“Because we've created a world where effort gets treated like a disease to be cured.”
That pretty much sums it up for me. Well put. I am at a point where I am trying to acquire hobbies to improve my happiness and there is a difficulty modifier now on a lot of things where it’s like “what’s the point”. It reminds me of when X-Box first offered the ability to watch other people play. I was grinding to get like five more points on a course to hit the 200 point requirement, so I downloaded the top ghost video for the course. That person and I were not even playing the same game; they were orders of magnitude better than I was and all I wound up learning was I would never be that good at it.
I think this is why I grasp on to strength training and fitness as one of my main hobbies. There is no current shortcut other than steroids but even then you still need to put in the effort. If I stop, I can feel and see my body atrophy, my stress levels rise, my energy going down, etc. You need to keep learning and adjusting to make progress. You can definitely nerd out about it if you want. And it provides the dopamine rush after a tough workout and looking back and seeing my progress. It helps me connect with my body since I’m in my head all day. It’s also a primal and human activity that has nothing to do with AI.
Healthy is a continual conversation from aged 8 through 18