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At some point -- sometimes early, often too late -- we realize we're going to die. Our time is finite. We have only so many days to do anything, let alone somet

At some point -- sometimes early, often too late -- we realize we're going to die. Our time is finite. We have only so many days to do anything, let alone something that matters. Meaning is found in how and why we spend that time. When we're fooled into believing money matters more than time, we trade far too much of the latter for the former. Worse, we can mistake the monetary value of our time for its actual value, and then optimize our entire lives according to that myth. The idea that AI destroys meaning is a false framing. Many people are already experiencing a meaning crisis, and AI is simply an easy scapegoat. Purpose comes from discovering our own values through living, not from accepting meanings imposed by others.

dangus 1y ago
I’d also extend this by saying that you can just exist and be happy and then die. There’s no need to be defined by some effort you’re putting into some kind of work or hobby. If there’s someone out there who just sits on the beach all day and survives by eating coconuts they don’t have to be defined by photography or coding or whatever hobby is being used to seek external validation. And that’s a bit of a problem with this article. The photographer that wants to quit because of digital photography? I find that odd, it seems to me like the film community has a really great time with the craft of film photography in the digital age. If anything, the massive shrinkage in available professional labs should make the art of developing your own photos even more validating. Why didn’t this photographer want to quit when Kodak made disposable cameras and CVS would develop your photos in an hour? I submit that it isn’t digital photography that killed their hobby/passion. It’s okay to not love doing something anymore and take a break or move on to something else. I think this idea that it defines you is a bit of a toxic validation mechanism.
- dfee 1y ago
  > If there’s someone out there who just sits on the beach all day and survives by eating coconuts they don’t have to be defined by photography or coding or whatever hobby is being used to seek external validation. This is written from a different values perspective than mine, but I can understand it. I think you’d have made a stronger point if you’d focused on internal validation, though. For many, the ideal is internal integrity driving oneself forward. I say ideal, because we’re imperfect creatures - external validation, greed, etc. slip in. Overall though, a life on the beach sipping coconuts sounds immediately appealing, but long term empty. I’m not going to tell you it’s working 996, either. For me, the journey is finding what makes me whole - through many failed starts.
  - dangus 1y ago
    The reason I didn’t focus on internal validation is that I think the article is ultimately not talking about that. I think the article is almost exclusively talking about external validation.
- mym1990 1y ago
  "If there’s someone out there who just sits on the beach all day and survives by eating coconuts" This seems like a dire situation for most humans and probably isn't the status quo for human operation. Its perfectly fine to sit on the beach, but eventually a light should go on that would say "lets go build some tools", "lets go see if I can catch a fish", "lets build a hut". Which would all be fine and admirable things to spend your time doing.
  - dangus 1y ago
    Obviously I don’t mean it literally, I mean a general situation where one’s needs are met and they decide to spend their time generally idle.
gsf_emergency_2 1y ago
There's this related phenom which seems paradoxical to me but maybe you can help figure: Things that are built with money (& not by say, intrinsic motivation alone) seem to have a high ratio of (traction) to (resources invested). Not sure if marketing alone can explain that? Obvious exceptions come to mind , eg the Linux kernel, but even that was massively boosted by commercial interests. (One other class of exceptions could be tentatively named "winning the zeitgeist lottery") If you would agree that this phenom exists in the short to mid time frame: without the likelihood of traction, how can intrinsic meaning alone provide motivation?
- mym1990 1y ago
  I would guess a lot of intrinsic motivation is driven a lot by hormones and things like dopamine release when you do something that is really interesting or exciting. I play tennis and absolutely love it, I will never make a dime from doing it, and that's totally okay with me. Things that are built with money are often done so for scale. Successful things that are built with money often also have people who have some interest in the thing they are building.
  - gsf_emergency_2 1y ago
    Thanks for helping to refine the thinking. I guess the other side of the coin that would be make the paradox interesting is that, in the long term, it has to seem that most of the stuff built with money (but without intrinsically motivated managers) lose out to the stuff built on pure passion. After discounting for a heap of survival bias.
    - mym1990 1y ago
      Yeah I guess it really depends on what the measure for success is. As with all things, the answer is probably that products that work really well or are beloved are often a combination of money and passion. Unfortunately, once the product/company reaches a certain threshold, it seems to get bought out and there is only money left, and thus it becomes crap.
- 1y ago
swat535 1y ago
While you make good points, I wanted to quickly counter this narrative with the fact that majority of people are chasing money because it provides them the basic necessities. Money gives you food, shelter, healthcare and relationships; all of which are required for happiness. I think we need make the distinction between a startup founder missing his daughter's birthday because he is at the office chasing money and the average Joe working double shifts at Walmart. Most people don't even have the luxury of optimizing their life for money.
- pixl97 1y ago
  If this is really the end state of humanity then we should stop all automation and reel things back 10 thousand years or so. This is, modern people can imagine the end of the world before they can imagine a world without money based capitalism. Go back far enough in history and money disappears. We had barter and trade and happiness still existed without money. Go back further and trade becomes les important and violence/cooperation to achieve what one wants becomes greater. Trying to shove money in a post labor world won't make sense and will just lead to war/genocide if we don't find a way to transition.
  - diordiderot 1y ago
    Post labour is still resource constrained. How do you efficiently allocate resources? Especially when you have a wide spectrum of preferences. I think if you spent long enough thinking about that problem you'd just end up inventing money. You'd have to call it something else so it sounded rebelliously anti-capitalist though
  - SkyBelow 1y ago
    Barter still exists. It is largely inefficient as we don't see things having equal value. Even in barter, often some intermediate that was a form of money emerged, such as a staple food that could be stored for a relative long term. In smaller communities, there was a bit of not seeking equal exchange because belonging to the community was more important, but that doesn't scale well to larger groups and can lead to some people being taken advantage of and thus leaving the community if that is an option. Violence is problematic for self evident reasons. Cooperation I already touched on about the community involvement, with all the same problems. It isn't that we can't imagine a world without money, but that we quickly see the problems with it given the scale of modern day life. As for post scarcity, it really depends upon what is post scarcity. Money becomes meaningless for things that are not scarce, but some things remain scarce.
anal_reactor 1y ago
I know that one day I'm going to die, but it's just incredibly difficult to find meaning in life. The more I try the more I fail and the more depressed I get. I can't find meaning in work because toxic corporate environment is what pays most. I can't find meaning in hobbies because the mind just gets bored of them at some point, whether it's productive hobbies or doomscrolling. I can't find meaning in other people because talking to 99% of them leaves me frustrated rather than fulfilled, and the other 1% has better shit to do than talking to me. I can't find meaning in meaninglessness because mind starts to wander. By the power of sheer discipline I keep moving on. I have my daily routine which encompasses a variety of activities that theoretically should push me forward as a person. But I can't escape the profound sense of disappointment and dissatisfaction. It's terrifying for me to think that this is how I'll spend the rest of my life and then I'll die, but at the same time I'm completely clueless what I could potentially change while there's still time. And the worst part is, compared to most of humanity, I'm very privileged.
- escapedmoose 1y ago
  Did you always feel this way? If not, how far can you trace it back? I don’t have any particular expertise in the subject, just curious and willing to listen if you’d like to talk it out.
  - anal_reactor 1y ago
    I'm an extrovert, I can't do without human contact, but at the same time I'm an oddball, which prevents me from building solid connections with most people. This is hell and I can't stop feeling lonely. Some time ago I was helping my parents with renovation, and I found school documents from my childhood. It said that I had issues getting along with other kids. As an adult I learned what to tell people to get them to like me, but this strategy only gets me to survive in the society, not thrive in it.
    - escapedmoose 1y ago
      Loneliness sucks man, I’m sorry. :( It’s really interesting that lack of connection is what you jump to immediately as the cause of your sense of meaninglessness. I wonder what “thriving in society” looks like to you? And you may have tried this already, but personally I’ve found group hobbies to improve my sense of connectedness. I’m part of a group that meets regularly to sketch on street corners and in coffee shops. I’m not best friends with anyone there, but it’s very fulfilling just to sit with people in the same space for a couple hours, listen to them talk, and share our sketches. There might be drawing, hiking, photography, dance, etc. groups near you…? You’re certainly not alone in feeling lonely these days though. Modern society is so isolating, connecting feels like such a challenge.
fellowniusmonk 1y ago
Meaning can be found yes. But just remember, we are the only observed entities that _create_ meaning, complex, rich, nuanced meaning. We are the meaning generators of the universe. If the universe has a random forest walk to create meaning, to try new cool stuff, to hold a mirror to and understand itself. We are it. We don't know and ex ante can't predict which human(s) might reverse entropy, alter the topology of the universe, prevent an asteroid from wiping us out, escape the bounds of this reality. None of those things may ever happen, but as far as I know they haven't been strictly ruled out yet. It's early days yet.
- gsf_emergency_2 1y ago
  Sorry to repeat but I felt a bit of Eureka If I were to put myself in Archimedes' shoes (when he basically discovered calculus) motivation comes from "this is nuts but it could work" and meaning comes from "yep that works!" https://youtu.be/h0gPomI3h8o https://youtu.be/h0gPomI3h8o (That was long ago, but I'm sure it also happens today)
  - fellowniusmonk 1y ago
    Information is physical and part of the physical entropic universe, Landauer showed that. When we imagine something in our brain we are physically testing or creating something even if ephemeral, these thoughts you make have meaning and are real just with low distribution. They can be very complex thoughts, you can invent worlds and objects and play around with them in your mind for relatively low cost, this is the root of humanities power, the ability to create meaning, to create arbitrary coherence (even if it's just internal coherence) You can distribute this meaning to others, as a written or spoken word. You can investigate if your thought has correspondence to something that exists in the exterior world. This can be science and discovery. But you can also create something that you know doesn't exist and then work to have it realized in the external world. What's the casual path from Gene Rondenberry to the iPod? Hard to compute. We create meaning. It's what we do. The funny thing is this, we keep talking about people's search for meaning, but if we look at the observable facts, to speak poetically, if the universe was sentient (and I don't personally believe it is) it would be looking to us to see what meaning we create and new shit we discover and why it works the way it does.
diordiderot 1y ago
I've realised far too early. The death of my college age sibling has me constantly scanning and checking for life threatening illnesses. Sometimes the odd ache or a pain sends me into a days long spiral. The fear extends to my spouse and children. Financially, I'm completely free, very comfortable, want for nothing, but still don't feel any sense of achievement. I need help
- mvcosta91 1y ago
  I’ve been in the exact same boat for a decade. What helped me was working out; it’s pretty much a hobby now. Endorphins are a hell of a drug.

dangus 1y ago

I’d also extend this by saying that you can just exist and be happy and then die. There’s no need to be defined by some effort you’re putting into some kind of work or hobby. If there’s someone out there who just sits on the beach all day and survives by eating coconuts they don’t have to be defined by photography or coding or whatever hobby is being used to seek external validation. And that’s a bit of a problem with this article. The photographer that wants to quit because of digital photography? I find that odd, it seems to me like the film community has a really great time with the craft of film photography in the digital age. If anything, the massive shrinkage in available professional labs should make the art of developing your own photos even more validating. Why didn’t this photographer want to quit when Kodak made disposable cameras and CVS would develop your photos in an hour? I submit that it isn’t digital photography that killed their hobby/passion. It’s okay to not love doing something anymore and take a break or move on to something else. I think this idea that it defines you is a bit of a toxic validation mechanism.

dfee 1y ago
> If there’s someone out there who just sits on the beach all day and survives by eating coconuts they don’t have to be defined by photography or coding or whatever hobby is being used to seek external validation. This is written from a different values perspective than mine, but I can understand it. I think you’d have made a stronger point if you’d focused on internal validation, though. For many, the ideal is internal integrity driving oneself forward. I say ideal, because we’re imperfect creatures - external validation, greed, etc. slip in. Overall though, a life on the beach sipping coconuts sounds immediately appealing, but long term empty. I’m not going to tell you it’s working 996, either. For me, the journey is finding what makes me whole - through many failed starts.
- dangus 1y ago
  The reason I didn’t focus on internal validation is that I think the article is ultimately not talking about that. I think the article is almost exclusively talking about external validation.
mym1990 1y ago
"If there’s someone out there who just sits on the beach all day and survives by eating coconuts" This seems like a dire situation for most humans and probably isn't the status quo for human operation. Its perfectly fine to sit on the beach, but eventually a light should go on that would say "lets go build some tools", "lets go see if I can catch a fish", "lets build a hut". Which would all be fine and admirable things to spend your time doing.
- dangus 1y ago
  Obviously I don’t mean it literally, I mean a general situation where one’s needs are met and they decide to spend their time generally idle.

gsf_emergency_2 1y ago

There's this related phenom which seems paradoxical to me but maybe you can help figure: Things that are built with money (& not by say, intrinsic motivation alone) seem to have a high ratio of (traction) to (resources invested). Not sure if marketing alone can explain that? Obvious exceptions come to mind , eg the Linux kernel, but even that was massively boosted by commercial interests. (One other class of exceptions could be tentatively named "winning the zeitgeist lottery") If you would agree that this phenom exists in the short to mid time frame: without the likelihood of traction, how can intrinsic meaning alone provide motivation?

mym1990 1y ago
I would guess a lot of intrinsic motivation is driven a lot by hormones and things like dopamine release when you do something that is really interesting or exciting. I play tennis and absolutely love it, I will never make a dime from doing it, and that's totally okay with me. Things that are built with money are often done so for scale. Successful things that are built with money often also have people who have some interest in the thing they are building.
- gsf_emergency_2 1y ago
  Thanks for helping to refine the thinking. I guess the other side of the coin that would be make the paradox interesting is that, in the long term, it has to seem that most of the stuff built with money (but without intrinsically motivated managers) lose out to the stuff built on pure passion. After discounting for a heap of survival bias.
  - mym1990 1y ago
    Yeah I guess it really depends on what the measure for success is. As with all things, the answer is probably that products that work really well or are beloved are often a combination of money and passion. Unfortunately, once the product/company reaches a certain threshold, it seems to get bought out and there is only money left, and thus it becomes crap.
1y ago

swat535 1y ago

While you make good points, I wanted to quickly counter this narrative with the fact that majority of people are chasing money because it provides them the basic necessities. Money gives you food, shelter, healthcare and relationships; all of which are required for happiness. I think we need make the distinction between a startup founder missing his daughter's birthday because he is at the office chasing money and the average Joe working double shifts at Walmart. Most people don't even have the luxury of optimizing their life for money.

pixl97 1y ago
If this is really the end state of humanity then we should stop all automation and reel things back 10 thousand years or so. This is, modern people can imagine the end of the world before they can imagine a world without money based capitalism. Go back far enough in history and money disappears. We had barter and trade and happiness still existed without money. Go back further and trade becomes les important and violence/cooperation to achieve what one wants becomes greater. Trying to shove money in a post labor world won't make sense and will just lead to war/genocide if we don't find a way to transition.
- diordiderot 1y ago
  Post labour is still resource constrained. How do you efficiently allocate resources? Especially when you have a wide spectrum of preferences. I think if you spent long enough thinking about that problem you'd just end up inventing money. You'd have to call it something else so it sounded rebelliously anti-capitalist though
- SkyBelow 1y ago
  Barter still exists. It is largely inefficient as we don't see things having equal value. Even in barter, often some intermediate that was a form of money emerged, such as a staple food that could be stored for a relative long term. In smaller communities, there was a bit of not seeking equal exchange because belonging to the community was more important, but that doesn't scale well to larger groups and can lead to some people being taken advantage of and thus leaving the community if that is an option. Violence is problematic for self evident reasons. Cooperation I already touched on about the community involvement, with all the same problems. It isn't that we can't imagine a world without money, but that we quickly see the problems with it given the scale of modern day life. As for post scarcity, it really depends upon what is post scarcity. Money becomes meaningless for things that are not scarce, but some things remain scarce.

anal_reactor 1y ago

I know that one day I'm going to die, but it's just incredibly difficult to find meaning in life. The more I try the more I fail and the more depressed I get. I can't find meaning in work because toxic corporate environment is what pays most. I can't find meaning in hobbies because the mind just gets bored of them at some point, whether it's productive hobbies or doomscrolling. I can't find meaning in other people because talking to 99% of them leaves me frustrated rather than fulfilled, and the other 1% has better shit to do than talking to me. I can't find meaning in meaninglessness because mind starts to wander. By the power of sheer discipline I keep moving on. I have my daily routine which encompasses a variety of activities that theoretically should push me forward as a person. But I can't escape the profound sense of disappointment and dissatisfaction. It's terrifying for me to think that this is how I'll spend the rest of my life and then I'll die, but at the same time I'm completely clueless what I could potentially change while there's still time. And the worst part is, compared to most of humanity, I'm very privileged.

escapedmoose 1y ago
Did you always feel this way? If not, how far can you trace it back? I don’t have any particular expertise in the subject, just curious and willing to listen if you’d like to talk it out.
- anal_reactor 1y ago
  I'm an extrovert, I can't do without human contact, but at the same time I'm an oddball, which prevents me from building solid connections with most people. This is hell and I can't stop feeling lonely. Some time ago I was helping my parents with renovation, and I found school documents from my childhood. It said that I had issues getting along with other kids. As an adult I learned what to tell people to get them to like me, but this strategy only gets me to survive in the society, not thrive in it.
  - escapedmoose 1y ago
    Loneliness sucks man, I’m sorry. :( It’s really interesting that lack of connection is what you jump to immediately as the cause of your sense of meaninglessness. I wonder what “thriving in society” looks like to you? And you may have tried this already, but personally I’ve found group hobbies to improve my sense of connectedness. I’m part of a group that meets regularly to sketch on street corners and in coffee shops. I’m not best friends with anyone there, but it’s very fulfilling just to sit with people in the same space for a couple hours, listen to them talk, and share our sketches. There might be drawing, hiking, photography, dance, etc. groups near you…? You’re certainly not alone in feeling lonely these days though. Modern society is so isolating, connecting feels like such a challenge.

fellowniusmonk 1y ago

Meaning can be found yes. But just remember, we are the only observed entities that _create_ meaning, complex, rich, nuanced meaning. We are the meaning generators of the universe. If the universe has a random forest walk to create meaning, to try new cool stuff, to hold a mirror to and understand itself. We are it. We don't know and ex ante can't predict which human(s) might reverse entropy, alter the topology of the universe, prevent an asteroid from wiping us out, escape the bounds of this reality. None of those things may ever happen, but as far as I know they haven't been strictly ruled out yet. It's early days yet.

gsf_emergency_2 1y ago
Sorry to repeat but I felt a bit of Eureka If I were to put myself in Archimedes' shoes (when he basically discovered calculus) motivation comes from "this is nuts but it could work" and meaning comes from "yep that works!" https://youtu.be/h0gPomI3h8o https://youtu.be/h0gPomI3h8o (That was long ago, but I'm sure it also happens today)
- fellowniusmonk 1y ago
  Information is physical and part of the physical entropic universe, Landauer showed that. When we imagine something in our brain we are physically testing or creating something even if ephemeral, these thoughts you make have meaning and are real just with low distribution. They can be very complex thoughts, you can invent worlds and objects and play around with them in your mind for relatively low cost, this is the root of humanities power, the ability to create meaning, to create arbitrary coherence (even if it's just internal coherence) You can distribute this meaning to others, as a written or spoken word. You can investigate if your thought has correspondence to something that exists in the exterior world. This can be science and discovery. But you can also create something that you know doesn't exist and then work to have it realized in the external world. What's the casual path from Gene Rondenberry to the iPod? Hard to compute. We create meaning. It's what we do. The funny thing is this, we keep talking about people's search for meaning, but if we look at the observable facts, to speak poetically, if the universe was sentient (and I don't personally believe it is) it would be looking to us to see what meaning we create and new shit we discover and why it works the way it does.

diordiderot 1y ago

I've realised far too early. The death of my college age sibling has me constantly scanning and checking for life threatening illnesses. Sometimes the odd ache or a pain sends me into a days long spiral. The fear extends to my spouse and children. Financially, I'm completely free, very comfortable, want for nothing, but still don't feel any sense of achievement. I need help

mvcosta91 1y ago
I’ve been in the exact same boat for a decade. What helped me was working out; it’s pretty much a hobby now. Endorphins are a hell of a drug.