[Ancient Wisdom + Strategy]
I keep watching people slap “taste is your moat” across their feeds like it’s gospel. But it’s a feel-good shield, not a strategy.
Large Language Models run on probability. Feed them “The sky is…” and they spit out “blue,” the safest statistical bet. Scale that up to full text generation and you get mechanically average prose.
A person’s taste, their creative and editorial instincts, gets hyped as the ultimate weapon against The Beast. They’ll say, “machines can generate endlessly, but WE have taste.”
Sun Tzu would tear that assumption apart.
A competitive advantage is relative and temporary, not a permanent fortress.
Andy Warhol had taste. So did Steve Jobs. Neither enjoyed their bleeding edge advantage for long. Their choices were dissected, imitated, diluted, and eventually turned into industry-wide practices.
Taste can be an edge, but it is not nearly enough.
Here at Winser Labs, I’m running several moats. I don’t pretend any of it is permanent. I may have grabbed a first-mover advantage by embracing AI early while others dismissed and mocked it, but so what? Even THAT advantage was relative and temporary.
Sun Tzu would not tell you to sit around and feel smug about your taste advantage.
He would tell you to keep advancing.
RW
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