It has been months since I last returned to this space. In that time, much has changed, but one theme has followed me everywhere: the cultivation - and protection - of taste.
I once called this piece “The Ripple Effect of Incompetence.” Because incompetence never ends with the task botched or the deadline missed. It creeps deeper, corroding one's very sense of judgment. Spend too long amid mediocrity and your palate dulls. The crooked wall looks straight. The lazy paragraph reads sufficient. The buggy product passes for serviceable. What is lost is not simply quality, but the instinct to recognize quality in the first place.
That is why incompetence is so dangerous. Once it colonizes taste, ambition shrinks. The bar lowers without anyone noticing. Organizations, teams, even whole societies become content with “good enough,” and worse, forget that better was ever possible. This is decadence in its truest form: not corruption, not vice, but apathy toward excellence.
By contrast, competence is more than output. It is discernment refined to a sharp edge. It is a cultivated impatience with “almost.” It is the capacity to feel when something is off, even when others no longer notice. Competence, at its highest expression, is taste.
I have been particular about this across every venture I have built. MySub, AristoMan, GistPool - different sectors, different audiences, yet bound by the same precept: if I cannot be enthused by what I have made, then it is not worth making.
Take AristoMan. It is not a software product. But I was obsessive over every contour of its design. The way the bottle sits in the hand, the weight of the cap, the typography on the label. I wanted to feel something when I received the product myself. I wanted to look at it and know, without hesitation, that this was built with care. The product was for me first, because if it could not excite me, it would not excite anyone.
This has always served as a corollary to my life. I build the thing I want, the thing I would use, the thing that makes me restless when it falls short. I like to think I have an eye for well-designed products, and because I espouse that dictum, whatever I gestate will inevitably exude the same omen.
The Psychology of Apathy
This principle is not cosmetic; it is existential. Competence is contagious. When you encounter something built with care - a product, a book, a service - you awaken to your own appetite for quality. You realize that you had settled for mediocrity without even knowing it. And once you have tasted competence, you cannot easily return.
But the opposite is a slow poison. Constant exposure to the half-finished, the sloppy, and the merely functional dulls our senses. We begin to normalize failure. We start to internalize a narrative that says, "this is just how things are." This is not a rational conclusion, but a psychological capitulation. We stop seeing the possibility of a different reality because our everyday experience reinforces a bleak one. This is not just about the work we consume; it is about the work we produce. The bar we set for others becomes the bar we hold for ourselves.
Building as Rebellion
The great builders understood this. Jobs raged at circuit boards no one would see. Hegel scorned diluted philosophy and wrote in thunder instead. Their intolerance looked extreme, but extremity was the only defense against entropy. Had they compromised taste, all else would have collapsed.
Every act of real creation, then, is a rebellion. It is a defiant stand against the ambient apathy that surrounds us. To build with care is to reject the narcotic of “good enough.” It is an act of faith - faith in one’s own vision and in the potential for others to recognize and appreciate it. This is why the first user of any great product must be the creator themselves. The product must solve a problem you feel, must delight you, and must meet a standard you are unwilling to compromise on. The moment you build solely for an external audience, you risk losing that internal compass of taste.
This is not a matter of sector or scale; it is about spirit. Whether fintech, skincare, or prediction markets, the demand is the same: to build something that preserves my own palate, something that does not make me shrug when I receive it but makes me feel, yes, this is right.
The Lethality of Compromise
The alternative is easier, but lethal: to adapt to mediocrity until you no longer feel its sting. To let incompetence shape your taste until you stop desiring excellence at all. That path ends in torpor-in organizations that coast, in societies that stagnate, in individuals who forget what greatness even feels like. It is a slow, silent surrender of the soul.
Every act of real creation, then, is a refusal to surrender. To cultivate taste is to protect the soil where competence can grow. It is not just about the work itself, but about the world such work makes possible.
And so I return to this dictum: I build for myself first. I demand that the work I touch enthuse me, stir me, sharpen me. For once I lose that taste, once I compromise on competence, nothing I make will matter - not to me, not to anyone.