In the 2 x 2 matrix of (A) having agency versus not having agency and (B) thinking you have agency versus thinking you do not have an agency, the dominant strategy is to to think you have agency because the failure case is having agency but thinking you do not
Well then why do we have people who learn helplessness? Maybe there is a bigger reward to being right or predictive that drives us to not over predict agency
Or perhaps tribes that maximize perceived agency struggle to coordinate well: there are too many overconfident agents and so the group fails
Still, on the local level, believing you have agency is dominant. But on the global level it doesn’t work. Which agent would you like to serve: the individual or the collective? Or is the collective served by everyone serving themselves. I enjoy systems that allow local and global incentives to align (namely, free markets)