The thesis

I believe that for humans to truly flourish, most of us need to spend time doing activities that drive growth and include building and creating (ie eudaimonia, the top half of the 2x2), for long-run satisfaction. Of course most of us also need to spend time doing activities that drive short-term hedonic pleasure too - which help us recharge. The optimal ratio depends from person to person. Most of us currently are also obliged to spend a significant portion of our time doing activities that do not themselves derive pleasure, but enable us to engage in pleasurable activities (eudaimonic or hedonic) at other times in our life.

There are four key effects of AI on human flourishing.

1. The proportion of time in which humans spend doing activities for pleasure increases significantly.
2. The pleasure of the eudaimonic and hedonic activities is enhanced - it becomes possible to create more and better things, and more short-term pleasures become available.
3. There is less monetary incentive to engage in creative / building activities that drive long-run satisfaction, and a life of pure hedonism becomes more possible.
4. Potentially AI can be harnessed to encourage ourselves to partake in more eudaimonic activities, leading to a more fulfilling life.

Top against bottom

• Eudaimonia is the Greek word for a life that goes well. Aristotle's idea was that happiness is something you do, not something you feel. In this grid it is the top row: growth.
  • Growth means something comes of the hours. You come out more capable, or something exists that did not before. And it compounds: what you take in feeds what you make, and what you make teaches you the next thing.
• Hedonia is the Greek word for pleasure - the good life as feeling good. In this grid it is the bottom row: recharge.
  • Recharge means the hours are for the pleasure of them. Nothing new comes of them and nothing is meant to, which is what makes them restful, and you come out level rather than more capable.
• The test between the two: does anything come of it? The novel that changes how you see is top row. The same film for the fifth time is bottom row. Same activity, different row.
• You need both. Growth is where long-run satisfaction comes from. Recharge is what makes the next stretch of growth possible. Nobody stays at the top all the time.

Left against right

• Apollonian is Nietzsche's word, after Apollo, for the side of us that wants order: structure, method, a plan, a right answer. In this grid it is the left column: reason.
• Dionysian, after Dionysus, is his word for the side that wants to be swept up: creativity, imagination, instinct, the thing that takes over. In this grid it is the right column: energy.
• The test between the two: are you steering it, or is it carrying you? Training for a marathon you steer. The match carries you. Building and Comfort you steer, Flow and Escape carry you.
• You need both here too. Nietzsche's argument in The Birth of Tragedy was that Greek tragedy came from the two together, Dionysian passion inside Apollonian form, and I think the same is true of a mind, since reason on its own is sterile and energy on its own is chaos.

Where you live in the grid

• People's utility functions mean that the optimal time allocation across cells is different person to person.
• The squares you independently choose may not be the squares that optimise your lifetime utility. There is a distortion from lack of information and ability to calculate future expected satisfaction. Weigh your happiness across a whole life and you drift up the grid, because growth compounds, which becomes fulfilling in the long run. See the next hour and you drift down, because the bottom row pays now.
• Monetary incentives can often correct for this distortion, because people spend time in what they think is the "necessity" section, but some of this actually ends up becoming eudaimonic. Post-AI (assuming wealth is well-distributed across society) money no longer provides these incentives, and every hour in the grid is chosen.
• Potentially, AI can help with the choosing, and not by judging. Write down what you want across the long run - I have - and in the short-run moment, if you have the systems built up around you, it can speak for the longer-run version of you: "you said you wanted this, how about you work towards this instead".

What AI does inside a cell

• Every top-row activity has a core and a carrier. The core is the point - the idea, the structure, the judgement, the feel. The carrier is the mechanics that get it into the world - the typing, the model, the code, the drills.
• AI takes the carrier. The hours stay in the cell and move onto the core, the same hours produce far more, and the activity keeps its name and changes its shape. Writing becomes thinking out loud. A solo founder ships what took a team.
• The carrier was never a chore, and sometimes doing it yourself was what kept the core sharp. Which parts to keep doing yourself is a question for the cognition audit.
• The top row is the idea loops pipeline seen from the side: what you take in is the select step, what you make is the ship step.