our life's purpose is not happiness
life wants to “live forever”
continuity of life is our credo. from simple flight-or-fight instincts in our reptilian brain to the more sophisticated proclivities and trepidations in our neocortex clearly reveal this. we have health manifestos aimed at “longevity”. faith and deities linger due to eschatology despite our qualms about religion. we all deeply yearn to exist, forever!
evolution already solved at the genetic level through reproduction. why stop at genetics? why not reproduce or extend individual consciousness? remember that consciousness “just” evolved a moment ago in the grand timescale of evolution. so it’s safe to assume we haven’t had enough time to evolve a mechanism in natural selection to extend individual consciousness1. while we are at it, do we just optimize for the posited goal of reproduction instead of vague ideas like happiness?
it may sound odd or even corrupt to optimize life for sex. but everything we do from the moment we wake up has been programmed to accomplish just that, even though we aren’t actively aware of it. happiness may not be the objective function2 for life. carnal desires, including romance, form the bane and bliss of our limbic system. whether we like it or not, our behavior, intentions, and mores are naturally selected over 3 million years to ensure just one thing - that we can reproduce.3
all great ideas but we just wanna be happy!
here’s an idea that works for men. do hard things4. men evolved to hunt, protect, and solve problems. men can be happy by “simply” (i know the irony) doing hard things. the inherent randomness in life, or serendipity as i call it, will take care of the rest. if i may be so bold and poetic (both of which i have), i will add that the mother of all virtues is gratitude. now we don’t want a child out of wedlock, do we? so let me reveal, the father is courage.
this might be what ray kurzweil proposes as singularity. ai futurists seem to think this is possible in the near future. i surely think ai could reify the hivemind, but biologically extending individual consciousness is what i am talking about here.
an objective function is a function (ie, a process, growth, movement etc.) that we minimize or maximize in order to solve something else (let’s say an engineering problem). we often try to maximize happiness to solve for purpose. a machine learning model that sees the picture of a table and learns it has 4 legs might hallucinate and confidently predict it’s a cat. so we try to minimize the objective function that represents this error although as humans we know cats are more stoic than tables.
courtship is an evolved behavior to enable reproduction and child-rearing. people’s “stated preference” for pair bonding almost always overestimate courtship traits we often hear (eg. good listener). their “revealed preferences” (what they actually want) disagree with that. a study on 10,000+ people in 40+ countries proved this. what people say they want on their dating profile or elsewhere are traits that are relatively less important to them: loyalty, emotional stability, confidence, being a good listener etc. but the most important preferences are all carnal and not easily admitted: being a good lover, good smell, sexy, attractive etc.
we seek mates using a fundamental filter process followed by a higher-order selection process. we filter first and foremost by (the potential for) quality of sex but are oblivious to it. then we select from that pool by our stated preference of behavioral traits over time. data and charts on that study here:
i know of no better life purpose than to perish in attempting the great and the impossible - nietzsche