Almost at the end of the article, Wolfram has: "What Is Your Purpose on Earth? If aliens show up on Earth, one of the obvious big questions is: why are you he

Almost at the end of the article, Wolfram has: "What Is Your Purpose on Earth? If aliens show up on Earth, one of the obvious big questions is: why are you here? What is your purpose? It’s something the characters in Arrival talk about a lot. And when Christopher and I were visiting the set we were asked to make a list of possible answers, that could be put on a whiteboard or a clipboard. Here’s what we came up with:" the checklist: https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*Z0GZ8w2y9daVvZq65Y6HcQ.png https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*Z0GZ8w2y9daVvZq65Y... "As I mentioned before, the whole notion of purpose is something that’s very tied into cultural and other context. And it’s interesting to think about what purposes one would have put on this list at different times in human history. It’s also interesting to imagine what purposes humans — or AIs — might give for doing things in the future. Perhaps I’m too pessimistic but I rather expect that for future humans, AIs, and aliens, the answer will very often be something out there in the computational universe of possibilities — that we today aren’t even close to having words or concepts for." Seems like the intention is for Wolfram to be anticipating what we should be asking the aliens to tell us, about what they are doing on Earth to begin with. Conversely, it can also be read as the aliens asking us what we are doing on Earth to begin with. Good checklist. Might be a worthwhile idea not to wait for any aliens, and just fill out the checklist ourselves. Probably less fictional to focus on what humans think their own Purpose on Earth is all about. Start with yourself. Especially if Earth is your home planet.