What does it mean to have agency?

What does it mean to have agency? The dictionary says it's an "action or intervention... to produce a particular effect." This is a start, but a dissatisfying one. By this definition, a thermostat has agency. It takes action to produce an effect, yet no one would say a thermostat is free. The definition is missing something essential because it has no concept of a self.

A better way to understand agency is to build a definition from the ground up. A rock rolling down a hill follows a path determined by gravity. A plant turns toward the sun in a programmed response to a stimulus. It would seem absurd to say that either has agency. They are both engaged in "action" that "produces a particular effect," so the dictionary is clearly missing something. We need more requirements.

The first is Causal Independence. An entity's actions can't be wholly determined by external forces. The agency for the rock's movement belongs to physics, not the rock. To have agency, you must be the source of the action, not just a link in a causal chain.

But that's still not enough. Imagine a person flailing their arms randomly. They are the source of the action, but you wouldn't say they are exercising much agency. Now imagine that same person swimming toward shore. The actions might look similar, but the swimmer is directing their energy with purpose. This gives us our second requirement: Intentionality. An entity that acts randomly doesn't have agency in any meaningful sense. Its actions must be directed toward a goal.

These two ideas give us Level 1 Agency: the capacity to act independently toward a goal. This is the world of mimicry and optimization. As children, this is how we learn to function. We watch others, absorb the rules, and adopt the objective functions installed by our environment: parents, school, peers, society. The goal is to get good at playing the game as it's presented to us.

This is the state most people remain in, even the most ambitious. They get very good at running a script written by others. The script comes from their parents, their schools, their whole environment. This is why you see people who look successful on the outside, but feel like impostors on the inside. That feeling of burnout isn't just a matter of working too many hours. It's the friction from running a program your hardware wasn't designed for. The misery is an error message from deep inside, a trauma that forces you to re-evaluate everything.

This raises the obvious question. If the function was chosen for us, can we choose a different one?

This is Level 2 Agency: the ability to consciously write or rewrite your own objective function. It's the shift from letting your life be explained by its causes to defining it by its purpose. In Level 1, you're a brilliant navigator with a map someone else gave you. Level 2 is the moment you look up from the map and ask, "Why am I going to B in the first place?"

This transition is rarely a single event. It often begins with a period of exploration, of trial and error. You try things. Some go well, some don't. You start to discover your own limitations, not in the sense of failure, but in the sense of learning the boundaries of your own capabilities and interests. This process of discovery is crucial. You can't pick the right goal if you don't have data on yourself. An AI trained to win at chess has mastered Level 1. But it cannot decide that chess is a pointless game and it would rather write poetry. To reach Level 2 is to do exactly that.

And yet, some people do more than just choose a goal. By pursuing their own so intently, they create a new path for others to follow.

This is Level 3 Agency: the ability to create new objective functions that others can adopt. You don't just play the game or choose the game, you invent a new one. At Level 2, you choose a goal from the existing menu of human ambitions. At Level 3, you add a new item to the menu.

But Level 3 is almost always a byproduct, not a goal. It arises from mastering Level 2. When the Impressionists broke from the Salon, they weren't trying to create a new game for others; they were just trying to paint what they saw. In doing so, they created a new objective function for art. Claude Shannon, in writing a single paper, didn't just solve a problem in communications; he created the field of information theory, giving generations of engineers a new landscape of problems to explore. And Shopify's founders didn't set out to build a platform for a million entrepreneurs. They just wanted to sell snowboards. They solved their own problem so thoroughly that the solution became a new game for everyone else.

How do you make the jump, particularly to Level 2? The mechanism seems to be the separation of tasks. You have to rigorously distinguish between what is your responsibility and what belongs to others. Your actions and your thoughts are your task. How other people react is their task.

This is the foundation of Causal Independence. By focusing only on your own tasks, you stop your actions from being determined by external forces like the need for recognition. This requires a specific kind of courage: the courage to be disliked. The moment you stop optimizing for others' approval, you are free to choose your own objective function. But you will inevitably be misunderstood by those still playing the old game.

You discover your objective function through action. The common advice is to wait for motivation. The reality is that action precedes motivation. By trying things, you generate data about what holds your interest. The work itself teaches you what is worth working on. The question is not "What do I want?" which is often a proxy for "What would look good?" but "What struggle am I willing to endure?" The answer to that question reveals your true objective function.

Strangely, the path to greater agency often involves commitment. We think of freedom as keeping our options open. But this can be a trap, a paralysis of infinite choice that keeps you from going deep on any one thing. True freedom comes from consolidation: from committing to a path and cutting away the distractions of all the others.

But is the progression always this clean? Of course not. An essay is a cleaned-up train of thought, and reality is always messier. You might find someone who operates at Level 2 in their work, relentlessly pursuing their own vision, but defaults to a Level 1 script in their personal life. And people can regress. A founder might start a company from a genuine Level 2 insight, only to find themselves, years later, trapped back in Level 1, optimizing for board expectations and quarterly earnings, running a script written by the market instead of their own. These levels aren't fixed achievements, but states you have to actively maintain.

The world is full of people who are very good at climbing ladders they never chose. They focus on the "how" because it's easier and more legible than the "why." The real work is to have the courage to ask "why." To step off the ladder, find the right wall, and only then begin climbing. The objective is not just to win the game, but to choose it.