Framing

This is a post written for progeny, to help them figure out what to do and why. I'll evolve this post as my understanding changes, but I will post new versions as new blog entries so that previous versions remain.

Purpose

Many people ask, "what is the meaning of existence, and what is my purpose?" To help answer, many people adopt an identity--such as that of a Christian or an Atheist, a Nihilist or an Existentialist--which provides them an answer. What matters is not which one is correct but rather whether any of the identities' ideas are your ideas. If they are not your ideas, you are not taking ultimate responsibility for your actions.

When asking, "what is my purpose," we often have the roles reversed. We think we are the ones that need to be asking, but in fact we are being asked, be it by God, "the universe," etc. It is our responsibility to answer, to choose what we are going to use our time and capacity for. We are free to pick anything. We are also free to change our answer at any time.

I am a deeply curious person. I want to know how the universe works, where we came from (ex: can we reproduce human evolution?), where the ability to introspect came from, etc. From this, I derive my purpose. I'm here to explore the mysteries of these things. This journey is as spiritual as it is scientific. The more we understand these things, the more we understand what God is.

Dream big. So far our species has not been able to answer these questions, and it is likely I won't be able to answer them before I die. But that makes things all the more exciting and the journey more fulfilling. We have largely journeyed through the deserts, jungles, mountains, oceans. Next is the fabric and expanse of the universe.

Toward answering these questions, we need as much help as we can get. From all kinds of people: White, Black, Asian, etc., men, women, straight, gay, researchers, scientists, engineers, those working in finance, agriculture, entertainment, government, etc., Americans, Europeans, Africans, Asians, Australians, etc., Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Atheists, etc., from robots, software, etc., etc.

Your selection of meaning and purpose is very important. It affects how you value everything in your life, from people to ideas, work to rest, birth to death, your time.

Most breakthroughs in human progress were accomplished by a talented few people. But equally important were the anonymous people sustaining the society where those select few people could thrive and work. The breakthroughs by the few benefited the many. It is fine to aspire to be one of the talented few, and it is fine to aspire to be one of the many who help sustain a society that encourages breakthroughs in human progress.

Remember that there was no award waiting for Newton, da Vinci, Beethoven, Homer, Sun Tzu, etc. after they finished their most impactful works.

Also remember to rest and enjoy entertainment along the way.

Think bigger than self and play long-term games.

Explanations

What you hold in your mind will affect how you live. We often talk about peoples' beliefs. The nature of belief is often abstract. How do you compare beliefs? Why would you choose one belief over another? I realized I am in search of good explanations. What I used to call my set of beliefs I now call my set of explanations. A good explanation is hard to vary without changing its conclusion, accounts for the data, and seeks universal truth.

"Earth has seasons because its axial tilt causes hemispheres to lean toward or away from the Sun's direct rays as Earth completes a cycle of its orbit," is a good explanation. It is hard to vary: the explanation is tightly constrained on orbit and axial tilt--if you remove one of these, the explanation is incomplete, and if you broaden one of these, many permutations of the explanation account for the same phenomenon, meaning the permuted part is increasingly arbitrary. This explanation also agrees with what we can measure about the position and orientation of the Earth and timing of the seasons. This has universal applicability, as it also explains seasons on other celestial bodies.

More important than whether your current explanation is perfect is how quickly you can adopt a better explanation. In other words, the most important thing is how quickly you can correct errors. The purpose you select will help you understand what an error is.

Children

Have them.

In a world where villages needed children so that they had enough hands on the farm, soldiers in the militia, and workers at home, for the sake of survival, having children needed no explanation. In our current world where we are so comfortable and abstracted from base survival, we do need to think through having children.

One way to approach this is through your selected purpose. For me, we need people to continue the investigation into the universe. No people, no more journey.

A more general approach is thinking about your own comfort. Food in grocery stores, a roof over your head, an air conditioner in the summer, hospitals, medicine, transportation, entertainment, phones, etc. These were all made by people. Even the robots and machines that make things automatically are currently made by people. No people, no things. If you think that not having children will have no effect in your lifetime, consider the hypothetical case of very many people suddenly not having children. When you are 60+ years old, there will hardly be doctors, firefighters, construction workers, engineers, etc. younger than you.

No child wants to hear that they were brought into this world to satisfy someone else's purpose or to be a statistic in an economy. The ultimate reason to have children is because humanity is awesome. Nothing else currently acts as a universal explainer (can create the explanations and everything derived from them I mentioned above).

Money

You will need to make enough money to solve your money problems. Your money problems are relative to you. Some people need much less than others to live their lives.

Have a financial goal. Goals have two typical forms. The first is the amount of money you need to earn every year to pay your yearly cost of living. The second is the amount of money you need to invest to have the yearly returns cover your yearly cost of living.

The purpose of your goal is to protect you from chasing money more than you need to. Time is our most valuable resource, and initially you will need to trade hours of your life for money. Ideally you can make money doing what you love, but you will most likely need to do things you don't love for an indefinite amount of time. The end goal is either to work until you are able to make a living working on what you love or have your invested money cover your expenses. In either case, aim to produce more than you consume in this world.

Governments control the effective value of money by changing the amount of money in circulation and adjusting things such as interest rates. You need to understand how these things work in order to set appropriate financial goals.

If you are aiming to live off of investments, it will likely take a long time to reach your goal, on the order of decades. During this prolonged time, it is easy to slowly, subconsciously change your lifestyle and mentality to one that treats life as having to work for money until you die. The ultimate point of your work throughout life is not to make money. The ultimate point is whatever you selected as your purpose.

Money is just a number in a database. Don't live your entire life just trying to make this number go up.

Health

A healthy man wants a thousand things, a sick man only wants one.
- Confucius

Your health is the foundation of everyting, so take care of it. Exercise is not just good for your body but also your mind, mood, and general future. You want your body to be there for you when you need it, as you want to be there for the people you love.