Difficult to accurately give expression to "the absence of this particular illusion".

In the asteroid metaphor: It means that if you can very clearly see the asteroid coming towards you, instead of going "no, the asteroid is going to do the right thing", you make preparations knowing that there is no do-er inside the asteroid.

And after getting hit by it, you do not go "if only the asteroid had had more willpower it would not have hit us. The next time for sure I'll convince it!"

So by agency, in this context, I mean the ability to change the way reality is into what one thinks it ought to be. (But reality is only ever one way, disregarding quantum mechanical magic for a minute)

> And after getting hit by it, you do not go "if only the asteroid had had more willpower it would not have hit us.

I don't understand this. You tell me that not having agency is not applicable to asteroids?

> (But reality is only ever one way, disregarding quantum mechanical magic for a minute)

I think we can't really disregard quantum mechanics when talking about very complicated systems operating on the edge of being too noisy for any recognisable transmission in our neurons.

  You tell me that not having agency is not applicable to asteroids?

The opposite: Having agency is not applicable to non-asteroids, any more than to asteroids. The asteroid was a metaphor for humans. I recognize I am not at my best at explaining right now.

  I think we can't really disregard quantum mechanics

Then we can allow that there is a magical being outside our observable reality that is influencing the result of random-seeming quantum processes, itself unbound by deterministic physics. You may call this being "your self" and this being would indeed have agency that transcends "chain-of-dominoes" causality. I cannot disprove such a theory. But is that an interesting conversation to have?