On Competence
Competence is not always a prerequisite for responsibility. Often, responsibility creates the pressure through which adjacent skills become judgment. AI may compress learning and execution, but the willingness to be tested remains scarce.
By Vishnu Rajkumar · Marginalia
Competence is usually imagined as something that precedes responsibility. In practice, the order is often reversed. People step into work they are not fully equipped for, but not entirely foreign to either. Something adjacent is enough. The rest is acquired under pressure.
Some spend years becoming more qualified. Others keep entering environments that force them to become more capable. The difference is not simply skill, but exposure. A skill held in isolation is potential; exposed to consequence, it becomes judgment.
AI may make competence abundant by compressing learning and execution. What remains scarce is not merely skill, but the instinct to position oneself where skill becomes useful; and to enter situations where competence is still incomplete.