The War Against Heteronomy
Image: The Pathways of Choice - representing the autonomy that comes from recognizing our power to choose
Prelude
Our Great War’s a spiritual war. Our Great Depression is our lives.
— Tyler Durden, Fight Club
Recently, I came across a thread on X by the brilliant Andrej Karpathy, which made me reflect deeply on the nature of action and its relation to both individual fulfillment and collective progress.
Agency > Intelligence
— Andrej Karpathy (@karpathy) February 24, 2025
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… https://t.co/8yvECKi7GU
As Karpathy rightfully notes, society assigns a significant premium to raw, mechanical intelligence: metaphorically and literally the raw ability to crunch numbers. However, any major boon that’s attributed to a disrupter’s intelligence is often actually the result of their agency – their capacity to act decisively and effectively in the world.
Defining Our Terms: Agency, Autonomy, and Heteronomy
At its core, this exploration revolves around three key concepts:
- Agency: Your power to act and change things in the world. It’s not just knowing what to do—it’s actually doing it.
- Autonomy: The ability to govern yourself, making decisions based on your own values rather than external pressures.
- Heteronomy: Being controlled by external forces or others' rules. Think of it as the opposite of autonomy—living by someone else’s playbook.
These aren’t just abstract concepts. The tension between self-direction (autonomy) and external control (heteronomy) shapes every decision we make.
Steve Jobs and Agency: Beyond Mere Intelligence
One can retroactively attempt to conclude that a historical disruption in industry is inevitable, simply attributing it to the fact of the disruptor’s endogenous “intuition.”
What immediately comes to mind is the visionary Steve Jobs, who many just assume to have an eye for disruptive products, almost a real-life clairvoyant. His mental faculties (and perhaps his exposure to Zen philosophy) being the attributing cause of the immense success of Apple and later Pixar.
To the unacquainted, it’s as if Jobs had such an immense grasp over the collective consciousness, the need that was inherent in the late 20th century, that his raw “perspicaciousness” was the cause of the success of his ventures. Implicit in this assumption is that he was given knowledge/foresight that’s not privy to other brilliant entrepreneurs.
The Reality Distortion Field Decoded
Not to take away from the intelligence of the man, he was indeed incredibly smart and intuitive, but even he himself believed in a principle that transcends intelligibility and lingers in the realm of the seemingly absurd:
Reality Distortion Field is a term used by Bud Tribble in 1981 to describe Steve Jobs' charisma and its effects on the developers working on the Macintosh project. Steve used a mix of hyperbole, persistence, bravado, passion, charm, and marketing skills to convince not only himself to believe anything, but also others. It felt like reality is not fixed, but fluid and he could shape it by his ideas.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb captures this essence perfectly in his work:
“The strength of the computer entrepreneur Steve Jobs was precisely in distrusting market research and focus groups—those based on asking people what they want—and following his own imagination. His modus was that people don’t know what they want until you provide them with it.” — Excerpt From ‘Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder’
When Agency Trumps Intelligence
There are stories of Steve Jobs, just days before the launch of a major product, ordering massive optimizations that his engineers believed were impossible. Using his Reality Distortion Field communication style, he almost willed his engineers to find a way to make it happen, violating all their beliefs about what was possible or not.
On its face, this looks like pure and utter delusion, and that’s indeed what the public perception of an obscure Steve Jobs would have been if Apple had not taken off. And there are many such cases where people who held delusions of grandeur about themselves or their ideas were met with the harsh reality of failure (see: Survivorship Bias).
But that misses the point: the attribute that allowed the hypomanic visionaries of the past to shape the world through sheer Nietzschean will, against all odds, against naysayers and detractors, was not necessarily a spectacularly higher IQ (although that probably helped), it was AGENCY – the ability to consciously act on one’s surroundings, to tinker, to mold and shape like clay.
Going back to raw intelligence (for the sake of this discussion, let’s just simplify it to IQ), with a standard deviation of σ = ~15 IQ points, the IQ difference between two human beings is relatively insignificant. Also, there are many cases of human beings with enormous IQ struggling with acting on that memory and God-given gift. It’s famously known that the former highest IQ individual on the planet, Christopher Langan, was not a CEO or a world leader, which would imply high agency, but was a horse rancher and bar bouncer for most of his life.1
And this very agency—to act with intent—is quite possibly the most feared, yet seductive human quality.
Archetypal Analysis: The Deep Patterns of Agency
Throughout history, humans have wrestled with a fundamental question: What gives us the right to shape our world? Two archetypal figures help us understand this struggle:
Prometheus: The First Agent of Change
The Greeks had stories, tinged with awe and wariness about humans interfacing with their environment—not remaining helpless ape-like creatures subjected to the fluctuating contentedness and wrath of mother nature, but rather being able to impregnate her with their will.
The classic example for this is Prometheus, the famous titan who brought humankind fire, kickstarting the mythologized recounting of the first technological revolution: the first enactment of human will.
For this, the titan was severely punished (implying the Greeks believed that the forces of nature, i.e., gods are resistant to the will of man).
Lucifer: The Light of Individual Will
Humans gaining the ability to dictate their own fate and destiny seems to perplex humanity as a whole.
It’s a responsibility too big to bear. The thought persists: perhaps agency should be left to elevated beings; we truly can’t be trusted with free will because of the real and imaginary atrocities we can commit with it.
Throughout history, we’ve assigned the property of “higher agency” to various surrogates: perhaps gods, Nietzsche’s Übermensch, or in the contemporary context, the worship of elites, celebrities, entrepreneurs, and so-called “successes” who seem to have everything figured out.
This idea also manifests in the Abrahamic faiths and derivative mystery schools and secret societies: in the figure of Lucifer, the light bearer. Luciferians hold the belief that the fallen angel was attempting to FREE humanity from the shackles of an unjust and oppressive Demiurge, to give them the real or imaginary power of agency.
The Modern Mythological Landscape
There are arguments to be made that modern liberalism as we know it is worship of Luciferian principles and, by extension, the worship of human agency—our ability to act. But this is out of scope in our current discussion. What’s certain is that modern Western society has its foundation on individuals being held accountable not for their thoughts or beliefs, but for their actions.
The thread connecting ancient mythology to modern society is our persistent struggle with the implications of human agency—our capacity to shape the world according to our will, for better or worse.
The War Within: Autonomy vs Heteronomy
This isn’t just philosophy—it’s a battle that plays out in our daily choices. Every time you face a decision, you’re choosing between:
- Autonomous Action: Making choices based on your own judgment and values
- Heteronomous Reaction: Following prescribed paths and external expectations
Why Most People Choose Heteronomy
The truth is stark but simple: autonomy requires responsibility. Many prefer the comfort of having choices made for them. It’s not about intelligence—it’s about courage.
The Great Man Theory and Its Implications
One theory, which carries substantial weight, is the Great Man of History perspective.
To summarize, autonomy isn’t equally endowed onto humanity. No one, apart from leftist theoreticians and anarcho-libertarians, seriously believes that every human being has an inherent desire for freedom or the capacity to exercise it fully.
Nature vs Social Constraints
It’s imperative to recognize that often EXTERNAL forces, more so hypersocial and artificial sources, are the biggest detriments to human liberty rather than nature herself. Nature has no verbal demands for humankind; she is cold and indifferent (at least on the surface) to whether we follow a code of ethics, have a particular theoretical worldview, or adhere to guiding principles.
Nature is distinctly interested in absolute reality, which would be the face of absolute truth.
It is human beings, with our ability to move freely through nature—abated only by Newtonian and quantum laws governing physical principles—that set the social criterion.
The Philosopher King and the Elite Few
The most useful organization in this type of system is where a few organized individuals, who can see lucidly through the lurid noise of social and mimetic contagion, are fit to govern man in the name of God or nature.
This is the very idea of Plato’s Philosopher King. This lucidity manifests as autonomy, understanding, sharpness, and metaphysical understanding of ideals and the world of forms.
This is, unfortunately, an essentialist quality that many don’t manage to realize. Much like a seed that refuses to germinate despite signals such as water, air, and soil, some will never escape heteronomy—the state of being subject to external laws or governance—and the mimetic contagion that accompanies it.
The Unconscious Made Conscious
As Carl Jung profoundly stated:
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
Finding autonomy, in this way, is a process of mining, chipping away excesses in order to find the underlying raison d’être in our ongoing process of individuation. It’s a process that many intelligent people get stumped on, stuck in mindless loops in which they repeat the same errors over and over again until the day they die.
This all sounds… macabre, hopeless even. But if you’ve read this far, it’s fair to say you possess the conviction, the drive to pursue your own autonomy. In that case, the solution I propose will work as intended. If not, you’ll have to come to this realization independently, which I would argue is ultimately a better path to travel.
The Clearpill: Choosing to See
The “clearpill” isn’t another matrix or 4chan reference—it’s about achieving clarity. It means seeing that:
- You have more choices than you think
- Your identity shapes which choices you see
- Every choice creates ripple effects
The Power of Identity-Driven Choice
When you act from identity rather than rules:
- You don’t exercise because you “should”
- You exercise because that’s what the person you’re becoming does
Practical Applications of Identity-Based Choice
If you think you’re stupid, you become conscious of your misalignment, and you slightly try to nudge your actions away from the cause of that identity.
If you know you SHOULD be leaner, more muscular: it’s as simple as making the decisions that align with who you would be if you took your diet more seriously and exercised consistently.
A Real-World Example: Learning a New Skill
Consider someone who wants to learn to play the piano. The heteronomous approach would be to:
- Wait for the “perfect” time to start
- Compare themselves constantly to others
- Quit at the first sign of difficulty
- Seek external validation for progress
The autonomous approach would be to:
- Begin immediately with whatever resources are available
- Set personal standards based on one’s own progression
- See obstacles as opportunities to develop antifragility
- Find intrinsic satisfaction in the learning process itself
In this way, it’s as if you’re pulling out a clone from another dimension who will do the bidding of your true self.
The Fractal Nature of Choice
Mathematically, every choice you make creates a fractal, a constant recursive function that generates possibilities. All you require is the ability to see those possibilities unfolding in parallel, and to act on the one that most resembles your desired identity.
For example, consider a simple decision like whether to wake up early. This single choice branches into numerous possible days:
- Early rise → Exercise → Productive morning → Momentum for the day → Better sleep that night → Easier to rise early tomorrow
- Sleep in → Rush → Skip breakfast → Low energy → Poor focus → Work extends into evening → Sleep disrupted → Harder to rise early tomorrow
Each decision point represents a branch in the fractal of your life. The autonomous person sees these branches and chooses consciously.
This is how you develop autonomy.
On Contrarianism and Autonomy: Finding Signal in the Noise
The autonomous individual sees the signal from the noise, not from foresight, but from experimentation and carrying hypotheses to fruition.
The Statistical Minority of Tinkerers
The reason why this works is because NO ONE ELSE DOES THIS. Only a statistical minority in the vast majority of fields are doing the important work of tinkering.
The vast majority of people in a given market are following the propositions and inclinations of the rest of the market, making them blind followers, and mostly cannon fodder whose wealth and time are extracted. Often, this happens with their explicit glee because it feels like work, but really isn’t. It’s work without the asymmetric reward associated with it.
The Speculators vs. The Doers
A minority of these individuals, who are providing the signaling and noise, are armchair speculators who, although voracious in their opinions, have minimal or insignificant stake in the commodity being speculated on. This setup—with sycophants, laymen, and conmen—is what contributes to bubbles, where the potential of the underlying commodity isn’t maximized.
So what’s the way out? Autonomy.
Finding Gold in the Profane
An even smaller group of people ignore the market completely. They’re autonomous. They find gold in the profane. To an outsider, this always looks crazy. As pointed out in the section about Steve Jobs, he didn’t believe that the masses knew what they wanted; he relied on intrinsic value, which is a signature mark of an autonomous thinker: TINKERING with inner conviction.
Practical Examples of Autonomous Action
In Technology
Instead of believing things based on what other people say about the latest state-of-the-art open source AI, download it on your local machine (or set up a cloud server) so YOU YOURSELF know the inherent pros and cons, especially for your use case.
In Education
Rather than following standard educational paths, the autonomous learner identifies the specific knowledge they need and creates a personalized curriculum—combining formal education, self-teaching, mentorship, and practical application in unique ways.
the premier mark of autonomy is AUTODIDACTISM: the ability to self learn
If a tool or heuristic doesn’t meet your needs, if it’s not good enough, take the time to build your own.
It’s never about settling for “good enough”; it’s about setting things up so they’re perfect for your use case. Over time, as you start to think this way more consistently, you’ll find the world bending to your demands, like a timewarp—because you are BUILDING the world of your dreams.
Conclusion: Beyond Intelligence
The core message is simple: Agency—the power to act—matters more than raw intelligence. Why?
- Intelligence without action changes nothing
- Action, even with average intelligence, changes everything
- The world rewards those who shape it, not those who merely understand it
Your task isn’t to become smarter—it’s to become more autonomous. To stop waiting for permission. To start acting on your understanding.
The war against heteronomy isn’t won through intelligence. It’s won through the courage to act.
Autonomy > Intelligence
This post was inspired by Andrej Karpathy’s insights on agency and draws from various philosophical traditions. If you found these ideas valuable, please share/retweet with others who might benefit from them.
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It’s worth noting that Chris made a conscious decision to pursue knowledge over material wealth, and that his choices were not a result of a lack of agency, but rather an exercise of it. Chris has agency over his own life, and has chosen to dedicate it to the pursuit of knowledge, rather than ephemeral material success. ↩︎