Decibel #18
Some things from around the internet I consumed this week and found interesting:
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Type of Power (image)
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Spotting High Agency People (tweet)
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I Should Have Loved Biology (essay)
1. Types of Power
What types of power do you seek? What types of power do you value most?
2. How to Spot High Agency People
How to spot high agency people:
- Weird teenage hobbies - Teenage years are the hardest time to go against social pressures. If they can go against the crowd as a teenager, they can go against the crowd as an adult.
I think this one should go pretty far. Though I think it doesn’t have to be as as teenager. Going against the crowd in principled manner at any time takes guts.
- Energy distortion field - If you meet with them when you’re tired and defeated, you leave the room ready to run a marathon on a treadmill with max incline. Low agency people do the opposite.
People like this are certainly the types I enjoy spending time with the most anyways.
- Golden question - If you’re in a 3rd world prison cell and had to call someone to get you out, who would you call? That’s the highest agency person you know.
I know my answer and it seems to track.
- You can never guess their opinions - The boxer that writes poetry. The advertiser obsessed with the history of war. The beauty queen who reads Nietzsche. If their beliefs don’t line up with their stereotypes, they’ve exercised agency.
Finding the spots where beliefs don’t line up with their stereotypes is a fun joy.
- Immigrant mentality - If they’ve moved from their hometown, that’s a good sign. If they’ve moved from their home country, that’s an even greater sign.
It takes agency to spot you’re in the wrong place, resourcefulness to operationalise a move and a growth mindset to start from zero in a new location.
I think this works in the positive form, but doesn’t rule out non-immigrant mentality as not high-agency.
- They send you niche content - Low agency people look at the social engagement of content before deeming its quality. High agency people just look at the content. They spot upcoming trends very early.
I do love niche content. It’s what inspired me to write this blog in the first place. However I think sending niche content could simply be an awareness and care about your interests and actually have pretty little to do with agency.
- Mean to your face but nice behind your back - The social incentives are to be nice to people’s faces and gossip behind their backs. To do the opposite requires agency because they’re swimming against the social tide.
I suspect the author would agree, but I think it’s worth noting that the being mean part isn’t necessary — it’s about being nice to people behind their backs.
3. I Should Have Loved Biology
Disclaimer: I grew up loving learning and public school.
That said, I think it’s tragic how often the magic of figuring out how things work is lost.
The linked essay is about this happening in biology lessons. It’s long and fascinating, but the intro is really want I want to talk about.
In the textbooks, astonishing facts were presented without astonishment. Someone probably told me that every cell in my body has the same DNA. But no one shook me by the shoulders, saying how crazy that was.
“No one shook me by the shoulders, saying how crazy that was.” What a sentence! And it’s so true! I feel that way about many subjects.
No one shook me by the shoulders, saying how crazy it was that we can use language to transmit ideas from one brain to another. How wild is it that I can write words on this page, and put ideas in your head, even if they’re messy and lossy?
No one shook me by the shoulders, saying how crazy it was that so much of our world boils down to a bunch of math equations.
No one shook me by the shoulders, saying how crazy it was that we discovered those equations with a process we called science, that our world is (mostly) knowable, and that the discovery process is both thrilling and boring.
No one shook me by the shoulders, saying how crazy it was that the structures of certain musical notes make people feel specific ways.
Someone did shake me by the shoulders, saying how crazy it was we could add up a bunch of little numbers and invent a field called calculus that opened up a huge range of possibilities for things we could calculate. Mr. Porter was a great teacher, and the shaking of shoulders was done in the softest of ways, with a wry smile as he explained the same problem from a third perspective to make sure everyone understood.
I hope to be like Mr. Porter some day when it’s my turn to wear the teacher’s hat.