Agency > Intelligence
I had this intuitively wrong for decades, I think due to a pervasive cultural veneration of intelligence, various entertainment/media, obsession with IQ etc. Agency is significantly more powerful and significantly more scarce. Are you hiring for agency? Are we educating for agency? Are you acting as if you had 10X agency?
Grok explanation is ~close:
“Agency, as a personality trait, refers to an individual's capacity to take initiative, make decisions, and exert control over their actions and environment. It’s about being proactive rather than reactive—someone with high agency doesn’t just let life happen to them; they shape it. Think of it as a blend of self-efficacy, determination, and a sense of ownership over one’s path.
People with strong agency tend to set goals and pursue them with confidence, even in the face of obstacles. They’re the type to say, “I’ll figure it out,” and then actually do it. On the flip side, someone low in agency might feel more like a passenger in their own life, waiting for external forces—like luck, other people, or circumstances—to dictate what happens next.
It’s not quite the same as assertiveness or ambition, though it can overlap. Agency is quieter, more internal—it’s the belief that you *can* act, paired with the will to follow through. Psychologists often tie it to concepts like locus of control: high-agency folks lean toward an internal locus, feeling they steer their fate, while low-agency folks might lean external, seeing life as something that happens *to* them.”
Destined Ones, #GameScience will be joining this year's Gamescom Opening Night Live. The show kicks off at 8:00 p.m. (CEST) on August 19, and we look forward to seeing you there.
@elonmusk ur chinese sells depts sucks and cheat me for selling car. this is so call If you treat others badly, remember—what goes around, comes around
No longer hiring junior or even mid-level software engineers.
Our tokens per codebase:
Gumroad: 2M
Flexile: 800K
Helper: 500K
Iffy: 200K
Shortest: 100K
Both Claude 3.5 Sonnet and o3-mini have context windows of 200K tokens, meaning they can now write 100% of our Iffy and Shortest code if prompted well.
It won’t be long until AI will be writing all the code for Helper, Flexile, and Gumroad. My guess is by the end of 2026.
Our new process:
1. Sit and chat about what we need to build, doing research with Deep Research as we go.
2. Have AI record everything and turn it into a spec.
3. Clean up the spec, adding any design requirements / other nuances.
4. Have Devin code it up.
5. QA, merge, (auto-)deploy to prod.
@elonmusk hi,Elon,your Chinese sales of tesla just cheated me for over 1000yuan, hope you can deal wiht this kind of situation, it happened a lot, thanks a lot
Introducing, The Heist. Every shot was done via text-to video with Google Veo 2. I did all the sound design, edit,ing and music. I can't wait to show you what's in store next year at @secret__level! 4K version here: https://t.co/oLgxWxYKCC