Capability didn't fix my avoidance; it made the avoidance more sophisticated

A LessWrong essay documents a month spent running a persistent personal AI system—202 sessions that produced a song, a browser DAW, and a rebuilt work operating system. LessWrong reports the output would have required a small team not long ago. But the essay captures something uncomfortable: greater capability didn't reduce the author's avoidance of actions that could lead to rejection. Instead, it made the avoidance more productive-looking. He had a complete paid personal-AI service ready to launch, with a live payment page, yet never showed it to anyone. Eight days later he killed it, claiming he no longer believed in it—not market rejection, but builder's rejection, safely unseen. As LessWrong frames it, his emerging hypothesis is this: AI gave his avoidance a coherent strategy, letting him build a sophisticated perimeter around the core feared action. He closes with a question: has AI capability changed what people avoid, or simply made avoidance look more productive?

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