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Hearing a lot of this kind of take.. It's only as true as the doomscrolling happiness is: fleeting, moments at a time. Learning is struggling. And struggling leads to a feeling of accomplishment that's more sustainable in the long run.

As much as it sucks to struggle, when you solve a problem through sweat (and maybe tears), that's a different kind of feeling. Sitting with the uncomfortable is what makes the reward worth it. Babysitting an AI isn't as uncomfortable, and the "almost there" high is unsustainable in the long run

I had a conversation about this the other day. So I think it’s two things that create happiness. One is the flow state, which is working right at the edge of your abilities and a bit beyond. Aah what a rush. LLMs do not give that.

The second one is that dopamine rush after the struggle, when you’ve solved the problem. LLMs instead provide these small dopamine rushes of constant progress. But they also move the baseline. With LLMs you expect the progress all the time and that creates massive dissatisfaction when you struggle.