Besides looking at a person’s overall balance of explore/exploit, it’s also interesting to look how that balance plays out in the case of specific issues.
An observation that e.g. IFS therapists have made is that often when a person seems to be struggling with two subagents that are pushing in opposite directions, those two subagents are ultimately optimizing for the same goal, but with opposite strategies. (It feels more natural to describe their general class of strategies as something like “safety / passivity” vs. “adventure / activity”, but those do have a resemblance to explore / exploit as you’ve described it here.)
For example, someone may have a workaholic subagent that pushes them to do nothing but be productive, and a slacker subagent that never wants to do any work at all. Both may be reactions to an insecurity over whether the person has been productive enough—with one of the subagents trying to eliminate that insecurity by working all the time, and the other trying to eliminate it by deciding that actually work doesn’t matter at all and it’s fine never to work.
A list of some such typical opposite-paired agents that I wrote down during some lecture of my IFS training:
Besides looking at a person’s overall balance of explore/exploit, it’s also interesting to look how that balance plays out in the case of specific issues.
An observation that e.g. IFS therapists have made is that often when a person seems to be struggling with two subagents that are pushing in opposite directions, those two subagents are ultimately optimizing for the same goal, but with opposite strategies. (It feels more natural to describe their general class of strategies as something like “safety / passivity” vs. “adventure / activity”, but those do have a resemblance to explore / exploit as you’ve described it here.)
For example, someone may have a workaholic subagent that pushes them to do nothing but be productive, and a slacker subagent that never wants to do any work at all. Both may be reactions to an insecurity over whether the person has been productive enough—with one of the subagents trying to eliminate that insecurity by working all the time, and the other trying to eliminate it by deciding that actually work doesn’t matter at all and it’s fine never to work.
A list of some such typical opposite-paired agents that I wrote down during some lecture of my IFS training:
Obligated <-> Ambitious, risk-taking
Speak up <-> Silence
Stay <-> Leave
Striver/busy <-> Avoidant
Engaged/emotional <-> Numbing
Emotion <-> Reason
Selfish/egocentric <-> Caretaker
Overindulgent <-> In control
Inner critic <-> Inner defender