A few weeks ago I shared about “The Tricycle of High Agency“. One of the wheels of the tricycle was called “disagreeability”, which led to some interesting discussions with folks. How can you be a high agency person if you’re disagreeable?
From the article that I shared in that post, “disagreeable” was mostly about pushing past the doubters. If someone tells you that something is impossible, you don’t necessarily need to agree with them. The “High Agency in 30 Minutes” article that I referenced unpacks it a lot further.
However, in the days since I wrote that post, I’ve also come across a very similar argument in “The Almanack of Naval Ravikant“. In that book, Naval says:
“A contrarian isn’t one who always objects—that’s a conformist of a different sort. A contrarian reasons independently from the ground up and resists pressure to conform.”
You can be disagreeable or be a contrarian without objecting to everything. If you object to everything just to be different, that makes you kind of a jerk.
I certainly advise people to be humble and listen to others, but if you think someone is steering you wrong, think through your reasoning from first principles and continue to push forward if it still makes sense.
