Lumifer comments on To what degree do you model people as agents? - Less Wrong

34 Post author: Swimmer963 25 August 2013 07:29PM

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Comment author: Lumifer 30 August 2013 03:16:47PM *  5 points [-]

That's a bit different, I think. You're describing what I'd call the degree of internal conflict (which is only partially visible to the conscious mind, of course). However it seems that agency is very much tied to propensity to act and that is not a function solely of how much in agreement your "drives" are.

Crudely speaking, agency is the ability to get your ass off the couch and do stuff. Depressed people, for example, have very low agency and I don't think that's because they have a particularly powerful instinct which says "I want to sit here and mope".