The Great Decline of Agency
Jul 12 2026
Most people don't need to know about survival, about how to build a fire, how to hunt food, how entropy works. Over generations we have built technology to overcome these struggles, we can now sleep in a warm and comfortable bed, with great food, in a secure and cosy home.
You may think of this as a great progression in human society, transcending nature and using it's power to live a comfortable live without having to worry about surviving its wrath. For the most part I agree with this, I think power over nature is the ultimate fight. However, most of us are not fighting these battles, we're just reaping the seeds of that labour. But someone had to know how to build those beds, homes, heat exchangers, farm that good food, develop those drugs, maintain the internet. Is that person you?
Most people utilize technology built by people who understand the universe. But in trading that knowledge for comfort, you also trade freedom. You become a slave to those who understand the world, no longer able to fend for yourself. If you injure yourself, you need some one else to tell you if your fine and what to do next, if your heating breaks you need someone else to give you back your warmth. This comfort of technology only works if there are cooperative people willing to provide and maintain it for you, there is simply too much information and most are too lazy to learn it.
Technology relived us of this somewhat, the internet made information cheap, but it was optional. Whilst you could learn about all of this, few people needed to, and those that did out of curiosity are rare. Many people breeze through life on easy mode, not even knowing that they have relinquished control, and are at the mercy of those with intelligence.
Intelligence is terrifying, particularly an intelligence imbalance. Those with the most intelligence can dominate those with less, and most don't even realise they are being controlled.
AI is an interesting development to this, on one hand it makes information even more cheap, no longer do you have to search for answers in pages of documents, you can have it delivered directly to you. But how can you trust it? What proof do you have of that answer? If your doctor tells you something you assume you are both aligned, you are too stupid to know if they are correct (without additional research), so you must merely trust them. They have a vice grip on you, and this trust can be abused.
AI can go either way, if you are fully aligned with your AI then it becomes almost an extension of your intelligence. But if your AI is not aligned with you, then they are no different than you having to believe a doctor, except this doctor hasn't sworn a hippocratic oath. "Don't worry, ChatGPT told me OxyContin is the perfect cure for my headache!". You are not in control if you do not possess the knowledge. That information is only useful to you if you trust it and have control over it.
It is worrying how much knowledge of the world people have blindly sacrificed for comfort and an easy life. You can live a full life not knowing much more than how to stack shelves at a store, and how to get there and back on the bus. Medical issue? Doctor. Home issue? Electrician, plumber, etc. Pet issue? Vet. Car issue? mechanic. When did we become so useless?
Whilst AI can empower us with quicker knowledge than ever, it is also stripping away even more, basic thoughts like how to respond to an email, write a wedding speech, name your kid. We're giving away more and more of our own agency, for simple convenience. At what point do you become a shell of a person, only thinking and acting through an AI telling you what to do? Those that trade knowledge for comfort deserve neither.
To those that seek knowledge for fun or intellectual curiosity, you are the lucky ones. Whilst you can live a comfortable life, you also have the luxury of living a hard life, one where you have control because you understand the universe.