A great term! In a conversation last year, and I were trying to find a better word for this than “agent-iness” but totally failed.
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Ah, but is there a similar word for *this*?:
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Replying to @realtimeai and @juliagalef
That’s interesting—you’re helping me see that both self-efficacy and virtu fail to capture one characteristic we were trying to describe: not only having high self-efficacy but also particularly likely to *use* it, e.g. to decide to change one’s situation or to start something.
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If you’d like a terrible baseline that makes all those words seem great: causalicious.
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Curiously, Virtù could also refer to physical objects designed to encourage it too - medals, medallions, vases, etc that depicted inspirational examples of people who pursued it, and their deeds.
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“agency” describes the thing such people have; agentiness/virtu describes the characteristic of having a high degree of it.
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Replying to
Nice! I wasn't aware of this word.
The only thing I'd add is that being "agenty" also means not being ruled by fleeting counterproductive impulses (like the urge to lash out at someone, or avoid something), as well as thinking strategically about how to pursue your goals/values
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