A few month’s ago, twitter’s big argument was about this AITA, in which a woman left a restaurant to buy ranch dressing. Like most viral AITAs this is probably fake, but the discourse around it is still revealing. The arguments were split between “such agency! good for her for going after what she wants” and “what is she, 3?”. I am strongly on the side of people doing what they want with their own food, but in this case I think the people praising her have missed the point, and the people criticizing her have focused on the wrong thing.
I think it’s weird but harmless to drown all your food in ranch dressing. But it is, at best, terribly rude to leave a date for 20 minutes to run an errand. If it is so important to you to have ranch on all your food, either check with the restaurant ahead of time or just bring a small bottle by default.
So this woman is agentic in the sense of “refusing to accept the environment as it is, working to bring it more in line with her preferences”. But it’s a highly reactive form of agency that creates a lot of negative externalities.
I see this a lot in the way rationalists talk about agency. What gets praised is risky, expensive, reactive actions. The kind of responsible, proactive agency that heads off problems before they get costly receives much less attention.
Example of reactionary agency: someone who filled their house with air purifiers in 2020, but hasn’t changed the filters since.
Their reaction was correct, and in this case they’re probably net better off for it. But it would probably have been worth dropping some other expensive reaction in favor of regularly swapping air filters, or putting the purifiers aside since they’re useless at this point.
[Full disclosure: I change my air purifiers regularly but haven’t cleaned my portable AC filter in 3.5 years because I can’t figure out how]
HEROIC/REACTIVE VS RESPONSIBLE/PROACTIVE AGENCY
A few month’s ago, twitter’s big argument was about this AITA, in which a woman left a restaurant to buy ranch dressing. Like most viral AITAs this is probably fake, but the discourse around it is still revealing. The arguments were split between “such agency! good for her for going after what she wants” and “what is she, 3?”. I am strongly on the side of people doing what they want with their own food, but in this case I think the people praising her have missed the point, and the people criticizing her have focused on the wrong thing.
I think it’s weird but harmless to drown all your food in ranch dressing. But it is, at best, terribly rude to leave a date for 20 minutes to run an errand. If it is so important to you to have ranch on all your food, either check with the restaurant ahead of time or just bring a small bottle by default.
So this woman is agentic in the sense of “refusing to accept the environment as it is, working to bring it more in line with her preferences”. But it’s a highly reactive form of agency that creates a lot of negative externalities.
I see this a lot in the way rationalists talk about agency. What gets praised is risky, expensive, reactive actions. The kind of responsible, proactive agency that heads off problems before they get costly receives much less attention.
Example of reactionary agency: someone who filled their house with air purifiers in 2020, but hasn’t changed the filters since.
Their reaction was correct, and in this case they’re probably net better off for it. But it would probably have been worth dropping some other expensive reaction in favor of regularly swapping air filters, or putting the purifiers aside since they’re useless at this point.
[Full disclosure: I change my air purifiers regularly but haven’t cleaned my portable AC filter in 3.5 years because I can’t figure out how]