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Reducing suffering doesn't seem to be a good criterion, because it has a trivial solution of reducing all life. The pain, the process of suffering itself is not
by chr1 7y ago
Reducing suffering doesn't seem to be a good criterion, because it has a trivial solution of reducing all life. The pain, the process of suffering itself is not bad, it is just a signal that what one wanted to do will not be possible to do. So suffering is just a messenger. A better heuristic for a purpose is to increase the future freedom of action https://www.ted.com/talks/alex_wissner_gross_a_new_equation_for_intelligence?language=en#t-2357 https://www.ted.com/talks/alex_wissner_gross_a_new_equation_...
- playing_colours 7y agoThis is what the comments above from HONEST_ANNIE and thrav mentioned as well. It's a promising territory to explore, but also going down the path of absorbing existentialists literature feels terrifying to me, based on my past experience of reading Nausea by Sartre. What I liked in Emerson's Self-Reliance is the idea of trusting ourselves in finding or deciding on the meaning of our own life, cultivating this ultimate freedom to decide and take responsibilities on our own.