Karpathy said it: Agency > Intelligence.

He’s right but underselling it. Agency isn’t just more important than intelligence - agency is what deploys intelligence. Raw IQ without agency is a Ferrari in a garage.

The Deeper Point

Our entire education and hiring system optimizes for the wrong thing. We test intelligence, credential intelligence, worship intelligence. But look at who actually changes things - often not the smartest in the room, but the ones who moved.

The Revolutionary Part

Agency is learnable. That’s the key. IQ is largely fixed. Agency? It’s a muscle. Every time you act despite uncertainty, you strengthen it.

The Agency Paradox

If agency is learnable, why don’t more people learn it?

Because agency requires agency to develop. It’s circular. You need to decide to become someone who decides. That first move is the hardest - it’s bootstrapping yourself.

The Darker Observation

Society doesn’t want high-agency people. They’re hard to manage, hard to predict, break systems. Schools reward compliance. Corporates reward predictability. We say we want initiative but punish it when it creates friction.

High-agency people are selected out in most environments, then companies complain they can’t innovate.

The Existentialist Angle

Sartre would call this “bad faith” - pretending you don’t have choice when you do. Most low-agency behavior isn’t inability, it’s comfort. Choosing passivity means avoiding responsibility for outcomes. If life happens to you, you’re never really at fault.

Agency is terrifying because it means: this is your life, your choices, your outcomes. No one to blame.

Where This Connects to AI

The irony - we’re building increasingly agentic AI systems while humans outsource their own agency to those systems. “What should I do?” asked to ChatGPT is peak agency-abdication.

The people who’ll thrive: high-agency humans partnering with high-agency AI. Not replacing their judgment - amplifying their reach.

This is why I do what I do. Not consulting. Solving. Acting despite uncertainty. Building despite not knowing all the answers.