Pablo_Stafforini comments on Open Thread, November 16–30, 2012 - Less Wrong

3 Post author: VincentYu 18 November 2012 01:59PM

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Comment author: Pablo_Stafforini 18 November 2012 04:10:52PM 0 points [-]

Minor correction: it's 'agency', not 'agenty'.

Comment author: cousin_it 18 November 2012 04:18:33PM 3 points [-]

Fair point, "agenty" is a little idiosyncratic to LW. Edited.

Comment author: Pablo_Stafforini 18 November 2012 04:30:15PM *  3 points [-]

Ah, I now see why you wrote 'agenty' instead of 'agency'. I thought you meant to use the term as a noun, in the sense of 'capacity for action'. But you were in fact using it as an adjective, to refer to the property that makes certain folks outgoing and willing to do things.

Your usage was probably inspired by Luke's "The Power of Agency", which makes use of the term 'agenty' (I only discovered this article a few minutes ago, after using the search box to look up that term).

Comment author: SilasBarta 19 November 2012 01:45:14AM *  5 points [-]

Ah, okay, I've heard people use the term "agenty" with me before but didn't know what it meant (the context didn't help much and it only came at the point where s/he was cutting off communication).

The context was:

  • "Silas, since you're [near X] at [time Y], can do you [task for me] at Y? No trouble if you can't."
  • "[leaves silas a voicemail]: time Y has moved to inconvient time Z."
  • "[my reply back with a voicemail]: I can't make that time, and it would be cheaper at this point anyway to do it youself."
  • [still expects me to do task]
  • [I get a call from someone else who was told I would do task.]
  • [I attempt to do task to the extent I can anyway.]
  • [I get condemned on the basis that "Silas, I thought you were agenty."]
Comment author: jmmcd 19 November 2012 02:09:49PM 1 point [-]

Sounds like someone has a new buzzword for catch-all criticisms. Best not to take such people seriously.

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