The Values of Increasing Agency
Many companies, large and small, attempt to convey their core values to their employees, their clients, and beyond. This is a noble pursuit. However, far too many companies love to emphasize the high-minded merits of their core values, which are little more than something concocted when someone in marketing reminds them that they should write down some core values. At AE, we think our core values are more sincere for two reasons.
Firstly, those values were articulated, and then the company followed. Secondly, our team actually lives these values in everything they produce. Improved, reinforced, and refined through our experience and our quest to better understand human agency, our values grow in each of us.
AE’s vision is to increase human agency. That mission begins with our team, extends to our clients, radiates outward through the products we build, and ultimately (we hope!) touches all human beings with the development of the first brain-computer-interface operating system (BCI OS).
Around here, we discuss a “big-hairy-audacious-goal” (BHAG). The goal, from day one, was to scale a profitable consulting business. That business would invest in agency-increasing Skunkworks projects, unlocking economic value by inspiring internal founders who might otherwise never have brought their products to life.1 The purpose of these successful ventures (casting many seeds begets a garden, even if not every seed blooms) is to generate the necessary capital to pursue (or cause to be built), the first BCI OS–one that wins in the space and increases human agency.2
So what are these core values? How do they facilitate the pursuit of our BHAG? And how do we ensure that we not only articulate these values, but live them on a daily basis? Our five core values appear below.
1. Growth Mindset Within Effective External Structures
We’re trying to assemble neurotechnology that has not yet been invented, and will require all manner of knowledge that our species does not yet possess. This is, of course, how every meaningful human accomplishment begins–the attempt to do something no one knows how to do...yet. This is only possible if challenges are opportunities to learn and grow. Moreover, learning and growing demand focus. Human beings, despite their best efforts to the contrary, cannot multitask3 and delude themselves constantly about the capacity of their working memories. External structures are whatever tools you can rely upon that allow you to be present and on task–from the notepad on your desk to the reliable colleague–because you trust that those structures are holding down the fort on your behalf. We insist on being excellent external structures to one another daily. We also place our employees in positions to stretch beyond prior experiences, then allow them to focus upon that next step of growth, which leads to…
2. Acceleratingly4 Larger A/B Tested Baby Steps
Human discovery and technological advancement is nothing more than this process. Each day, each moment, is an opportunity to take a small step forward. That step should be tested until it works. If it does, we as a species should gain that knowledge and build upon it, rather than reinvent. The gains compound. The exponential acceleration is more powerful than anyone can imagine. For example, could anyone have imagined landing on the moon in 1900, let alone in 1700? Or 700? Could anyone have imagined automobiles in 1800? Could anyone have imagined smartphones in 1950, let alone 1850?
Why has the process accelerated so rapidly over the last 100 years? In no small part because ideas can spread. If some data scientist halfway around the globe in Australia discovers a better mechanism for recognizing latent patterns in neural data, an American solving a similar problem can build upon those incremental gains now. This reinforces the first core value of maintaining a growth mindset. We always try to take one step forward. If those steps increase geometrically in size (and they have, just look at the images and prose developed by AI and their implications for future AGI), even the sky isn’t the limit.
3. Overcommunicating (rather than undercommunicating)
Communication with clarity and generosity is a gift for its giver and its receiver. Often, it solves problems before they even arise. It encourages feedback. It fosters the growth mindset. It makes external structures more trustworthy and reliable. Just as our species advances at an accelerating speed because one gain is communicated broadly, within AE, one discovery, one productivity hack, one technological problem solved becomes a higher scaffold on which we all stand. Eventually, we learn to rely upon each other, and the client, who hears from us early and often, learns the same lesson. We share good news fast. We share our bad news even faster. We give and receive feedback, and say thank you for the candor. We practice kindness, particularly when we disagree, assuming the best of the other person’s position and seeing the best possible version of their persona.5
Against the backdrop of human development, electronic communication is a recent blip. Individual habits for communication vary. Getting to know someone in the modern world is, in large part, getting to know their habits and rules for communication.
In short order, our broader community adopts a positive perspective, communicates with others as they prefer, and assumes the best of intentions. It just takes time and intentionality. Why do we put our core values in a blog post? Overcommunication.
4. Be a Good-Tripper, With an Ownership Mentality
Part of becoming a reliable external structure with a growth mindset is taking ownership of one’s work. Initiative and determination, when widely displayed, is mutually encouraging and reinforcing. It’s not the prisoner’s dilemma (do I take time away from my work to aid yours and hope for reciprocation?). It’s a paradigm in which the net result is far better than any offer to any prisoner. Figure out what needs doing. Then do it. Then watch as the world trusts you to do it right the next time and the time thereafter. Help others do the same. Encourage others to try, fail, take a baby step forward, and grow. Maximize the productivity of colleagues and clients respectively. Model good behavior. This is, of course, easier to do in the presence of overcommunication, a growth mindset, and the concept of accelerating baby steps!
5. Balance Steelmanning with Working Plans
Good decision making requires empathizing, articulating, and even improving counter-arguments to one’s own position. We write about this a lot.6 Moreover, generating a counter-argument, in opposition to one’s own views from a place of excitement, curiosity, and generosity improves7 the quality of the discourse and the conclusions ultimately reached. Whether we call this “epistemic humility” or just plain consideration that any idea of yours is a hypothesis, and might *gasp* be wrong, this keeps our minds open to whatever concepts might challenge and improve us.8 Finally, when the time comes, and a decision is reached, we move forward with whatever working plan gets the job and hand done–and our colleagues will trust us to do so. 9
Ultimately, maximizing human agency begins with each of us–refusing to give way to fear and anger, allowing negative emotions (which are essential to process rather than repress) to be indicators that possibly, we are losing some personal agency or misaligned with one of the values above. Like our ancestors before us, we are only 1% (or even less) of what we could become. This means that our first baby steps begin with our own habits. An aspiring writer would not (and could not) begin with a daily habit of composing 10 pages. But one sentence? Sure, who couldn’t manage that baby step? Then we commend ourselves for that small success, and build upon it the next day.
The fact is, our ability to think clearly, communicate clearly, retain information reliably, and improve upon the state of technology are all far greater than our ancestors’, and yet also, far less than they can be. BCI OS offers a path to unlocking human potential and diminishing existential risk from AGI.
Think about your own world. What tiny habit might you take today? What baby step forward might improve upon it tomorrow?
1
Not every extraordinary idea emerges from the cranium of someone willing to forgo their salary and stability for years on end. However, if those ideas were nurtured and nourished (and even aided by engaged colleagues), think of the economic productivity that might be unleashed! YCombinator harbored similar aspirations many years ago– - perhaps at AE, we can help spark the next generation thereof.
2
In other words, not one owned by some massive conglomerate looking to harvest neural data to ensure optimal targeted marketing efforts tailored to your specific thought patterns and dopamine receptors!
3
Seriously, I think this word is similar to “sasquatch” or “loch ness monster” or “honest politician.” It doesn’t exist, no matter how hard we try to look for it.
4
I know, “acceleratingly” isn’t a word. It should be. Do you see “only use words in Webster’s dictionary” as a core value? Yeah, me neither.
5
We believe in the Pygmalion effect and act accordingly. Scott Alexander once wrote “Once you’ve had enough bad experiences with someone, your prior solidifies until you start interpreting even neutral or good experiences as bad ones, and every time you interact with them you just get angrier and angrier until it’s a giant black hole.” We architect the opposite early and often–creating situations where we like each other “so much that the positive emotion builds on itself, grows stronger and stronger with every interaction.”
6
Also an example of over-communication
7
Almost like taking a baby-step forward...
8
Growth mindset! See, it all comes full circle.
9
Because we’re all reliable external structures! See, it all makes sense :-)