Editing High Agency

[[File:High-Agency-Martian.jpg|thumb]]

'''High agency''' is a psychological and behavioral concept first publicly articulated by Eric Weinstein during a 2016 interview on The Tim Ferriss Show. In the episode, Weinstein defined high agency as a mindset characterized by persistent, creative problem-solving in the face of obstacles, particularly when authority or systems present apparent limitations.

== Origin ==

The term was introduced in [[Eric Weinstein on Challenging “Reality,” Working with Peter Thiel, and Destroying Education to Save It (YouTube Content)|a conversation between Eric Weinstein and Tim Ferriss]], where Eric described high agency individuals as those who, when told something is impossible, begin formulating ways to circumvent the limitation rather than accepting it. He used examples such as getting past a nightclub bouncer without credentials or starting a business without credit or experience. Weinstein framed this behavior as analogous to MacGyver-like thinking—resourceful, independent, and nonconformist.

<blockquote>
''Are you constantly... when you're told that something is impossible, is that the end of the conversation, or does that start a second dialogue in your mind?''

— '''Eric Weinstein''', [[Eric Weinstein on Challenging “Reality,” Working with Peter Thiel, and Destroying Education to Save It (YouTube Content)|The Tim Ferriss Show]], 2016
</blockquote>

Weinstein argued that many high-agency individuals emerge from what he called "traumatic births"—experiences that force them to see through the inadequacies of social reality and into deeper structural truths. He emphasized that while this often happens by accident or necessity, it should be cultivated deliberately through alternative educational systems, rather than waiting for exceptional individuals to emerge by chance.

== Key Attributes ==

* '''Problem-Oriented Thinking:''' Sees barriers as challenges to overcome rather than endpoints.
* '''Nonconformity:''' Tends to challenge norms and resist authority when it impedes progress.
* '''Resourcefulness:''' Uses unconventional means to achieve goals.
* '''Persistence:''' Maintains pursuit of objectives despite systemic resistance or lack of support.

== Cultural Commentary ==

Weinstein critiqued modern Western culture—especially post-1970s America—for drifting toward "low agency," marked by risk aversion and overreliance on institutional structures. He contrasted this with earlier American values that embraced disruption and individual initiative. The Bay Area was cited as a "ghetto of innovation," where high-agency people were allowed to thrive but also constrained within defined cultural and geographic boundaries.

== Implications ==

Weinstein proposed the development of a parallel educational infrastructure to systematically cultivate high agency, creativity, and [[Genius vs Excellence|genius]]. He noted that while institutions are adept at training for expertise, they often suppress or fail to foster the attributes necessary for original discovery and innovation.

== Quotes ==

<blockquote>
'''Tim Ferriss:''' ''Have you come to any conclusions or beliefs outside of that essay that related to how autodidacts or Newtons can leave Newton's when they travel on from this world?''

'''Eric Weinstein:''' ''I think so. I can't prove it, but I think where I'm headed with this is that most of us who wind up using these sort of strange '''high agency hacks''' to negotiate the world, have some kind of a traumatic birth. We may flatter ourselves that were in touch with reality, but in fact, reality is a second best strategy. If you're lucky, your family works pretty well and you never leave social reality. It's only when something goes wrong that you discover, okay, the world doesn't work in any way the way I was told. Here's the underlying structure. What you then have to realize is, if you want to do this at scale, you've got to stop relying on these traumatic births it's like you're waiting for somebody to get bit by a spider to become spider-man. No you have to do this in a more controlled fashion.''

'''Tim Ferriss:''' ''You have to harvest spiders.''

'''Eric Weinstein:''' ''That's right, you've got it you've got to regularize it. So I think what we need to do is we need to create a completely secondary parallel educational structure for people who are going to be in the high agency creativity discovery idiom and realize that we know how to impart expertise, but we don't know how to impart creativity in genius.''

'''Tim Ferriss:''' ''Could you define high agency? or just explain what you mean by it.''

'''Eric Weinstein:''' ''Sure. '''High agency''' is ... well, are you constantly... when you're told that something is impossible, is that the end of the conversation, or does that start a second dialogue in your mind how to get around whoever it is that's just told you that you can't do something. So, how am I gonna get past this bouncer who told me that I can't come into this nightclub? How am I going to start a business when my credit is terrible and I have no experience. You're constantly looking for what is possible in a kind of MacGyver-ish sort of a way, and that's your approach to the world.''

'''Tim Ferriss:''' ''I’m not gonna take us off the rails here - have you seen the Martian?''

'''Eric Weinstein:''' ''Yes, the ultimate high agency code!''

'''Tim Ferriss:''' ''Did you love it? I just saw it last night, man, it was just like two hours of MacGyver on steroids I loved it.''

'''Eric Weinstein:''' ''Yeah, and it I'm glad you brought it up. I think it heralds a return, at least among Americans, to our previous way of being. I think there was some terrible thing that happened starting around 1970 and that is just cracking now. So, really, about 45 years of a low agency super-safe, timid, frightened kind of societal aspiration. If you just stay on track can we keep the American prosperity machine going. I think we now realize that you can't do it without a bunch of really marginal characters—people who have might be described as disruptive and have bad attitudes—these are my people. They're tough to deal with and I don't always and enjoy them but I do think that without them it's not much of a football team.''

'''Tim Ferriss:''' ''What can someone do who's listening to this let's say and they're they live in a community that is clearly low agency and they want to train themselves to be able to look at option C D and F when people say ‘Do you want a or B?’ or if they're given let's say, the know, from the bouncer from the admissions officer from the ‘fill in the blank’. They look for a way around it instead of just being stopped in their tracks. Are there any recommendations or tools or resources exercises that they could use to cultivate that higher agency?''

'''Eric Weinstein:''' ''Well, there's I don't think there's a community on earth where somebody isn't modifying their car beyond what's street legal. I don't think that there's any community in which nobody is cooking something up in the basement that probably isn’t prescribed by law. I don't think that there's a community on earth where somebody isn't trying to break into their own computer in order to see how it works from the inside. There are high agency people everywhere. What there isn't necessarily is critical mass. Sometimes I refer to the Bay Area as the innovation ghetto— so you have all of the people who are too high agency to behave properly and wait their turn and the rest of the country. So they've been given like the nicest piece of real estate an un-Godly amount of cash and you know the pleasure of each other's company. But they've been told ‘Okay, you have to stay at the terms of your probation, so you have to stay within the Bay area’ So what I'd love to see is, I'd love to see more of us violating our parole and going into the rest of the country and trying to bring that irreverent spirit, because I think one of the things that the US still has over, let's say, a competitor like China, is that we tolerate the middle finger. It is perfectly acceptable to be disruptive here in San Francisco, where you and I are conducting this interview, whereas if I'm told that my child is disruptive in Kansas or South Carolina I'm probably being told that he's being sent home for bad behavior. So I think it's really important to start respecting our marginal citizens of greatest ability and looking for the unusual personality types that are irreverent and committed enough to making things happen and to really do things.''

- '''Eric Weinstein''' on [https://tim.blog/2016/01/13/eric-weinstein/ Tim Ferriss]
</blockquote>

== On YouTube ==

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== On X ==

=== 2016 ===
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/768487846894116866
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=Without Burning Man, there would be no proof of the vast scale of the genius, decency, creativity &amp; '''agency''' that the default world suppresses
|timestamp=4:39 PM · Aug 24, 2016
}}


=== 2017 ===
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/942138500039634944
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=Also, the public that is '''HIGH agency''' is looking for alternate non-institutional experts: @nntaleb @BretWeinstein @jordanbpeterson @CHSommers @SamHarrisOrg @HeatherEHeying @PiaMalaney @peterthiel @DouglasKMurray @Raheelraza @tristanharris @sparker etc....
|timestamp=9:04 PM · Dec 16, 2017
}}


{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/942457223896166401
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=@RadioFreeTom @SamHarrisOrg @paulkrugman @NSF @theNASciences And, no I don’t call something a conspiracy because I disagree w/ experts. I usually agree w/ them! What I disageee with is using expertise to transfer wealth &amp; '''agency''' from the supposedly childlike voters who intuit something is rigged but can’t name it in political 3 card Monty.
|timestamp=6:11 PM · Dec 17, 2017
}}


=== 2018 ===
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/951696768344907776
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=When we take manageable numbers of '''high agency''' people longing for opportunity from desperate nations &amp; give them a gift of US citizenship from strength, a kind of magic happens. It rarely does taking them from advanced nations.

And you know it if you’ve ever seen a swearing-in.
|timestamp=6:06 AM · Jan 12, 2018
}}


{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1013421459941675008
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=I smell dyslexia, ADHD, or some such “learning disability” all over this story. '''Super high agency'''. High creativity. Can’t fit in. Some blood on his hands but unexpectedly little considering his “line of work.” Can’t fit in to society.

This guy may need a prison STEM PhD program.
|quote=
{{Tweet
|image=akannampilly-profile.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/akannampilly/status/1013389662625325056
|name=Ammu Kannampilly
|usernameurl=https://x.com/akannampilly
|username=akannampilly
|content=Notorious thief flees French jail by helicopter. "It was the second time Faid has pulled off a spectacular jailbreak -- in 2013, he blasted his way out of a prison in northern France using dynamite before being recaptured six weeks later". 
@AFP https://au.news.yahoo.com/notorious-thief-flees-french-jail-helicopter-prison-authority-113632983--spt.html?soc_src=social-sh&soc_trk=tw via @Y7News
|timestamp=11:51 AM · Jul 1, 2018
}}
|timestamp=1:57 PM · Jul 1, 2018
}}


{{Tweet
|image=george__mack-profile.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/george__mack/status/1068238562443841538
|name=George Mack
|usernameurl=https://x.com/george__mack
|username=george__mack
|content=1/ '''HIGH AGENCY'''

Once you SEE it - you can never UNSEE it. 

Arguedbly the most important personality trait you can foster. 

I've thought about this concept every week for the last two years since I heard @EricRWeinstein discuss it on @tferriss' podcast.  

THREAD...
|timestamp=1:57 PM · Jul 1, 2018
}}


{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1075859859243843584
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=Give a man a fish and he eats for a day. 

Teach him to fish, and he becomes dependent &amp; clingy as a student who has to be shown everything new in a time draining &amp; soul sucking infantilizing ritual that cannibalizes his '''agency'''.

Consider teaching a man to teach himself fishing..
|timestamp=9:05 PM · Dec 20, 2018
}}


=== 2019 ===
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1095808235133558785
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=Thought those of you who put up with me should know; I've been thinking about this for a long time and it's time to boost @jgreenhall's signal: high variance, high insight, and '''high agency'''. Just know, he's not your indoor cat. 

End.
|timestamp=10:13 PM · Feb 13, 2019
}}


{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1128189185511178240
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=It's a great feeling seeing so many people letting this idea of '''"high agency"''' impact their lives for the better. 

[Thanks @george__mack.]
|timestamp=6:43 AM · May 14, 2019
}}


{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1167978088816246784
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=Can we stop pretending that we care as a nation? Because clearly we don’t. There can be 10 of these in a month and we don’t do a thing. We don’t try things. We don’t experiment. We sit here like '''low agency''' idiots suffering from learned helplessness.
|timestamp=1:50 AM · Sep 1, 2019
}}


=== 2020 ===
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1237790369263153153
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=That thing we were told was an Internet panic is now a pandemic.

Is it possible that authoritative sources are now more the problem than the 1st hand videos &amp; direct reports that were circulating?

I mean Jesus Christ: When do we overthrow this overclass of '''low agency “experts”'''?
|timestamp=5:19 PM · Mar 11, 2020
}}


{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1237802721857556480
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=A herd of cats. 

Here are a few names of higher variance '''high agency''' super independent people I think highly of and I would consult on any national problem:
@LauraDeming</br>
@patrickc</br>
@paulg</br>
@NAChristakis</br>
@DrJoonYun</br>
@peterthiel</br>
@pwang</br>
@tylercowen</br>
@nntaleb</br>
Liz Blackburn</br>
@SamHarrisOrg
|timestamp=6:09 PM · Mar 11, 2020
}}


{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1239349071199887360
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=It's time for a massive reversal of who is allowed to contribute to our institutional sense-making. 

End.

<nowiki>#</nowiki>SlipTheDISC
{{#widget:YouTube|id=QxnkGymKuuI}}
|thread=
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1239349064488996864
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=The outbreak of a pandemic and/or a bioweapon was *entirely* forseeable. As was the 2008 crisis. As was 9/11.

As I have said almost constantly for years: we have SYSTEMATICALLY selected for the wrong experts &amp; leaders for between 30 to 50 years.

We need to replace our experts.
|timestamp=12:33 AM · Mar 16, 2020
}}
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1239349065256558593
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=Trump, Bernie &amp; Biden are *all* unworkable. Our Chinese staffed research labs are all unworkable. Our payment obligations under social security are unworkable. As is Just-In-Time supply lines across borders. Our Debt is likely not payable. Macroeconomists are not talented enough.
|timestamp=12:33 AM · Mar 16, 2020
}}
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1239349066124779521
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=We're panicking because we're being lied to and misinformed. Panic is stupid: our efforts should be to get rid of our impotent institutional expert/leadership class. We have '''low agency''' get-a-long social creatures where we need disagreeable tough minded creative folks in the room.
|timestamp=12:33 AM · Mar 16, 2020
}}
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1239349066921693184
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=We need more divergent thinkers and we need to get rid of everyone who ushered in our state of panic, ill-preparedness and indebtedness.

I'm sorry but it is this stark. We just have the wrong editors, the wrong politician, the wrong CEOs, and the wrong university presidents.
|timestamp=12:33 AM · Mar 16, 2020
}}
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1239349067899006977
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=We need competence to match our threats. If not this one, then the next. 

We should institute competency reviews for people over 70 who are sitting in important chairs. There's no way the final people running for president should have ALL been septuagenarian. It's simply insane.
|timestamp=12:33 AM · Mar 16, 2020
}}
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1239349069585113088
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=It is time to re-evaluate all (and re-instate some) of the people our current fake experts called Xenophobes, Chicken Littles, The Disgruntled, Whiners, Catastrophists.

The globalizers were never people in love with other cultures. They were profiteers looting their nations.
|timestamp=12:33 AM · Mar 16, 2020
}}
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1239349070365216768
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=I'm sorry to bore you with this frequently. But this evil impotent center has put our entire world at risk. 

These are not our candidates.</br>
They aren't our journalists.</br>
They are not our researchers.

They propped up institutions that needed to go through crisis periodically.
|timestamp=12:33 AM · Mar 16, 2020
}}
|timestamp=12:33 AM · Mar 16, 2020
}}


{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1255180803866148864
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=Protest political people with dazzling '''agency''', beauty, technical rigor and grace. That class can’t do these things. 

They don’t code. They don’t weld. They don’t compose. They don’t crowdsource. They don’t understand crypto. They don’t believe in standing alone.

Now use that.
|timestamp=Apr 28, 2020
}}


{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1257771307560665090
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=Please tell me this '''high agency''' kid is listening to The Portal.
|quote=
{{Tweet
|image=nytimes-profile.png
|nameurl=https://x.com/nytimes/status/1257740625996394498
|name=The New York Times
|usernameurl=https://x.com/nytimes
|username=nytimes
|content=When his mom refused to buy him a Lamborghini, a 5 year-old Utah boy hit the road himself in the family's SUV. “He decided to take the car and go to California to buy one himself,” said the Utah Highway Patrol trooper who pulled him over.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/05/us/utah-boy-driver.html
|timestamp=6:35 PM · May 5, 2020
}}
|timestamp=8:37 PM · May 5, 2020
}}


{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1316073539963768832
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=“Hey! Administrator! Leave those kids alone.”

The K-12 version of what I‘ve been talking about in universities. Administration-heavy schools destroy our minds of greatest promise and '''agency'''.

It’s the administrators stupid.

With apologies to Pink Floyd, but the times changed...
|timestamp=5:49 PM · Oct 13, 2020
}}


{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1328874583802298368
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=You aren’t getting it. I actually have TWO sets of business cards: the one’s I run out are the ones *without* PhD printed on them.

That’s not how it should be. But overproduction of '''low agency''' PhD drones for jobs that don’t exist has degraded my credential as a signaling device.
|timestamp=1:36 AM · Nov 18, 2020
}}


{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1332106208124100609
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=Thanks for all the '''agency''' and hope over the years. Especially the hope.
|timestamp=11:37 PM · Nov 26, 2020
}}


{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1336050541848264704
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=You don’t have a consistent plan. And you don’t communicate scientifically. And you’re not honest about what this is doing to our kids in terms of risks and costs.

I’ll wear a mask and follow the law if you bring us a '''high agency''' science based plan. Or Is that asking too much?
|timestamp=8:50 PM · Dec 7, 2020
}}


{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1338575427279810560
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=A remarkable high tech system has just been unveiled to screen out '''low agency''' humans.

Once locked SmartGate2000 uses a proprietary algorithm to convince '''low agency''' humans to turn around while '''higher agency''' people willing to take responsibility for themselves easily pass through. https://t.co/23n5rB47pb
|timestamp=8:03 PM · Dec 14, 2020
|media1=ERW-X-post-1338575427279810560-EpOTQHDUwAAKP_C.jpg
}}


=== 2021 ===
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1382006499216531457
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=Well executed Vaccines are miracles in *relative* risk reduction. You exchange some risk in receiving vaccine for a larger reduction of risk against a disease.

Overselling vaccines takes away public '''agency'''. Then when inevitable issues crop up, Public Health credibility crumbles.
|timestamp=4:23 PM · Apr 13, 2021
}}


=== 2022 ===
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1579014103653224448
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=@declanganley @sapinker We are reduced to hoping this doesn’t go critical instantaneously. All the brilliant '''high-agency''' people on earth, reduced to hoping, crossing their fingers and mumbling prayers. 

I cannot believe all of human history brought us to this. Yet, here we are.
|timestamp=7:41 AM · Oct 9, 2022
}}


{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1606407639826837504
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=I have had the feeling that @AsraNomani is talking about the tip of a *FAR* larger iceberg: merit-privilege, success-privilege, initiative-privilege, '''agency'''-privilege, talent-privilege.

What if woke Educator/Administrators are regularly &amp; *BROADLY* doing what is alleged here?
|timestamp=9:53 PM · Dec 23, 2022
}}


=== 2024 ===
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1867165465585594779
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=I do not believe a persistent slow moving “drone” situation in New Jersey is just a head scratcher &amp; a big shrug.

There are too many smart '''high agency''' technical people in the US with tons of equipment, kit and sensors.

As if CalTech, Lockheed, IAS and MIT don’t exist. Bullshit.
|timestamp=11:11 AM · Dec 12, 2024
}}

== Contemporary Interpretation by George Mack ==

In March 2025, writer and strategist '''[https://x.com/george__mack George Mack]''' published an influential essay titled ''[https://www.highagency.com High Agency]'', which sought to distill and operationalize the concept originally articulated by Eric Weinstein in 2016. While Weinstein introduced ''high agency'' as a psychological trait characterized by irreverent problem-solving and creative defiance of limitations, Mack extended the idea into a '''personal development framework''' complete with practical tools, mental models, and "lines of code" for everyday application.

Mack’s essay, which he described as the product of '''seven months of work''', aimed to offer a '''30-minute blueprint''' for cultivating a high-agency mindset in modern life. It gained wide traction online and was praised for its clarity, relevance, and impact—especially among readers in entrepreneurship, self-improvement, and technology.

=== Key Contributions ===

* '''Mental Reprogramming''': Mack introduces five core "lines of code" designed to override limiting beliefs. These include assertions such as ''“there are no true adults”'' and ''“there is no normal”'', encouraging readers to break out of passive or socially conditioned thinking.

* '''Actionable Tools''': He recommends writing down problems to externalize thought, tracking real-world metrics (such as weight or financial burn rate), and designing a "dream week" to clarify life goals and constraints.

* '''Democratizing High Agency''': While Weinstein emphasized the accidental or trauma-induced emergence of high-agency individuals, Mack focuses on '''intentional cultivation'''—suggesting that this mindset can be learned and scaled through habits, reflection, and strategic self-questioning.

Mack's work has helped bring the ''high agency'' concept to a broader audience, translating an originally abstract or elite trait into a '''replicable mental model'''. His essay complements Weinstein's original framing by bridging '''theoretical insight with tactical application'''.

== Related Pages ==
* [[Eric Weinstein on Challenging “Reality,” Working with Peter Thiel, and Destroying Education to Save It (YouTube Content)|Eric on The Tim Ferriss Show]]
* [[Genius vs Excellence]]
* [[Kung Fu Panda]]
* [[Skadoosh]]

[[Category:Ericisms]]
[[Category:Psychology]]