Why is anything important?

A few weeks ago I was asked why I want Eroom’s law to be crushed. Why I want humans not to die of diseases. My answer was that it feels like a duty to leave the world better than we found it. Sometimes I say “because it is important.”

But why is it important? Why is anything important?

Truth is: I don’t know. The question pains me. It triggers frustration within me because I know it matters, yet I have no answer to the question. Why is it important? Why should life have any meaning? Why am I running?

I don’t know.

Why do I think we should fix healthcare first, fix education, fix democracy, protect western values? Why do I feel the pressure? I don’t know. There is something missing that makes it hard for me to articulate a why. I just know that I have to. That we have to. I believe deeply that our duty is to leave the world better than we found it.

Why?

If you ever ask yourself that question, I am sharing my thoughts with you here.

After thinking about it longer, I suspect the meaning of life might be to answer a question we cannot yet ask. Life feels like a sequence of puzzles, and every generation gets a set of them. Only by solving each puzzle set do we reach a kind of clarity that lets us articulate the next question and unlock the next set of puzzles.

Humanity is probably after something much larger than anything we can currently imagine. We still lack the knowledge to form even the right version of the question “what is the meaning of life”. A thousand years ago no one asked how to cure cancer. Every fever was just a fever. Only when we gained knowledge did we learn to distinguish one disease from another and ask better questions. Why look under a microscope? To understand a cell. Why understand a cell? Because understanding lets us articulate the next question and unlock the next set of puzzles.

There is an inner drive to understand the world by pursuing these puzzles. I do not think I chose it. I do not think any founder, scientist, researcher, artist, nurse, doctor, inventor or caregiver chooses it unless they are escaping the puzzle they were supposed to go after. I only know that reducing disease-related suffering and improving health, education and governance seems like the natural next set of puzzles. For others it is digitalizing the financial system, or fixing the climate crisis, ensuring sovereignty, or democratizing access to resources.

Why? Possibly because once those are solved we will have the knowledge needed to articulate the next question and unlock the next set of puzzles.

It is fascinating to know that we are about 8 billion humans on earth, and if we ask all of them what is the set of challenges we are facing, we would agree on the top 10. The order might vary, but there is a universal agreement about what must be fixed. And a universal force pushing the Doers to fix these problems. (the fact that we might disagree about the solution is irrelevant.)

Why is is important? Possibly because once those are solved we will have the knowledge needed to articulate the next question and unlock the next set of puzzles.

I do not think I will ever be able to answer the question “what is the meaning of life”. It seems to me that it is a question that can only be answered by life itself. The universe. Yet we lack the tools needed to communicate with this vast space that encompasses all of us.

And maybe that is the meaning of our lives. To solve puzzles and create deeper understanding so we can eventually ask life the question we cannot articulate yet. “Life/universe! what is the point of your existence?”

I believe the meaning of our individual lives is to create knowledge that helps us as individuals (and others) understand the universe more and move us closer to being able to articulate the right question. The last question.

While typing “the last question”, I suddenly remembered Asimov’s essay The Last Question (link at the end). I am in a “holy sh* This is what he meant “ state” right now. When I first read it years ago, it was just fiction. It does not feel so fictional anymore.

The SuperIntelligence Cosmic AC in his essay always answered “INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR MEANINGFUL ANSWER.”

So why is anything we do important? We are all here to generate data so we can eventually get a MEANINGFUL ANSWER to the universal question.

Why? Does it suddenly make life seem like a Spiel and therefore less meaningful. The not-doers doomscroll their lives to brainrot. The doers accelerate (e/acc) humanity toward the last question.

Progress is the acquisition of new information through experience. Technologies are experiences that let us create new information faster.

Rockets shipped astronauts to space, creating new information. The way I see Yendou is the same. Yendou’s job is shipping drugs to patients faster so we can create new insights. The faster we gather insights, the faster we can answer the question “how do we cure [insert disease]” with a concrete solution. When we are no longer challenged by diseases, we can focus on eternity. Can we extend the human lifespan and conquer death? If the answer is yes, then how?

Whatever life’s meaning is, one thing is clear. The set of questions we are challenged by today is huge. And for reasons I do not understand, I was born with a brain obsessed with answering a few of these questions. Creating technology that enables researchers to generate sufficient data to reach a meaningful answer that leads us toward cures.

Why is any of this important?

I don’t know. I am playing a game that started centuries ago when the first human discovered fire and began a tradition that allows you and me to have the privileges of a 21st century comfortable lifestyle.

And that is important to you and me.

So why stop the tradition.

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• Access Asimov’s essay here.

• Note: After I posted this on LinkedIn, a friend sent me an interview where Terence describes the universe as an organism with a purpose: reach hyper-connectedness (A cosmic awareness) by scaling complexity “disorder”. In his view, complexity is nothing more than the output of data production (more dots to connect) which leads to better understanding. That process of connecting dots is what he calls collective consciousness. Humans are the engines that generate collective consciousness (= data).

• On another note: over the weekend, while recovering from a cold and reading The Unincorporated Man in bed, I looked at my hands holding the book and realized how strange it is that we live in a body we neither fully understand nor control, yet we still believe we’re free. It’s humbling (not the LinkedIn way) to be reminded that we will always be dependent on an envelop to carry us. Today it’s a body of flesh, one day it’s an NVIDIA chip (?). I used to hate this thought (to be uploaded in the cloud), I now realized it’s just a romantic attachment to the body, combined with the fear of the unknown. Maybe “Upload” is our only way to achieve Super Intelligence. And probably we will only welcome it to escape death. Then again, why? ….