Quiet Disempowerment     Automating decisions feels like progress.   But when you take decision-making power away from people, you take away the brain’s greatest strength: its ability to imagine, adapt, and create what comes next.    MIT Media Lab researchers found that engagement drops sharply when people lose control, even when outcomes improve.    Across multiple studies, perceived loss of autonomy was associated with a 30-40 percent decline in engagement. Not because peop