Audacity Goes the Furthest
April 18, 2025
I used to think intellect mattered most. Now I realize audacity goes the furthest. Some of the least intelligent people I know are the richest, and vice versa. You realize as you get older that audacity matters most because it is so rare. Sure, intellect matters, but beyond a certain (relatively low) baseline, it's your audacity that determines how far you'll go. In virtually every field, the willingness to take action and be loud often matters more than raw intellectual capacity. (And yeah, AI makes it worse.)
Are we more timid now?
I think society is more timid now; people are scared to talk to others on the phone, they're scared to talk to their boss about raises, they're scared to reach out to industry peers, they're scared of everything (and I check many of these boxes). This creates an opportunity—when someone is audacious, confident, or loud, it stands out dramatically against this backdrop of collective timidity.
I see this everyday on Twitter, where the loudest designers and developers—of widely varying skill levels—excel (at least in terms of their purported MRR). Those willing to post regularly, share their work publicly, and weather criticism often gain outsized attention and opportunities. There's an advantage to being the loudest in the room, especially in professional contexts where visibility translates directly to opportunity.
And of course AI makes it worse
This is especially true now. Intelligence and effort used to be our moats. Now your audacity is your moat. Previously, you had to do your own research, distill your own thoughts, and develop your own apps. Now, you have AI do it for you: you reply to a tweet and ask @Grok if the above tweet is true; you reply and tag @LovableBuild to make a website for you. We're entering an age of superintelligence where your own intellectual capacity is secondary. Your audacity is your moat.
There are two components to this: 1) volume, and 2) agency. I struggled to find a word that captures both of these in tandem, but audacity was close enough.
Volume can be thought of as your willingness to put yourself out there, make requests, engage in conversations on Twitter, etc. Visibility is a form of marketing, and so being in the arena captures clients that otherwise wouldn't see you. Agency is a big term now, in reference to agentic AI but also in reference to those authoring their own story. (See my post from 2024 on this topic). Agency is infinitely more important in an age where not only resources, but intelligence, is abundant and readily available (just one ChatGPT conversation away). Those with agency leverage modern tooling while others hesitate.
And so those that are loud and agentic are the winners. This is in stark contrast to the near past where quiet, knowledgeable people could leverage their expertise to stand out. As AI continues to level the intellectual playing field, audacity becomes the ultimate differentiator in every domain.
This sucks, right?
Of course, this is chiefly a bad thing. It makes it harder to distinguish between the good and the great. Previously, when you came across a beautiful landing page, a nicely designed asset, or an app with nice polish, you could only attribute its beauty to the craftsperson in charge. Now, everything is muddy. Why appreciate anything when everything can be made so easily?
In programming in particular (but also probably other industries), there are troubling downstream effects, particularly on learning the fundamentals. I was reflecting on this the other day when I considered some of the very very simple CRUD apps I created as I learned how to code. The first JavaScript project I made is ugly and buggy, but I made it from scratch, with no AI, and I learned so much as a result. When effort & intellect are no longer our moats, and audacity & volume are instead, why would anyone bother making these apps from scratch? Why learn the fundamentals at all?
What's the solution?
Being good at what you do now matters less than being seen doing it. The quiet craftsperson is being beaten by the mediocre megaphone. What can we do? If you want to play the game, the course of action is clear: be loud, learn in public, post engagement bait, etc. There is probably a more tasteful version of this, which I hope to achieve: making my online presence less of an engagement farm and more of a digital garden.