I imagine, some time in the future, my child asking me a very simple question.
What do you do, daddy?
How will I answer this question? How do I want to answer this question? Will I be comfortable explaining (and if so, will I be able to explain) the financial services industry, how it makes people in this world better?
Maybe that’s how we should decide what to do with our lives — if we can explain it to our children, it’s a good thing to do.
Go down the list and stop once your answer is “no”.
I see progress as the measure of our ability to solve the problems we encounter in our lives. As mankind learns to solve problems, we focus on the more complex ones (ones that are harder to solve, or those put in focus by the just-solved problems) — and this increasing complexity of the problems usually brings about the increased complexity of solutions (or the increased complexity of the research required to arrive at a solution).
Unsurprisingly, this is consistent with and deeply linked to the idea of increasing entropy. However, in my opinion continued progress is a state of unstable equilibrium — one between self-destruction and attrition. In the former, entropy gets a one-time boost followed by a lifetime of nil. In the latter, entropy increases at a decreasing rate thus proving the agents of progress (mankind) ineffective implementators of its underlying idea. It’s only that unstable equilibrium that fulfills entropy’s goal.
Mankind’s mission is therefore to maintain that unstable equilibrium.
We find comfort in light. There is ample symbolism that gives light an undoubtedly positive meaning — the light leading to an Afterlife, light as serenity, peace (have you ever seen any peace symbol that was surrounded by darkness?), energy, goodness.
But there is something better than light. It’s the twilight; it’s the knowledge that the light is there somewhere, it just needs to be found. The anticipation of light gives us hope and keeps us going.
In ancient mythology, there is a concept of Paradise Lost, mankind’s fall from grace. But in my view, Paradise is not really lost. Man did not fail or screw up. Instead, Man was shown a glimpse of Paradise, and then told to earn it. Without seeing it in the first place, Man would never feel incentivized to keep looking for it.
In a way, what makes us human is our desire to keep looking. We are always aiming for the next great thing. Progress is just a disguise for mankind’s search of answers to the infinite stream of questions. It doesn’t matter how many questions are left. It doesn’t matter where and when Paradise will be found. We’ll keep looking — that’s all that matters.
Many people struggle to understand abstraction; they are unable to connect specifics to more abstract concepts and reason in that higher, conceptual level. I think this has to do with a kind of instant gratification — our lizard brain is making it harder for us to be conceptual. It’s advantageous for our survival to transact on the specific (eat food today instead of tomorrow because we may not live until tomorrow), on what we see before our eyes. So how come our brains grew to give us an ability for abstract thinking? Is it just a side effect of a mental capacity which is essential for survival? Or is there something intrinsic about abstract thinking that makes it advantageous?
This is a somewhat dated collection of my thoughts on purpose and life goals. Other posts have subsumed this topic but it’s still useful to look at it from a slightly different point of view.
Ask yourself: “what is my goal?”
Let’s assume that you start with “To make lots of money”. It may not be the most lofty answer, or the most sophisticated or morally satisfying one, but I am sure it’s a thought that every one of us had at some point in our lives.
Let’s explore this goal. Is this it? What if you had lots of money, but only that? You will probably realize that it’s not good enough. Money is useful to lead a comfortable life, but at the end of your life you will probably wish you could trade some of what you have left (after ensuring your family doesn’t struggle) against something else. Anything else.
For me, this broke down when I thought about all the people who were part of my life as I was growing up, They thought, they knew I will be remarkable in some way. Having money, one of the most universal mediums in human civilization is not remarkable — precisely because money is so universal,
I want to show them that I achieved more than just wealth. Otherwise it feels like all the people who made me what I am wasted a lot of time on me. It feels like I had potential that I didn’t utilize. So maybe there is something to do with expectations that others place on you based on your potential for greatness.
But if I did something remarkable, I wouldn’t want it to be undone after I die. This means that there is something greater than me. Either some kind of an afterlife where these expectations we met meta-materialize, or something to do with mankind itself.
Better still, the two don’t actually have to be that different. An afterlife could be an extension of all the intangible, metaphysical properties of the Universe. And if it is, what is your goal then?
Entropy in the Universe is increasing. Why? What is going to happen when it runs out of its energy? This is a fascinating question (so beautifully covered by Asimov in The Last Question) because it pertains to quite possibly the most universal of all concepts of the Universe. Ever increasing entropy is the reason we die; it’s very likely the reason no alien race has contacted us yet; in my opinion it’s intrinsically linked to the reason why time flows in a single direction.
But does it have to be that way? First, what would the Universe look like if entropy did not increase mercilessly? Would it even be allowed to exist? If the flow of time — and thus causality — is linked to entropy, it seems that Universes without that ticking clock would be unstable, ethereal, essentially nonexistent (existence, I think, can only be defined in a knowledge base that also includes time).
Could entropy be reset? Or, in other words, what happens once the Universe reaches its maximum level of entropy (and we now know that such a maximum exists as nothing in nature is infinite — probably another implication of the existence of entropy and thus the Universe’s stability)? The Universe — its existence, history (which requires information, and thus entropy) becomes undefined. Cause and effect cease to exist. The last sigh of a dying Universe nullifies everything the Universe has ever been. The undefinable entity that is the Universe post mortem is no different than the undefinable entity that is the Universe before its birth. And in that chaos where everything is infinite, the proto-Universe has a lot of time to invent the concept of entropy all over again.
This reminds me of how I thought of an afterlife some time ago — we are immortals who one day choose to live a life of a mortal with no recollection of their former selves. If that’s the case, we might just as well enjoy our life before we return to our regular immortality.
So go ahead, destroy the Universe.
This is how I was thinking of elevenseconds about a year ago:
Elevenseconds is devoted to the exploration of meaning: its mechanics (mankind’s purpose) and dynamics (creativity), but also to the occasional trifle.
I decided to juxtapose the lofty “exploration of meaning” with “the occasional trifle” to show that I’ll be all over the place. What is “exploration of meaning” exactly? I’m not sure; I might iterate over this several times but it seems to me that meaning is pretty important to understand (it’s a very high level concept that may be somehow linked with what makes mankind special).
Going further, I borrowed (but probably botched up) a technique from physics that analyzes forces by considering their mechanics (the rules that govern the forces) and dynamics (the consequences of the forces changing): the mechanics of meaning then are the rules governing it and connecting it to its signifieds (the objects that have meaning) and its signifiers (mankind that gives objects meaning) — in a way, then, understanding meaning means understanding mankind. On the other hand, the concept behind the appearance and disappearance (i.e. the change) of meaning is creativity.
Hence the full tagline.
It’s pretty obvious to me that evolution–the phenomenon of a gradual and inter-generational increase in the individuals’ ability to survive through the selection bias of mutations of their genetic make-up.
But one thing I don’t understand. Evolution (and thus the underlying natural selection) assumes that the individuals have the desire to live. Why? Why is it more advantageous to live than not to live? I can see that in intelligent species, the desire to live is a natural consequence of consciousness: I am aware of my existence and so I do not want to cease to exist. But what about all other species?
Today’s generation is used to instant gratification. I want to earn lots of money now. I want to be an expert now. An idea of a 15-year career sounds crazy to us — we have no idea what we will be doing in 15 years, but it will almost certainly not be the thing we’re doing now. Because of that we’re limiting ourselves and our potential to the kinds of work that reward bursty, energetic types but don’t stick to their guns.
In doing so, we are missing a lot. The most impressive careers are not those that are made overnight, but those that have substance, purpose and meaning. Have you seen someone’s life work? A work of someone who has been working on the same thing for 15 years? How about forty years? How impressive is it?
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