AI Made Intelligence Ordinary and Taste Irreplaceable

ai just made you ordinary. can you still win? most people who’ll lose their jobs to ai won’t lose because they were stupid, lazy, or incompetent, but purely because they kept sharpening their sword in a world that had already moved to rifles. you see, for a long time, intelligence worked for us. if you were sharper than the people around you, if you knew more about things, if you could catch patterns easily, money followed. doors opened up. people listened to you. ai didn’t kill the intelligence ceiling. it anal-fucked it. intelligence is now everywhere. you’re one tap away from summoning an oracle that knows more than any single person ever could, can go into incredible depth on almost anything, and do it much faster. you’d think “upskilling” could maybe give you an edge here. trying out new ai tools, frameworks, skills. everyone learning the same thing at the same time and calling it an edge. i can do the funniest thing here. i can tell you that learning ai is the way forward. actually, wait, let me correct myself. the only way forward. i can show you your career’s death, then the aftermath, then sell you peace of mind today for a future you have no control over, in the form of an “ai upskilling course.” many of you will buy that course. not because you’re dumb, but because fear loves anything that looks like a checklist. this is what insurance companies do. fear for hope works every time. or i could tell you to find your safe camp. safe camp 1: doctor, ca, lawyer, therapist. titles that require professional licenses to practice, and are somewhat protected by law, regulation, and institutions. safe camp 2: plumbing, carpentry, hvac, welding. work that requires physical skill, where ai is too expensive to take over, yet. both safe camps optimize for survival. but neither guarantees total protection from being replaced over a longer horizon, say two decades from now. but a tiny minority still exists, and will continue to exist. the minority that will also have access to the same tools you do, but whose work will not feel interchangeable. these are the people who will win with ai, not against it. do not mistake these people for being necessarily louder or smarter. they’re just choosing fewer things, making stranger combinations, and taking decisions that, to an observer, make no sense. yet somehow, they win. if i were to decode this strange pattern and give you a single attribute that makes this possible, it’s called taste. taste is not limited to preference, vibes, or aesthetics. it’s the ability to look at a million options and say, “this one matters. everything else does not.” it’s judgment that sits close to intuition. the difference is that taste can be developed, refined, and tuned over time, while intuition has no clear framework. you can already see this in the real world. why do some creators thrive while thousands using the same tools disappear? why do some founders ship products that feel obvious in hindsight? why do some writers feel irreplaceable even when ai can write a thousand words a minute like it’s nothing? it’s not output volume. it’s that they already know what to build, what to ignore (important), and when to stop. this is also why resisting ai is a dead end. moralizing, dooming, or opting out by calling it a fad is pure denial. the only two guaranteed outcomes of resistance are this: ai will not wait for your comfort, and the winners won’t be the ones who reject it. i’m sorry if these ideas make you uneasy. i’m well aware that “learning more tools,” “stacking more skills,” and “copying playbooks” are the go-to advice of anyone who claims to help you safeguard yourself from ai. i’m betting my money on taste and individuality in its truest sense. build judgment. develop a seductive taste. expose yourself to extremes and startling depth. be aggressive in your use of ai, but never blind. this is war. but one where the losers will be the loudest. the winners won’t be. they’ll just have taste.