Comment by xpe

One way to think about meaning is a general pattern to which behavior matches. This would be similar to a teleological cause in Aristotle’s framing.

Another way to think about meaning is how a person frames the importance of their decisions: why does doing one thing instead of another matter?

I, like most humans, want to survive for a lengthy period of time and lead a good life. I want my fellow humans and all of our children to share in that.

The idea of some unknown and maybe incomprehensible grand “plan” — whether it be a Judeo-Christian heaven or some techno-utopian rise of next generation machine consciousness personally brings me no comfort. Why? It is a foreign concept very far from my experience. So foreign that I sometimes view advocacy of such philosophies as doing it for manipulative reasons.

The idea of human thriving changing over time is good and part of how I think about progress. Moral lock-in (see MacAskill) is to be avoided. I admit the thought experiment of “how fast is too fast” raised by Bostrum in Superintelligence (IIRC) is challenging and requires more thought and experience.