The Meaning of Life

I had a secular upbringing. I'm not disappointed that the universe has no meaning (i.e., purpose given by a creator) but I do sometimes find it frustrating to be in the situation of being an optimizer who doesn't know what it is they're supposed to optimize.

I liked this post.

I needed a few solid years of good strong individualist pep-talks before I was at all ready to be an adult.

"Non serviam,"

"I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine,"

"Listen to the fools reproach! It is a kingly title!"

"I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do."

"Truth forever on the scaffold/ Wrong forever on the throne,"

and so on. (This song is in the same vein. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZnV6hKhFDs)

There's a cluster of writers (generally science fiction, libertarian, and atheist, with a little Tom Paine and Blake and Joyce in the mix) who were really good at inspiring me to be less automatically servile, more willing to stand for things on my own, less excessively guilty. I actually knew some people who were like that in real life, and would say things to the effect that they'd rather die on their feet than live on their knees. Wonderful folks.

As time goes by, I find that the more I internalize personal independence, the less overt it becomes, and the less I seek out writing that has a propagandistic tone -- I find I need it less and less. This might be why the post has a lukewarm reception around here -- it's the sort of writing that's for inspiring people not to be lapdogs. People who have not been lapdogs for a long time sometimes forget how important this kind of language can be. And people who are still between "denunciation and confession" like b1shop find it hard to imagine that there will be a time when they'll completely take personal independence for granted.

The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease. It must be so. If there ever is a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in the population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored. In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference --- Richard Dawkins

"What is the meaning of life?" is a question that should be dissolved on sight.

Some questions can be dissolved. Others need to be replaced, lest they leave a gaping hole. I would suggest replacing that question with this one:

What meanings have you given to your life?

The reason "What is the meaning of life" is such a hard question is because it includes part of a wrong answer right in the question. We should instead ask, what is a meaning of life, because there is no reason to think there is only one. Or if we insist on there being only one, then we have to narrow it down to, say, what is the meaning of my life.

Perhaps spending years on my knees weakened my ability to choose and complete my own goals.

When you choose your own goals, by what criteria should you decide they're worthy? Some criteria meant to satisfy some higher goal, right? If you had a highest goal (and I'm not sure humans are even really capable of it, but assuming we are), how could you have chosen it? By what criteria could you decide that it was a good or bad goal, given that evaluation of the worth of anything at all is only meaningful in respect to some goal or other?

Saying "this is an action I want to take" is equivalent to "I believe that taking this action will move me closer to a goal I hold". But choosing a goal is an action in this sense, so there's eventually a recursion problem with choosing your own goals, unless there's some highest goal you hold which isn't chosen by you.

So, if you have a highest goal, it isn't one you've chosen. If you don't have a highest goal, then except in the case where your highest level goals are all compatible (which seems to collapse to the first case, since you could simply view them all as a single amalgamated goal), your goals are inconsistent. Both the case in which you don't get to choose your own goal and the case in which your goals are mutually incompatible are pretty unpalatable, but I don't see a way of avoiding one of them being true.

I'm another one raised in a secular household, since you asked. Not an especially atheistic one, just apathetic to the concept of religion. I don't feel like I'm missing a purpose; on the contrary, it gives me the freedom to choose one, with no one to answer to about my choice. I find it somewhat alien that people are willing to accept a purpose which is handed to them by someone who had it handed to them by someone else .... and it bothers me that I don't understand it, because that prevents me from communicating intelligently about it. This is why I don't argue against it. (Maybe if I understood it, I'd want to argue for it--who knows?)

There are two things I do miss from a religious upbringing, though. One is the built-in local social community which is separate from work, school, or family. Getting a group of likeminded sociable secular people together is harder; you have to actually come up with an excuse. The other is that I simply enjoy participating in rituals; I'm not sure why. I sometimes go through the motions of a superstition, without any belief in it--knocking on wood, for example--just to satisfy that taste. But there's not nearly as much of that as there is religious ritual, and it's not as cohesive. I've been thinking of starting an innocuous secret society just to invent goofy traditions for it.

1. Evo Psych: Our instincts were formed in an ancient time when not knowing the social norms and kow-towing to the political leaders resulted in literal and/or genetic extinction. Perhaps altruistic humans who served causes other than our own were more likely to survive Savannah politics.

I find the case that post-agricultural humans are the result of selection pressures for neoteny to be fairly convincing: The 10,000 Year Explosion (a short, good book on recent human evolution) talks about this some I believe. Many have remarked that humans in general are neotenous apes, where selection for neoteny (and thus an extended period of the greater propensity for learning that's associated with childhood) led to increased intelligence, or more often vice versa. It's odd because whereas selection for intelligence pre-agricultural revolution may have led to neoteny, when the agricultural revolution hit it may have been that selection for neoteny (submission) led to greater intelligence. This led me to do a lot of thinking and writing that unfortunately I think I can't put here, because it talks heavily about racial differences. :/

However, maybe someone with more knowledge than me could speculate about the possible link between neoteny and autism? I did some theorizing but it's not convincing. (Ha, I just realized how odd it is that talking about autistic people as if they were a group of people wholly separate from the rest of humanity is so much more socially acceptable than talking about racial differences. I understand why that is -- genocides and antagonistic discrimination are more often based on racial differences (exceptions include e.g. homosexuality and minority religions), so talking about them is taboo -- but it's still odd.)

most humans want nothing more than to surrender to a powerful force... I worry man is a domesticated species.

Seeking a powerful benefactor, who provides guidance and protection, is simply about the self-interest of the seeker. There is a rational will to power at work even in a slave seeking a master.

In a human life, parents are the original powerful force, and religion and politics are largely about finding a substitute for this relationship.

A human being starts out unapologetically selfish. They may not understand much about reality, but they have desires, and will cry and rage if they are not satisfied. Older humans are quickly discovered to be powerful and responsive in complicated ways, so they become the focus of attention.

If someone feels they can go it alone in life, it's because they think they can get what they want by their own efforts. The question about life's meaning usually arises when it looks as though personal desires cannot be met either by external help or by one's own efforts. What is life for, if I can't be happy / if we can't be happy?

Usually people reach for some unlikely possible world at this point, one that provides hope. The degree of irrationality of worldview is proportional to the degree of hopelessness in reality - the irrational person or group has to reach that much further to get hold of their new hope.

But no matter the cause, "What is the meaning of life?" is a question that should be dissolved on sight.

I usually replace it with "What do I want?"

I think, in my case at least, Misplaced Life Dissatisfaction is the main cause of existential angst. I've noticed a strong positive correlation between how happy I am at a given moment and how satisfied I am with my purpose in life (or lack thereof). There is a causal link, but it works the opposite way from what I first assumed: sadness makes me angsty, not the other way around. This despite the fact that my logical reasons for being angsty were just as valid no matter whether I was feeling good or not.

As with all biases, identifying the problem doesn't get rid of it, but it helps.

I really like this post. It touches on two topics that I am very interested in:

How society shapes our values (domesticates us)

and

What should we value (what is the meaning of life?)

I find the majority of discussions extremely narrow, focusing on details while rarely attempting to provide perspective. Like doing science without a theory, just performing lots of specific experiments without context or purpose.

1 Why are things the way they are and why do we value the things we value? A social and psychological focus, Less Wrong touches on these issues but appears focused on specific psychological studies rather than any overall perspective (I suspect this would start to touch on politics and so would not be discussed). I think our understanding of the system we are a part of significantly shapes our sense of meaning and purpose and, as a result, strongly influences our society.

I would go so far as to suggest we are psychologically incapable of pursuing goals that are inconsistent with our understanding of how the universe functions (sorry Clippy), i.e. if we are selfish gene darwinists we will value winning and reproductive success. If we have a Confucian belief that the universe is a conflict between order and chaos we will pursue social stability and tradition. I have my own take on this for those who are interested (How we obtain our values, the meaning of life)

2 What problems do we want to solve? It seems much easier to find problems to solve than goals to obtain. A recent post about Charity mentioned GiveWell. This organisation at least evaluates whether progress is made but as far as I am aware there is no economics of suffering no utilitarian (or otherwise) analysis of the relative significance of different problems. Is a destructive AI worse than global warming, or cancer or child abuse or obesity or terrorism. Is there a rational means to evaluate this for a given utility function? Has anyone tried? (this is an area I'm looking into so any links would be greatly appreciated)

3 What can we do? Within instrumental rationality and related fields there are a lot of discussions of actions to achieve improvements in capability. Likewise for charity, lots of good causes. However there seems to be relatively little discussion of what is likely to be achieved as a result of the action, as if any progress is justification enough to focus on it. For example, what will be the difference in quality of life if I pursue a maximally healthy lifestyle vs a typical no exercise slacker life. In particular, do I want to die of a heart attack or cancer and alzheimers (which given my family history are the two ways I'm likely to go). If we had a realistic assessment of return on investment, as well as how psychologically likely we are to achieve things, we could focus our actions rationally.

I suggest that if we know how things work, what the problems are and what we can do about them, then we have a pretty good start on the meaning of life. I am frequently frustrated by the lack of perspective on these issues, we seem culturally conditioned to focus on action and specific theoretical points rather than trying to get a handle on it all. Of course that might be more fun, and that might be a sensible utility function. But for my own peace of mind I'd like to check there isn't an alternative.

By the way, here's how 30 users of one of the world's smartest Q&A sites answered the "meaning of life" question: http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-meaning-of-life

(Quora is mostly entrepreneur types at the moment and the epistemic rationality is well below LW-level.)

What is the meaning of life?

My usual response is that it is a category mistake (a type mismatch, for the CS nerds), or to interpret the question as:

What is the meaning of "life"?

the meaning of life is to collect as many paperclips as possible

Upvoted for this.

What is the meaning of life? Read the FAQ.

;)

I can think of several possible explanations:

An explanation that I've more or less settled on, if it is true that my constitution requires a certain kind of "meaning" that doesn't exist, is that a core component of my personality in charge of evaluating goals and my progress towards them simply doesn't allow terminating goals.

It seems like a tool with some usefulness that eventually hijacked my mind. Since this component is more meta it feels more conscious than other components (more like the 'I' of my mind).

Emphasizing the importance of evaluating goals is useful when I realize that there is a more direct route to goal-A than goal-B, but this component of my personality is at a loss when the point of goal A is goal A without any reason. Because it's whole job is to look for and expect justifications for goals, it doesn't understand pursuing a goal for its own sake.

Or, rather, it expects that any goal that is pursued must have 'real value' behind it, somewhere done the line. So we're not all chasing after worthless paper money: somewhere there's a bank we could cash it all in. For this goal-evaluating self, God should exist not so much to provide a goal but to guarantee the value behind some goal.

On a trivial level, the meaning of the word meaning is just "that which one intends to convey by language", the meaning of something is it's definition, it's essence.

But we don't take the question to mean something trivial, such as "what is the definition of life?"

So the deepness comes from connotation, for meaning is something that implies purposeful intent. So really it is the question of a creator in disguise.

Or we take the connotation of purpose to imply we are the agent both conveying and interpreting meaning, and it is thus us who are the source.

Either way, it all ends up being equivalent to asking what we are striving towards at large, the goal of humanity, or perhaps the target of evolution - that which we wish to see the world become.

What is perhaps most interesting is that as humans advance in knowledge or wisdom, there seems to a universal tendency to seek more complex meaning, more universal or non-personal goals. We seek out and work towards higher purpose - goals larger than what evolution appears to have optimized us for (our genes).

It's ironic that, not only do we fail to consciously represent our creator's purpose, we also fail to consciously represent a coherent picture of our own fragmented purposes. We typically act like confused servants to a crowd of waxing and waning drives. If you understand this state of affairs, then you can use the full power of conscious thought and achieve your true purposes better than you otherwise would have. You can strive to be a knowledgeable and effective servant to a crowd of waxing and waning drives.

From my LW-inspired blog post: What Is My Purpose?

I just remembered what this article somewhat triggered in my mind:

http://xkcd.com/167/

An addition to the evo-psych account:

If reason is primarily optimized for arguing about right and wrong, we shouldn't be surprised if this leads to some characteristic biases when we try (or think we try) to use it for truth-seeking. In particular, we tend to be more successful in argument if the ethical principles we state are more general, less based on personal preference, and more widely agreed upon, and so we'd expect to see a bias in favor of these characteristics. Carried to its extreme, this would lead us to characterize our moral framework as universal and objective, and to discount any moral framework which fails to make those claims.

I had a secular upbringing and was never really disappointed nor frustrated that the universe supplies no inherent purpose. These days I'm frustrated (but I turn that frustration into active thinking about the problem of extrapolated volition, which hasn't led anywhere at all useful but ya never know). That said, probably like a lot of people, I got into one or two small philosophical happy death spirals around first Buddhism and then Secular-Buddho-Epicureanism between the ages of, I dunno, 13-16, leading me to think that the 'meaning of life' was something like a gestalt of Enlightenment, Compassion for everyone (think Corinthians 13: "Love is patient, love is kind..."), and Happiness. I still think that's not a terrible answer but I realize now that insofar as it's true it's the result of evolutionary psychology and not some deeper truth of the universe. (HT EY.)

Context creates meaning and in its absence there is no meaning. To discuss meaning we also need to discuss context.

Perplexed suggests a personalized context.

What meanings have you given to your life?

When the Mormon missionaries visit my home, we often invite them in. Once I was asked, "If you don't believe in God, then what is the meaning of life?".

After talking with them, I could see that what they meant was purpose. Their beliefs gave them purpose and direction. They knew what they needed to do, and acting on those beliefs gave them comfort and satisfaction. In the face of the unknown and uncertain, they could place trust in the plan of their Heavenly Father.

From their perspective without God there is nothing but the unknown and uncertain. Life would be shallow, purposeless and frightening, and would in fact be Hell.

I wasn't sure how to explain to them why, without God, I found purpose in exploring my life, challenging the unknown and uncertain that I find within myself.

In Buddhism, the primary purpose of life is to end suffering.

Much of this is about being willing to see the world as it is, not as we want it to be.

This doesn't mean that we simply become comfortable with the status quo. This is explained well in Radical Buddhism and the Paradox of Acceptance.

Instead it gives us the awareness we need to transform our circumstances.

I am not Buddhist but I like the epistemic rationality of Buddhism. It provides a purpose for life and a how-to guide that seems to get to the core of the human condition.

I've long been of the opinion that (high truth probability that) we evolved into a Slave Race during the Neolithic. Republics are an accident of history, when a bunch of Noble Savage throwbacks come into power purely by accident, and build a system to keep people free. 50 years later the mutants start infiltrating it, and we go back to feudalism, our natural form of governance.

I was educated as an atheist. Maybe, be cause it was under communism, when I was born and raised.

The almost single good thing I attribute to the communism today. Good thing, non the less.

Building instrumental rationality may not be the reason why we're on this planet, but it it is the reason we're on this website.

NO. IT. ISN'T!

I reversed my upvote when I noticed this comment. That claim is making a factually incorrect assertion to me about myself and also thrusting a normative presumption at the community at large. I always vote down such claims, no matter how good the rest of the post or comment is.

(Incidentally, apart from that final sentence your post applied to epistemic rationality at least as much as it applied to instrumental rationality.)

As someone who was raised atheist in the liberal-scientific-secular-buddhist crowd, it has always seemed fundamental to me that there are amazing experiences like friendship and romance and poetry that have nothing at all to do with God but are just inherently worth pursuing.

My parents were not antireligious or militant atheists, and they have described themselves many times as spiritual. But the natural world and human desires seem to have simply won out in terms of being the best models for pursuing happiness and purpose.

It's not enough to find a meaningful cause. These monkeys want to look in the stars and see their lives' purpose described in explicit detail. They expect to comb through ancient writings and suddenly discover an edict reading "the meaning of life is to collect as many paperclips as possible" and then happily go about their lives as imperfect, yet fulfilled paperclip maximizers.

It seems likely that people really do have a biological (not memetic) god or authority figure-shaped hole in their lives (on top of naturally making way too many Type II errors, not seeing why 'goddidit' isn't an explanation, et cetera), probably weakest in modern hunter gatherer tribes and strongest in regions with a long uninterrupted systems of agriculture (5,000 years or so). (See The 10,000 Year Explosion.) This lets me sympathize with theists a little more: there are evolutionary reasons to be really frickin' scared of an empty universe with no easy instructions to follow.

Added: As far as I can tell this comment was pretty off-the-mark, even by armchair theorizing standards. See prase's reply and my reply to prase's reply below.

What could instrumental rationality mean without reference to a set of terminal goals (or equivalently: intrinsic values, preferences, a utility function)? Given that we seem to have value uncertainty, asking "What is the meaning of life?" seems perfectly reasonable (as long as one doesn't assume that there must be an answer). There is no reason why we couldn't have been designed by some creator to serve the creator's purposes. I'm not sure if it makes sense to be disappointed when that turns out not to be the case (as seems likely at this point), but it certainly doesn't make the value uncertainty problem any easier.