This is a long winded way to dance around nihilism. Nihilism is much like a hidden tarpit on the philosophical journey. Easy to fall into and get stuck. Necess

This is a long winded way to dance around nihilism. Nihilism is much like a hidden tarpit on the philosophical journey. Easy to fall into and get stuck. Necessary in a way, but not the place to dwell. A primary thing to point out is perception of meaning is flexible and not static, and things don't need "to matter". Meaning is an emergent phenomenon of relationships. As an example: Doing meaningful computer work is about the relationship between the coder, the computer, and the emotional/physical rewards of completing the work. If you define the relationship of "computer work now" vs "computer work in 20 years" that edge in our meaning graph is going to have a value bending towards not mattering at all. > what's the point of humans having a replacement rate when a smaller population can be a lot richer and better off? Sidebar: this is also probably wrong as far as I understand. Modern wealth is built off of leveraging large populations / economics of scale and has this implied requirement of growth to maintain stability. Until things are completely automated (AKA we have robots capable of matching a human's productivity) a smaller population would imply a population collapse which would not be good in the short term.