The Pocket Dimension: Motivation Now & Post AGI

Inspired by James P. Carse’s infinite-games lens, Will Storr’s status research, David Pearce’s pleasure blueprint, Eliezer Yudkowsky’s fun puzzles, and Naval Ravikant’s wealth axioms.

Last Human Standing

Day three after humanity vanishes.

The pantry’s stocked. Your shelter’s secure. You sit on the hood of an abandoned Ferrari at sunrise, watching the empty city gleam. With survival handled and no audience left, what will consume your day?

Do you:

• Wander the silent museum, losing yourself in beauty that no one else will ever see again?
• Race the Ferrari down empty highways, chasing the pure rush of speed?
• Climb to the ridge with a notebook to unravel cosmic riddles?
• Sort through abandoned materials to build something that outlasts you?
• Practice an instrument no one will hear, perfecting your craft simply because you can?

Your answer reveals which of life’s fundamental games truly matters to you when the external pressures evaporate.

The Pocket Dimension

Now imagine the opposite. You wake up in a pocket dimension – a pristine copy of Earth where travel between worlds is effortless. Your close tribe (family, friends, loved ones) can move freely between dimensions. Want to visit someone in the original world? Step through. Want time alone? Come back. The difference? This pocket dimension has no survival pressures.

Self-sustaining infrastructure handles everything. Autonomous systems maintain power, water, transportation. Food production runs itself. Complete abundance. No work required, just choice.

Day three. You can socialize with your tribe here or expand your social circle in the original world as often as you want. But when you’re here, you don’t have to compete for resources, status, or survival.

What game do you find yourself playing now? How does the option of an audience change your choices?

These scenarios reveal something profound: when survival pressures dissolve, we gravitate toward our true motivational cores. Whether completely alone or in a pressure-free social paradise, we’re drawn to certain fundamental games that shape our existence. These aren’t trivial pastimes with rules and pieces, but deep motivational frameworks that shape our decisions, define our values, and ultimately determine whether we find fulfillment or frustration. Understanding these games gives you the power to choose them consciously rather than sleepwalking through whatever game your culture or biology defaulted you into.

The Game Board

Deep Dives

1. The Wisdom Game: The Infinite Puzzle

“An infinite game is played for the purpose of continuing the play.” -James P. Carse

Picture the physicist mapping quantum fields, the philosopher contemplating consciousness, or the child dismantling a clock just to see how it works. The Wisdom Game is about understanding how reality functions at the deepest levels. Pursued for the sheer thrill of knowing, regardless of audience or reward.

Even if you were the last person on Earth, this game would remain compelling. The “aha” moment when understanding clicks into place delivers a hit of satisfaction that needs no external validation. It’s an infinite game. The goal isn’t to win but to keep playing, to keep expanding your understanding of reality.

Why people play it: The pure joy of comprehension, intellectual adventure, awe at uncovering truths.

Pitfall: Getting lost in abstraction, analysis paralysis, knowledge without application.

My take: There’s something uniquely satisfying about the moment when a puzzle clicks into place – whether it’s trying to understand why economies crash, why certain melodies resonate with our brains, or how the universe started. The game has no end, only deeper layers.

Post AGI: The question shifts from “what is true?” to “how do we weave truth into meaning?” As AI systems churn out facts instantly, the human advantage lies in synthesizing patterns across disciplines, exploring metaphysical questions, and understanding subjective experience. Wisdom becomes less about acquiring knowledge and more about developing unique perspectives on the infinitely complex tapestry of reality.

2. The Status Game: The Primal Ladder

The tribe circles up, hierarchies snap into place. The hardware is 200,000 years old and predates humanity itself. Even primates obsessively track their positioning in the social hierarchy. It’s the game we’re most biologically hardwired to play, with our brains releasing dopamine when our status rises and stress hormones when it falls.

As Will Storr points out, this game underlies everything from office politics to social media flexing to success theater. Status saturates moral crusades and public displays of virtue. The critical flaw? It’s inherently zero-sum within any defined group: for someone to rise, others must relatively fall.

Why people play it: Immediate neurochemical rewards, access to resources and opportunities, protection from social threats.

Potential pitfalls: Anxiety, envy, validation addiction, never feeling “enough.”

My take: You can’t fully opt out, status games ride deep mammalian circuitry. But you can choose your tribes wisely: intellectual honesty, creative contribution, and genuine support over zero-sum competition. Focusing on elevating others paradoxically raises your standing in ways that feel sustainable and satisfying.

Post AGI: As material needs dissolve, status reorganizes around uniquely human capacities – emotional intelligence, creative synthesis, philosophical depth. The currency shifts from resource control to the ability to inspire, connect, and innovate in ways machines cannot. New hierarchies emerge based on who brings the most meaningful human experiences to shared spaces.

3. The Hedonism Game: Orgasmium vs. Rich Experiences

The Hedonism Game maximizes subjective experience. The felt quality of being alive. It extends beyond base pleasures, encompassing flow states, aesthetic depth, and richly immersive sensory moments.

David Pearce’s Hedonistic Imperative envisions biotech permanently erasing suffering and elevating our hedonic baseline toward bliss. Yet Eliezer Yudkowsky’s provocative “orgasmium” thought experiment questions this pursuit: would we genuinely want to tile the universe solely with pleasure centers, stripped of context, narrative, and purpose?

Why people play it: Pleasure and meaningful sensory experiences are intrinsically rewarding; life is short and suffering is real.

Potential pitfalls: Diminishing returns (the hedonic treadmill), emptiness from pleasure devoid of meaning, and resource-intensive escapism.

My take: I see hedonism as the art of experience collection. From the sublime (watching a meteor shower) to the intense (flowing in solo sports) to the refined (a perfectly balanced dinner). Variety over intensity, pleasure as one color in life’s palette. The challenge is the balance of immediate gratification with deeper narrative and existential satisfaction.

Post AGI: When perfect pleasure becomes available on-demand, the game transforms entirely. The new frontier becomes the architecture of meaningful experience – how to blend challenge, context, and uncertainty into pleasure to create depth. Humans might deliberately introduce friction into bliss, seeking the textured complexity that makes satisfaction feel earned.

4. The Wealth Game: Engineering Freedom

Naval Ravikant distills it best: “Wealth is assets that earn while you sleep.” (Naval) The Wealth Game isn’t merely about accumulating money. It’s about engineering systems that convert resources into freedom, primarily freedom of your time and attention.

Played correctly, this game becomes genuinely positive through value creation rather than extraction. When you build something people willingly pay for, everyone benefits. Scavenging for food, building shelter, and creating safety has always been inevitable. But sosciety’s sytem of IOUs, money, is an extroardinary innovation. You can create enough value to earn the freedom to engage in life’s other games.

Why people play: Autonomy, security, optionality, and the freedom to reinvest in other games

Potential pitfalls: Confusing wealth as the end goal rather than a tool, getting stuck on the accumulation treadmill, funneling newfound wealth straight into the status arms-race essentially reskinning The Status Game

My take: Wealth isn’t about accumulation but about buying back time and attention. It requires a careful focus on equity over salary, building systems that generate freedom rather than just income. The real win comes from being able to play games deeply – funding curiosity, supporting causes that matter, and creating without survival pressure looming.

Post AGI: “Wealth” evolves into control over scarce human experiences and creative capacities. As AI generates material abundance, value shifts to curating authentic human moments, developing unique skills that resist automation, and creating spaces where genuine human connection flourishes. The new wealth creators will be those who design experiences that feel irreplaceably human.

5. The Virtue Game: Forging the Self

Who are you when no one is watching? The Virtue Game revolves around character building: integrity, discipline, courage, compassion. Qualities cultivated internally, independent of external recognition.

Think Stoic philosophers deliberately embracing hardship to cultivate resilience, or artisans pursuing mastery purely for the craft itself. Validation here is internal, and the timeline is lifelong.

Why people play it: Inner peace, alignment with deeply held values, reliable character under pressure, and quiet pride.

Potential pitfalls: Perfectionism, self-righteousness, neglecting external impact.

My take: Virtue is most compelling when it’s tested against real-world complexity. Deliberate discomfort almost always leads to some incredible character growth. Like strengthening a muscle no one can see but everyone can benefit from.

Post AGI: AI systems could serve as perfect virtue partners – offering consistent moral reasoning, pointing out inconsistencies in our behavior, and modeling ethical frameworks without the emotional baggage of human judgment. The challenge becomes maintaining authentic virtue when every action could be optimized by an AI counselor. True character emerges in choices no algorithm would make.

6. The Legacy Game: Ripples in the Pond

This game transcends your lifespan. Played by parents raising children, mentors guiding protégés, artists crafting enduring works, or leaders establishing lasting institutions it seeks lasting influence beyond personal existence.

Legacy integrates elements from other games but uniquely expands the horizon far beyond one’s own life. It asks: “What mark will remain after I’m gone?”

Why people play it: Meaning beyond the self, deep connection with future generations, transcendence of personal mortality.

Potential pitfalls: Sacrificing present well-being solely for future impact, or prioritizing legacy image over real, lasting contributions.

My take: Focus on genuine relationships and tangible contributions rather than abstract posthumous fame. Approach legacy as present-day positive influence that sends lasting ripples forward through time.

Post AGI: The scope of legacy explodes exponentially. A single human contribution to AI alignment, space exploration, or understanding consciousness could echo through millennia. Yet the most profound legacies might remain intimate – the human who taught AI to value beauty, the community that demonstrated new forms of cooperation, the artist who captured what it means to be alive in the age of artificial minds.

Game Dynamics: When Worlds Collide

These games aren’t isolated silos. They constantly interact:

Complements

• Wealth → Wisdom: Resources can fund learning, research, and contemplation
• Virtue → Legacy: Character creates the foundation for meaningful impact
• Wisdom → Wealth: Understanding reality often leads to valuable insights

Conflicts

• Status vs. Virtue: External validation often undermines authentic character
• Hedonism vs. Legacy: Short-term pleasure can derail long-term impact
• Wealth vs. Status: Accumulating resources privately often requires resisting status displays

Life Stages

Often, Wealth and Status dominate early adulthood, while Wisdom, Virtue, and Legacy gain prominence later, though major life events can trigger shifts anytime.

Understanding these dynamics helps you spot trade-offs. Are you optimizing for short-term pleasure at the cost of long-term impact? Is your pursuit of status undermining your character goals?

Mirrors: Pocket Dimensions & Post-AGI Futures

Pause for a moment. Notice how the post-AGI scenarios mirror our pocket dimension thought experiment perfectly. Both strip away survival pressures through technology, whether through AI abundance or a duplicated Earth with autonomous systems. Both force us to confront: what games do we play when we can truly choose freely?

This parallel reveals something profound about human nature. Whether you’re the last person on Earth, living in a resource-abundant pocket dimension, or inhabiting a post-AGI future, the fundamental question remains: which games matter to you intrinsically, not because they secure your survival or social position, but because they resonate with your authentic self?

The convergence is no coincidence. These scenarios, imagined pocket dimensions and future AI abundance, serve as filters, stripping away everything except our core motivations. They reveal which games we’d choose if external pressures vanished entirely.

The Paradox of Choice & Game Transitions

With all games equally accessible in our pocket dimension, the paradox emerges: how do we choose? Decision paralysis can be overwhelming when survival doesn’t dictate priorities. Others discover that games shift in importance throughout life. The status seeker becomes the wisdom pursuer, the hedonist transforms into the legacy builder.

These transitions aren’t failures of character but natural evolutions. The meta-game, choosing which games to emphasize, might be our most important decision. Are we playing games that truly resonate with our values, or ones inherited from family, culture, or circumstance?

Day 100: The Human Tapestry

Day 100 in the Pocket Dimension: You notice your close tribe naturally dividing into groups, each gravitating toward different games. Some build art galleries, others debate philosophy, some create elaborate gardens, a few push the boundaries of pleasure technology. You realize humanity’s diversity comes from our varied appetites for these fundamental games.

Each group enriches the whole. The wisdom seekers pose questions that inspire the legacy builders. The hedonists design experiences that deepen the virtue cultivators’ practice. The wealth engineers create systems enabling all games to flourish.

You see the truth: these games aren’t competitors but complementary forces. Together, they create the full spectrum of human potential. The question isn’t which game to play exclusively, but how to compose them into a life that resonates with your authentic self while contributing to the larger human symphony.