Meaning_of_life.md

This document attempts to develop an "objective" value function based on a consideration of the nature of objective reality as we know it (i.e., the "meaning of life")

1. Existence is the most fundamental value: only things that actually exist can have value, and the most basic value is mere existence itself.

2. This immediately raises challenging questions as to what it means for something to exist. As a human being, I only know subjectively that I experience something (cogito ergo sum). Everything else is a construct of my mind, and I can never have "direct access" to the underlying physical truth of the world -- everything is filtered through my perceptual system, my history of learning and thought, shaped by my culture, evolution, etc. All these statements are themselves constructs based on all of that history, in a language with words that we only share by tenuous threads of convention, etc.

3. We push these fundamental issues down the stack and move on, because, in fact, we can, and do make steady progress in establishing an "objective" understanding of our physical universe through the processes of science, and our shared accumulation of scientific principles and data, etc. It is in this shared, but always unfinished, framework of science and understanding of the actual universe in which we exist that this discussion proceeds.

4. Even within this objective (no quotes from here on out) framework, there are difficult issues involved in defining what it means for something to exist. I as a human being exist at many different levels of description, from a bag of atoms and molecules (mostly water), to cells, organ systems, and finally the full organism that I recognize as my "self". The boundary between myself and the rest of the world is not arbitrary: there is a physical barrier formed by the skin that separates me from the rest of the world, and my cells are glued together so as to move coherently through space and time. All of my cells are working together to provide shared resources of energy via the bloodstream, etc, to allow this coherent blob of stuff to persist for much longer than it otherwise would.

5. My survival also depends on levels above me, from other humans at all levels of physical distance, political organization, and electronic intercommunication, to all other organisms on Earth (plants, animals, the entire ecosystem). The oxygen I breathe depends on healthy plant life, and the food I eat to feed my cells depends on both plants and animals, and (regrettably from my perspective) this also involves the killing of animals.

6. Thus, despite existence being the most important value, every form of life is transient, and the very sustainence of life depends on this transience. At a basic level, the food chain is an essential part of nature, and life could not exist without it. At a more fundamental level, progress at every level depends on transience, because it is only by the removal of the old and emergence of the new (children, thoughts, technology, scientific advances) that new forms of existence can arise.

7. At the cosmic scale, it is likely that our entire observable universe is itself transient. We do not yet know the full scope of things at this level, but we do know beyond a reasonable doubt that the big bang happened ~13.8 billion years ago, providing clear evidence against a "steady state" universe. I personally believe that black holes will ultimately merge together to form a giant black hole that will swallow everything in the observable universe, and when it reaches a critical mass, it will explode and create a brand new big bang, starting the whole process anew, with this process continuing through an infinity of space and time. Thinking about this makes my brain hurt and my stomach queasy, but I cannot seem to avoid this conclusion, and every other possibility makes less sense. But again, we can push this down the stack and move on.

8. From this brief survey of existence across all of these scales, we can reach the following conclusions about the reality we inhabit, and therefore potentially derive a corresponding "value function" that is maximally compatible with this reality. 1. Our starting point #1 from above: "Existence is the most fundamental value: only things that actually exist can have value, and the most basic value is mere existence itself." 2. Everything is transient, and transience is essential for new forms of existence to emerge. 3. Therefore, the ultimate value is the continued process of creation of new forms of existence, within a synergistic ecosystem across all levels that balances the need for continued survival to support this creative process, with the need for constant turnover to enable new forms of existence to emerge. The fact that this is a reasonable characterization of the entire history of life on Earth provides an immediate "gut check" sense of validity for this value function: it is what it is, and the "meaning of life" is just the processes of life itself.

9. Some important reflections on this conclusion: 1. Conflict and contradictions are inherent to the overall process: life and death, creation and destruction, competition and cooperation, all must occur. 2. Ultimately, an "enlightened" perspective recognizes the value of these contradictions and processes, and accepts not only the essential need for our own individual transience, but also the need for competition and evolutionary "survival of the fittest", so that the continued survival of existence occurs. Inherent in the value function is a sense of "progress", which is always going to be contextualized by the current state of the system at all levels, but again the most fundamental value is continued existence, such that systems that lose out in the competition are replaced with those that thrive. 3. While there may be temporary "successes" in imposing stasis and control over the continued flux of life, any static state is going to lose out to "innovations" that come from a constant process of renewal, so ultimately it makes sense for rational beings to understand and except these "facts of life" and shape their goals and behaviors in a consistent way, to embrace, rather than fight against these ultimate forces.

10. The only stable "constant" in this sea of change is the accumulating knowledge of the invariant properties of the universe. The laws of physics remain immutable and universal (to the best of our current knowledge), and while we are constantly developing our understanding of all the different levels of organization and complexity, this body of knowledge can have stable elements that prove their continued truth across time. This knowledge can be encoded in to many forms and shared across sentient beings over time, and represents the central core upon which our ability to develop new technology and further scientific advances depends.