management, as given in your post. In this case, I would observe that this person displays high levels of agentness in managing relationships. However, this does not equate to high agentness in other fields; yet it may be an indication of an overall trend of agentness in his life. Therefore if his relationship agentness level is 10 I might estimate a prior of his agentness at any random domain to be, say, 6.
Now, suppose I observe him scheduling his tasks with a supposed agentness of 6 and he screws it up completely, because of an inherent weakness which I didn’t know about in that domain. After the first few times he was late I could lower my belief probability that his agentness in that domain (time management) is actually 6, and increase the probability of the belief that it is 3, for instance, plus a slight increase in the numbers adjacent (2 and 4).
However, cached thoughts do interest me. We have seen clearly that cached thoughts can act against agentness; but in my opinion the correct path is to make cached thoughts for agentness. Say you discover that in situation X, given Y and Z, A is almost always(or a sufficiently high percentage chance) the most agenty option. Then you can use your system 2 to train your system 1 into storing this pattern, and in future situations you will reflex perform A, with the slow-down consideration given depending on how high the chance that the agenty option is not A after all times its disutility and so on.
I would say that cached thoughts are very interesting phenomena, being able to control the first actions of a human being(and the actions that we, being impulsive creatures, normally take first), and that with proper training it might even be possible to use them for good.
I like your suggestion of treating the perceived agenty-ness of a certain person as a belief! Perhaps there can be a scale/scorecard developed to evaluate someone’s agenty-ness on different life domains. And we can even give feedback/training to others on their agenty-ness to help them update their beliefs about and skills in certain areas. For example, with your description of someone who is frequently late, that person can be encouraged to develop a specific focus to avoid planning fallacy.
So there might be fine-grained ways of dealing with specific challenges in specific life domains. We at Intentional Insights have actually been thinking of various ways of training people to improve their agency in specific life domains, and having scales/scorecards for specific domains, along with strategies for dealing with that specific domain, might be a useful product. Good suggestion there, thanks!