People build their realities around a single axiomatic design principle: “I must maximally validate my sense of my own agency.”
If you can figure out where someone *thinks* their agency is located, you can use behavioral observations to model their subjective reality correctly
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Basically, to understand someone, complete the following sentence from their point of view correctly, then take it from there:
“I exercise control over my own life by ________.”
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This is very interesting. Can you recommend any longer form thoughts on the topic? Or if none exist, maybe please write a full essay on it? I’d be an avid reader.
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Key premise of a book project I’m trying to get off the ground 🙂
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Have you considered that you might be biased in that you cluster with people for whom agency matters greatly? Because it ain't all of us.
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I’m specifically not thinking of that group but people who on paper lack agency and adopt a low-agency posture. Their realities are functions of their actual agency (often unconscious). Eg, a study that showed “powerless” housewives controlled husbands through what they cooked.
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Very fascinating. What I immediately think about is - what about victimhood? Of course there's a centrality of the self and a cloaked sense of agency there - but agency is denied?
Also makes me think of the viable systems model. Identity rules agency here, I'd say.
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