While I think there are very serious concerns that advancing technologies, and AI in particular, raise (such as lack of control over these systems with could be a tremendous threat, reduction of agency, and the potential for extreme concentration of power), if we can keep these technologies well under control and pointed at the betterment of humanity (a big if) I don’t think they have to destroy meaning. Here’s why:

While some people do derive a lot of their sense of self-worth from their work (such as myself), and such people could be especially hard hit if they are replaced by technology, there are, thankfully, many things that humans intrinsically value, and therefore, lots of potential sources of meaning. By seeking and then (at least to a reasonable degree) creating what we intrinsically value, we create meaning.

So let’s have a quick look at different human intrinsic values (i.e., things people value for their own sake, not as a means to an end) and how advancing technology, such as AI, may impact each of them:

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Spirituality and purity: there are no reasons I see that technology would have to interfere with spirituality, religion, or attempts to act purely. So these values could continue being a source of meaning.

Truth and learning: if anything, really effective technology can accelerate the search for truth and our ability to learn. At the same time, technology gone wrong could make the truth harder to discern (e.g., if technology facilitates misinformation outcompeting accurate information).

Achievement: this one could be hard hit by technology insofar as it’s related to doing things that eventually AI may do better than all of us. At the same time, humans find a lot of value in achievements regardless of non-human performance. For instance, people compete in sprints (even though cheetahs could easily outrun us) and find value in achievement in chess (despite AI being able to easily beat the best human). A lot of people also value personal achievement – merely doing the best you can, or improving to do better than your own previous results.

Freedom: while technology could impair freedom (e.g., if it concentrates power into the hands of certain actors, they might choose to limit freedom), there is also potential for technology to expand freedom a lot by allowing us to do many things that weren’t possible before, either because we didn’t know how to do them or because they were too costly before.

Pleasure, non-suffering, longevity: there is no fundamental tension between technology and these values, and technology may be able to improve these by reducing sources of suffering (such as disease), increasing lifespans, and making pleasure more easily accessible.

Happiness (as distinct from pleasure and non-suffering): This is a tricky one, because technology can cut both ways here. For instance, while it’s likely social media has increased some kinds of pleasure, it may well have reduced overall happiness for some people by making them more disconnected or impacting the way they see the world.

Caring, reputation, respect, loyalty, and virtue: these don’t have to be impacted by technology; we could continue valuing these in our relationships with others, even in a world where AI has replaced most work. The main threats I see here from technology are the ways that social media can cause people to spend less face-to-face time together, and the way that AI friends or “relationship” partners could take the place of human relationships.

Justice and fairness: this could go either way. Technology could concentrate power in a way that makes these worse or systematize bias. On the other hand, if the benefits of technology are distributed widely, they could create increased abundance. Technology also has the potential, if harnessed correctly, to reduce (currently commonplace) human bias.

Diversity: globalization tends to reduce diversity, and so technology could accelerate that trend. On the other hand, giving people more freedom through technology could end up increasing forms of diversity (such as how people choose to live their lives).

Protection: technology has the ability to make us safer, so while we may experience more protection (for ourselves and our loved ones), it also could mean that our own role of protecting others is reduced, which could reduce the meaning derived from providing protection. On the other hand, if technology is not developed thoughtfully, the world could feel increasingly chaotic and even become more unsafe, so protection could become even more important.

Nature: technology has a track record of destroying nature, so that trend may continue. However, it’s possible that with sufficiently advanced technology, that trend will go the opposite direction (e.g., cheap green energy makes it easier to protect nature). Technology often destroys nature either as a means to accelerate or as a side effect of acceleration, but sufficiently advanced technology may reduce that effect.

Beauty: technology has the possibility of increasing beauty in the world (making it easier to create and experience beauty), but also runs the risk of filling the world with generic slop.

Overall, while advancing technology may have a negative impact on some things that humans intrinsically value, as long as we don’t destroy the world with these technologies and avoid allowing extreme concentration of power from them, other intrinsic values may not be impacted or even be benefited by technology. As long as we can seek and (to a reasonable degree) create what we intrinsically value, there are sources of meaning available.

This piece was first written on November 16, 2025, and first appeared on my website on December 22, 2025.

Think of something you value that:

A. Multiple other people you know are capable of achieving, but that…

B. You assume you would not be capable of achieving, even though…

C. You have never actually tried to do this thing well before.

Now, suppose for a moment that you have no choice but to do the thing. That is, everything you care about in the world will be destroyed if you do not achieve it in X months. Here, X could be 1 if it’s a very small thing, or X could be 100 if it’s a much larger thing.

Under those circumstances, do you STILL believe you would fail to achieve it?

I think this sort of thought experiment can help us distinguish between things that we don’t believe we are capable of merely because we aren’t motivated enough, versus things that we ACTUALLY believe are impossible for us.

And I think it’s important to distinguish between these two cases, because if something is in the first category, we may actually be able to get ourselves to succeed just by finding ways to increase our motivation!

I also suspect that for many people, a number of the things that they view as being impossible for them would seem more possible in the face of carrying out this thought experiment. In other words, it is easy to confuse “I’m not motivated enough to try really hard” with “I’m incapable.”

As an example, suppose you believe you are just inherently bad at math, and that no matter how hard you try, you couldn’t understand calculus. Well, what if the fate of the world rested on your understanding of calculus in 6 months? I think under those circumstances, you would very likely find a way to learn it, with plenty of time to spare.

This piece was first written on April 26, 2018, and first appeared on my website on September 22, 2025.

• created billion-dollar companies with huge influence (e.g., Elon Musk)
• made multiple revolutionary scientific advances (e.g., Einstein)
• achieved absurdly high levels of skill at sports (e.g., Jackie Joyner-Kersee, who set the long-standing world record in the seven-event Olympic sport “Heptathlon”)
• reached extraordinary heights in politics (e.g., Margaret Thatcher)
• realized incredible artistic achievement (e.g., Mozart)

Here is my proposed list:

Predictors of Extreme Success

PRACTICE
(1) Head start – starts training in relevant skills at a very young age
(2) Deliberate practice – many thousands of hours of deliberate practice (i.e., performing relevant activities at a level that is challenging while receiving rapid feedback on performance and mistakes)

MENTORSHIP
(3) Encouragement – has a person who recognized their talent or believes strongly in them, ideally from an early age
(4) Coach – works closely with a very talented coach or mentor

BELIEFS
(4) Growth mindset – believes they are capable of improving their most important personal characteristics through effort (rather than viewing them as fixed)
(5) Changeable world – belief that the world is changeable along the dimensions where they want to make change
(6) Confidence – a conviction in their own abilities and belief that they will ultimately succeed at their goals

GOALS
(7) Focus – maintains their major high-level goals for a very long time, rather than switching what they are aiming at
(8) Ambition – has extremely lofty goals

MOTIVATION
(9) Persistence – does not give up when very large obstacles stand in the way of their goals, even when failure looks imminent
(10) Effort – puts an enormous amount of time and emotional energy into achieving their goal
(11) Hunger – willing to sacrifice many things for success, such as comfort, fun, rest, being likable, etc.
(12) Passion – extreme passion or obsession in the domain related to their goals

ENVIRONMENT
(13) Opportunities – there exist high levels of opportunity both in the physical place where they are born or move early on (i.e., their region) and in the domain that they work in (i.e., their field)
(14) Privilege – is born with characteristics that are not heavily discriminated against in that time and place, or that are viewed in a positive light by the surrounding society

RESOURCES
(15) Resources – starts out with useful resources (e.g., connections, money, equipment, prestige)
(16) Luck – happen to be in the right place at the right time to seize certain opportunities (through no effort on their own part)

SKILLS
(17) Intelligence – high level of intelligence (e.g., as measured by IQ tests)
(18) Creativity – has unusually high skill at coming up with new, valuable ideas
(19) Decision-making – when very important decisions must be made, makes them in a carefully considered, thoughtful, rationally oriented, less biased manner that weighs many factors
(20): Resourcefulness – readily generates effective strategies for overcoming challenges that others may not have thought of or considered
(21): Prioritization – continually refocuses their efforts on the activities that yield the greatest output per unit input towards achieving their goals, and cuts out low leverage or distracting activities
(22): Self-control – not generally succumbing to short term gains at the expense of long term ones, and having conscious control over the choices they make rather than tending to be controlled by passing urges
(23): Aptitude – some people have an innate ability that makes them better at certain activities relevant for success in specific domains, for instance, a sprinter who is born with “fast-twitch” muscles, or an intellectual who was born with a mind that is much better than most at seeing connections between disparate things.

PERSONALITY
(24) Charisma – others are drawn to this person upon meeting them, or are easily influenced by what they say, for instance, believing this person’s claims, wanting to help this person, wanting to bet on this person’s success, wanting to be led by this person, etc.
(25) Conscientiousness – stays organized, pays attention to important details, is careful in their work, not sloppy
(26) Rule bending – circumvents rules, conventions, or social norms that stand in their way towards success, without breaking them egregiously in a way that will cause them to end up ostracized or in jail
(27) Courage – lacks fear in the face of difficult goal-related challenges that would make most people afraid, OR carries out important behaviors anyway as though lacking fear (even if experiencing extremely intense fear)
(28) Risk-taking – is willing to take large risks when the predicted average reward / expected value is large enough but doesn’t take excessive risks when the potential for reward is not great enough
(29) Demanding – requires those that help them or work with them to produce at a very high standard of excellence
(30) Perfectionistic – continually hones their work, not stopping until it achieves an extremely high standard of excellence

BEHAVIORS
(31) Promotion – actively markets the work that they do to make others aware of it and excited by it
(32) Responsiveness – seeks external feedback, criticism or reliable data about what they are doing, pays close attention to what is and isn’t working well, and readily adapts approaches based on this information when evidence shows things aren’t working
(33) Community – purposely surrounds themselves with people who have relevant skills, advice, encouragement, knowledge, influence, etc. and who is a positive influence in the direction of them achieving their goals
(34) Single-mindedness – disregard for other, non-goal related activities (which could include neglect of personal life or of non-goal-related responsibilities)

It’s an interesting exercise to consider: which of the many factors above do you think are MOST predictive of success?

The high level components necessary for accomplishment in tennis are the same as they are in nearly every field. Accomplishment relies on the following factors:

1. Ambition. While it is possible to accomplish things that you don’t set out to achieve, when that occurs it is usually just due to luck. Setting something as your goal is the first step towards accomplishing it. If we have low ambitions, we are unlikely to achieve great things.
2. Talent. Most accomplishments require a certain starting level of skills relevant to the accomplishment. To be become a great singer, it helps to have good pitch. To be a great investor, it helps to have a personality that allows you to act calmly when others are afraid. While abilities can be honed with training, your current level of talent represents your starting point in the accomplishment race. If you start too far behind, even really good training may not get you to where you need to be.
3. Reasoning. The path towards almost every major accomplishment involves making difficult decisions. Which job should you take? Which helpful books should you read? Who should you make an effort to get to know? Which skills should you work to hone? Which training methods should you apply? The superpower of being able to reliably answer these kinds of questions will make your accomplishment much more likely. One very bad decision early on may lead you to failure.
4. Time. Most big accomplishments require a very large investment of time. You are not going to be able to invent a better type of microchip without first learning a lot about computers, electrical engineering, and materials science. This will take years.
5. Resources. These can be both physical (e.g. money) or social (e.g. knowing the right people to help you achieve your goal). If you have an incredible business idea, but don’t have the money to fund it, and can’t get in contact with someone who will fund it for you, you’re out of luck. A strong social network can make achievement much easier. It often takes the well-coordinated effort of many people to achieve great things. There may even be a person out there whose advice or help is exactly what you need for success. And sometimes involving others in our projects can make up for our own lack of talent, lack of money, or lack of time.

Any of these five factors can prevent you from accomplishing great things. If your goals are unambitious, your achievement will probably be low. If you are lacking in relevant talent, you’re unlikely to ever achieve great heights of ability. If your reasoning is poor, you’ll be likely to make bad decisions related to how to achieve your goals. If you don’t put enough time into achievement, you’ll probably not accomplish very much. And many goals require some money, or the help of others, and without either of these, your ambitions may not get off the ground.

Flipping this analysis around, we see that we need to make sure that we have these five factors in place if we are going to have the best chance of accomplishing what we hope to. Sure, we might get lucky, and not need them all. Maybe we’ll win the lotto and so won’t need to worry about physical resources anymore, or maybe our bad reasoning will happen to not harm our project. But if we want to maximize our chance of success, we should have sufficient ambition, talent, reasoning skills, time investment, and physical/social resources. Whichever of these is our weakest point is likely what we should focus on improving. We can consider how we can try to affect each of these factors:

1. Ambition may be hard to change. You simply may not care about accomplishing much. But reflecting on what you would like to complete before your die may make you realize that you do in fact care about achieving certain goals.
2. Your current level of talent is fixed, but you can make up for a lack of it by involving other people whose talents complement your own, and by reasoning about how to improve your skills and then investing sufficient time into doing so.
3. Reasoning can be honed with practice.
4. Time simply needs to be invested. But reasoning can help you make your time more productive and efficient, and involving others in your goals lets you pool your time with theirs. If at your current rate of time investment, your goals may take decades to achieve, you may need to start taking time away from something else.
5. If you don’t have the money or social network required to complete your goals, that may be solvable with further time investment. You may need to take a job to make the required money, and devote time to building new social contacts that are relevant to what you’d like to achieve. For instance, you can start introducing yourself to more people at places where those who are likely to be helpful are likely to be.

If you want to maximize your chance of accomplishing your goals, figure out which of these five factors is your weakest point, and fix it. Then, if necessary, repeat.

If one of your goals in life is to run a triathlon, and it is the day before the big race, you probably will feel excited. The day after the race is over, you will likely feel proud with a highly elevated mood. Months, and perhaps even years later, you will still probably feel good when you reflect on the fact that you completed the race. And yet, the fact that you ran that triathlon is very unlikely to impact your day-to-day mood long after the event. Most of us spend only a small percentage of our time reflecting on past memories and achievements, and even in moments of reflection the triathlon would represent just one of a great many possible things to reflect on. If you are lucky, the triathlon experience might have positive effects on your personality, increasing your confidence or perseverance, and give you a sense of accomplishment. All of these things are great. But you should also not expect the fact that you ran one two years ago to be determining how you feel on a day-to-day basis today, or to be making up for a life that currently lacks fulfillment. In other words, accomplishments are great, and you should strive for them. But you also shouldn’t expect them to benefit you that much on your typical days. But typical days are the content of most of your existence. Typical days matter most in terms of your average happiness because they are so abundant.

So in addition to thinking about the things you’d like to accomplish in your life, it can be helpful to also ask yourself:

• What would my ideal, ordinary week be like?

Ideal, in the sense that it would reflect a life that would make you happy (both helping you maintain a significantly positive average mood, keeping you feeling fulfilled, and including meaningful connections). Ordinary, in the sense that it is the sort of thing that you could actually repeat week after week for years. So base jumping is out, unless you don’t plan on surviving for very long. Eating $200 tasting menus every night is out, unless you plan on making a large sum of money first (and anyway, they would quickly become boring). And going on a roller coaster every week is out, because after six months of that most of the thrill would be gone (unless you are truly a roller coaster aficionado). To construct your ideal ordinary week, it may help to ask yourself questions like:

• What living situation would help keep me in a good mood?
• What activities give me a sense of fulfillment or purpose?
• What excites me that would still excite me if I did it weekly for years?
• What job would fit into this ideal week, providing the income to support this lifestyle while simultaneously adding to my positive mood and good feeling about life?

Don’t think in terms of achieving certain milestones, but rather in terms of how the hours in the week are spent. You can fill in these details about your ideal ordinary week with questions like:

• How much time would you spend watching TV per day? It may not be zero minutes, but your happiness is probably not maximized by watching more than an hour either.
• How much time would you spend reading or learning per day? What would you learn about and how would you go about learning it?
• How much time would you spend socializing? What sorts of people would you socialize with?
• How much time would you spend on hobbies? What might these hobbies be (making sure to choose things that wouldn’t grow boring over the years)?
• How much time would you spend doing altruistic things (keeping in mind that altruism increases both our sense of fulfillment and raises our mood, in addition to its direct benefits on the world)? Who would you be helping in this time?
• How many hours would you spend at work (keeping in mind that this job must support the lifestyle of your ideal week plus give you sufficient savings)? What would you want your hours spent at work to be like (being realistic about what you could get paid to do)? What sort of tasks would you be doing and what sort of people would you be working with that would be good for you, week to week?
• What would your romantic life be like? How would time with a romantic partner be spent?

Once you have determined what your ideal ordinary week would be like, consider how you can nudge your current life in that direction. What are you doing more of than would be your ideal, and what are you doing less of? Can you cut back on the former and increase the latter?

Milestones are important and worthwhile. But rather than thinking just in terms of what milestones you want to achieve in your life, think also about what you want your daily existence to consist of. Based on what you know about yourself, think about how you can fill your hours so that you regularly have a positive mood and a feeling of real satisfaction. Figure out what your ideal ordinary week would be like, and then ask yourself what you can change today to make your life more like that ideal.

Influences: Kenneth Chen (A Practical Guide to Defining Your Supergoals)