One courageous quote
“The only true test of intelligence is if you get what you want out of life. And there are two parts to that: one is getting what you want, so you know how to get it. And the second is wanting the right things, knowing what to want in the first place.”
- Naval Ravikant
One personal story
In March 2025, I read a great essay by George Mack.
He spent 7 months writing it before finally publishing it.
There are a number of things I love about the essay, but there’s one litmus test question in particular that stood out:
Imagine you wake up in a third-world jail cell.
You're only allowed to call one person to get you out.
Who do you call?
Is it the person that has the highest IQ?
Or is it the person that gets things done?
The one who would find a way, or make away, to get you out of there.
That person has something real, scarce and valuable.
George calls that thing high agency.
He believes high agency might be the most important idea of the 21st century.
I agree.
What Exactly Is High Agency?
George doesn’t give a simple and specific definition of what high agency is, but instead uses a number of illustrations, questions and behavioral examples of what high-agency looks like.
He says high agency is one of those things that “you’ll know it when you see it.”
Meriam Webster’s dictionary defines it as “the capacity, condition, or state of acting or exerting power.”
I think it's a lot simpler than most people make it.
Here’s my definition:
Agency is the percentage of your free will that you're willing to use.
That's it.
We all have free will.
Some of us just use more of our free will than others.
A low agency person has free will, but only uses a small percentage of it (e.g. 5~10%).
A low agency person’s default option is inaction.
They wait. They defer. They let life happen to them. They're passengers.
A high-agency person uses a higher percentage of their free will (e.g. 80~85%).
A high agency person’s default option is action.
They see something that needs doing, and they do it.
They have an idea, and they pursue it. They’re drivers.
They want a different life, and they build it.
Here’s the catch: the gap between these two people isn't intelligence.
It's not resources.
It's not luck.
It's the willingness to exercise their free will.
So what stops people from using their free will?
Fear.
Fear of failure.
Fear of rejection.
Fear of judgment.
Fear of embarrassment.
Fear of violating social norms.
Fear of success and the responsibility it brings.
Regardless of the specific fear, fear becomes a lock on our agency.
This is why courage is the key.
Because courage isn’t the absence of fear, it’s the willingness to act in the face of fear.
It’s all about feeling the fear and doing it anyways.
The Equation That Changes Everything
A few months after I read George’s essay, I came across a post from one of the most respected minds in AI, Andrej Karpathy.
Andrej helped lead AI at both Tesla and OpenAI.
He has a PhD in Computer Science from Stanford.
He's one of the sharpest minds on the planet.
When he talks people listen.
So when I saw this on X, it caught my attention:
“Agency > Intelligence
I had this intuitively wrong for decades, I think due to a pervasive cultural veneration of intelligence, various entertainment/media, obsession with IQ etc. Agency is significantly more powerful and significantly more scarce. Are you hiring for agency? Are we educating for agency? Are you acting as if you had 10X agency?”
Jack Clark (co-founder of Anthropic) also said something similar:
"AI systems have got so useful that the thing that will set humans apart is just having a high level of curiosity and agency."
Aha! There it is.
Two of the most respected people in the industry just affirmed and articulated in explicit detail what I’d also become convinced of…that agency is more important intelligence in the era of AI.
Curiosity and agency are the X factors that will set humans apart.
And both require courage.
We're living through a time where AI can write, analyze, research, code, and create.
You can get PhD level intelligence for $20/month.
Raw intelligence has been democratized. It’s abundant. Anyone can access world-class knowledge now.
Yes, AI is amazing, but it’s still just a tool.
It needs to be leveraged. It needs to be prompted. It needs to be given direction.
It can make insightful analysis, but it can’t take inspirational action.
It can crunch hard numbers, but it can’t make hard calls.
It can learn, but it can’t lead.
AI’s limitations are human’s strengths.
It’s why being more human (in the best ways possible) is one of the best strategies for winning in the era of AI.
In the age of infinite leverage, scale and intelligence, courage now becomes 100X more valuable than before.
One question
Here's your reflection for the week:
Let’s assume this statement is valid: “the truest test of intelligence is getting what you want from life.”
How intelligent are you, given this definition?
What’s preventing you from getting what you want from life?
How would having more agency help you?
One weekly challenge
Here's your challenge for the week:
Pick ONE area of focus for this week for you to exercise more of your agency.
Prioritize the area that has the highest ROI for increasing your quality of life.
Commit to taking ONE action towards your goal this week.
As always: Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.
With courage,
Jonathan
How did today’s message resonate with you?
1
