Our special guest this week is Sondre Rasch, a former political advisor to the parliament of Norway, and founder of freelance platform konsus.com and safety net SafetyWing. He has a background in economics and computer science. Recorded 23 July 2017.

Sondre shares his findings on decision making: how to think about “what to do next”, choose valuable goals, and make rapid progress.

Follow Sondre Rasch on Quora.

 

Episode Machine Transcript (unedited and uncorrected)

Let’s make the future let’s make the future let’s make the future let’s make.

Let’s make the future a discussion about future trends technologies and their implications for human society. Coming to you from all over the world featuring the voices of Michael.

Said No Michael.

Welcome to let’s make the future I’m Michael Curry and this week we have a special guest soldiery Raj actually so Undercliff you tell me how you pronounce your name and a region and a region.

Of the US but you’re pronounced it was because.

Let’s just call you sundering avoid that problem so we also have usual cast of panelists this week here to ask some under some interesting questions so why don’t you introduce yourselves and.

It is so rich uncle good Ishant song I’m look for you.

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Nation I think I can stand up. To you know live in the I there’s Michael I mean at all times what can I get your point of view just on that of the access and so I’m probably it’s not because you know who provide solutions.

Because. Just because I’m so much. Wider but I’m so beyond all the way so bad that well so as usual we have a cast of characters all interested in making the future and attacking it from different perspectives and now our guest this week is taking a wholly different perspective and is going to lead us into a discussion here today so Sandra is a thirty year old are we genuinely. As a background in economics and computer science he founded the freelance platform of concerts which was in why carbonator and safety net safety wing maybe he can tell us about this at some point sounds interesting and he was also formerly policy advisor for the parliament of Norway so take it away Senator thank you Michael great intro so the topic I want to talk about today with the fundamental problem but I suppose we’ll face it which is how to think about what to do next rest a bit more you say like which cause us to worry about in our lives and since I was young I found this an interesting topic so I should say that the inspiration of research into this topic comes to a large degree from what some called rationality community in the late ninety’s and early two thousand were some rationality community call less wrong which has led to a spurred some interesting subcommunities like effect about the present and with this community tries to think about our questions of this magnitude sort of the big questions of structure them in a way that makes sense and this applicable and where you use all the available knowledge to maximise your impact in life and the effectiveness of that endeavor so today we were structured my lentil and just ask questions that’s a go is that I will first less than three reasons for why it is worthwhile to think about what to do next and then I’ll go through seven relevant I.D.’s sort of component ideas that I think are important to have in mind when doing this exercise and lastly I’ll just give my personal conclusions how do I use this knowledge to my own decisions in life and how have I done so sooner that makes sense and that plan of attack seems great I’m wondering when you say what to do next are you referring to the very practical decision making that we have to do every day in our lives like if I’m walking down the street and I’m deciding whether I want to go to work toward. Go to the gym or do something else this is what you’re referring to are you thinking about on a societal level what’s the scope here one point I will get back to this I think that these are different variations of the same question it’s just that somewhere you know it’s more a question of derivation whether to look at an individual or a point in time but I definitely do think that what you do in a given day is connected to what you think society should be doing and what you think is the most valuable thing to spend your time on over long periods of time so yeah it makes sense it’s Weston of the whole society and your whole life but I do think that in practice this turns out to mourn and put in what to do with it which actually taking a given day so that’s all right that makes sense go right ahead Yes Great thanks yeah OK So the reason I want to start with why I think about this at all is one of the things that motivated me originally to start thinking about this maybe sixteen years ago it’s a realization that I could have more effect than I assume so there are some needs that are very common in society currently which I think are a bit confusing to people for example there is the medium of whether we let’s say have made any difference given their universe is infinitely large and whether a single person can make a difference given that there are seven billion people on the earth etc So I just wanted to address a few of these questions which I think are actually a fallacious So the first this problem of whether you are just one person how can you possibly make a difference given that there are seven billion people on there and I think that that’s actually a wrong way to model humanity especially now with the Internet so the right way I think tomorrow the human project is that a network and that means that any person is a node in a network and given that you have a thousand friends and they maybe have a thousand friends or a lifetime then you are once removed from a million and two people removed from a billion people and when looking at how information propagates in a network you can see that the. Each individual person has the potential to affect a large part of the world very quickly the second problem the problem up that sort of Stephen Hawking mentions in his book A Brief History of Time which is that we are chemical scum on a typical earth on a mediocre planet around a mediocre star on a mediocre galaxy and sort of the problem of mediocrity is what they call it and I think that this is a misunderstanding because a typical point in space is basically interest stellar space so even though this is true there is nothing typical about our specific position in space and time and furthermore connected to this is the question of what is possible in our future and this book the beginning of infinity since I think lays out incredibly persuasively I realize this is a topic to take in this intro but essentially the conclusion from that book is that as long as things are within the laws of physics then all problems are soluble in a way which leaves open an infinite avenue for future possibilities and I think that this is also an axiom that I’m building this for the top I’m OK And the third point which is connected to this is the reference frame so one reason that people would say that it doesn’t matter what they do is that they have from my point if you are wrong reference for so reference frame person standing on a train at the train it’s moving from left to right but the person is moving backwards right so which reference frame is correct to analyze the boy standing in the train and I think this question a reference frame often comes up where people said that so we doesn’t matter because the universe it’s infinitely big For example but I think that that is just an error of using wrong reference Fred so the correct reference friend to use is one of the appropriate scale and a fact of the sort of world that we inhabit and the reason this is the correct one is that there is as we know even if you just say we can’t discriminate between reference frames there is one that is relevant only to us and that is our local reference and in that reference frame our action makes all the difference so those are three axes. That all of that makes sense to you guys I mean those are some big ideas but I want to let some ground work there so I’m going to expand on each of those points now I’m not because I’m going to have a day and start you could say that’s a no let’s do some community before we move on and that’s actually sundry Could you summarize in one word or two words each of the one two three So why you are not in a two this is an atypical point in space and time and three right reference frame is a local so it strikes me that this is sort of a humanistic Metta Festo that the correct way to look at the world is not with a god or not anything other than to care about fellow humans would you agree you know not necessarily I think that I did not include anything related to that the way I think about questions of God and the Internet is that that’s a very valid and ever that I basically think is dealing with the problem of the infinite and evolutionally attained knowledge so we are bounded creatures in a way and we have limited competition power memory and so when acting in the world we are dealing with more information than we can possibly have in our brain at the single time even though we can’t explain it which means that we will always be contending with it that you can say things we don’t know and to me it seems that religions estate narrative for ways of trying to solve that problem so I don’t exclude that at all I think that that’s a valid source of evolution only a technology that’s evolutionarily attained because it’s different from an explanation so in this presentation go through things that I do understand in explanations the way I see religions is that it’s evolution and we attempt knowledge meaning that it’s like wait a spider know how to build a web it doesn’t it just knows that it builds the web like this it works so I wouldn’t rule out those things I think that’s valid it’s just since we don’t have very good explanations for love I don’t include it in this consideration but some of these ideas I should overlap with but you can find. In old stories OK now that makes sense does anyone have any other questions at this point before Sonia continues with this presentation OK Carette ahead SANDRA Ok so I will now go through seven What I find to be relevant ideas which are interesting for to say what to do next given the axiom that it actually matters what you do so the first idea is that correct Oh distribution which is that a few things Nate almost all the difference so you’re familiar of course with the normal distribution which is like most things in the middle and everything tails out each side around some kind of typical center and some people when they choose which actions to do assume that the effect of an action is normal distributed certainly noticed that I did that myself meaning that I would put in a lot of work and just do anything I could and I think that this can lead to catastrophic mistakes because effective actions to me seem to be prettily distributed enough normal to street and that means that a few actions almost all the difference this is a common understanding it’s a very relevant idea to thinking about what to do exactly because that means that the act of thinking about which tasks to do which actions to take and doing those that are most impactful might be the most impactful when you do close it’s clearly possible to do a lot of things that make almost no difference and it’s possible to do some things that make a big so that’s the first thing that effective actions are per the district or state it is like an idea is that what meaning is which is one of the article sent out is to maximize future meaningful moments so it spits out recursive meaning as in the experience of meeting what is meaningful something is meaningful to degree that it leads to future situations where you can have meaningful moments and what that means basically is that some things you do are basically dead ends it leads to one more thing and then it stops while other things you do unleash why possibility of you. Sure options right and not just for you but also for the future so if you do something that Mark Zuckerberg did man that created a lot of meaningful moments didn’t it so it did and it create a lot of meaningful moments for many people and this sort of optionality is a key idea in choosing what to do next I think especially because some actions you take are the sort of costings to rule on their own so if you do something that is meaningful then that is very likely to have a much higher facts than you can sort of even imagine from the action itself so a very typical example is like having children or starting a company like this but just the act itself yields some immediate consequences but because it is meaning that is central with many open brands just that it the future of tax will be a much larger that it sort of impossible to even comprehend what can happen from let’s say starting Facebook I’m sure Mike suburb never considered the possibilty that it would have like two billion numbers on it and certainly a parent can know what a child will do with their life etc OK yeah so ard Yeah go ahead so three in one sentence and I guess you know where that thought by saying that an action and meaningful action is what maximize long term reward but also what maximize the uncertain effect of that we don’t know it’s like creating a creature about which we lose control Yeah you could say that I would also say that it’s complex up to my station recursive complex up my station across time and scale to scale as people so you can say that pierced optimization problem What’s the up to more thing to do both or you and your friend send the world both now and future so that’s the optimization and a way to simplify how to think about that is to do things that is what we call meaning and meaning yes I think it’s an approximation and this underlying problem which is especially that you maximize movement of moments in the future and yet each of those are uncertain high variance. As you describe but it’s not variance for its own sake it’s positive value that comes back to it later slack OK that’s science MT great but it opens a new third idea is the next his legs it’s going to be two brain so the third idea is that perception is couple to go and goal attainment so there is this field called perceptual psychology researcher their project it gives them and just on a lot of which is now famous experiments to discover how we view perception today as a perception if what you see specially what you notice in your environment so a quote from his paper is that what we see in our environment is not objects but they’re perceived utility of objects everything with zero perceived utility becomes invisible then the Spirit in our experience so what that means is that as you know we get the world as you look at in the room now that are in it seems like you’re seeing the objects that are there objective and what these experiments have shown is that things that don’t have any perceived value let’s say that pattern on the carpet shapes in there by furniture would not be something you would remember if you were paying attention to it and the reason is that brain see it as a low utility Well what you do see is things that you can use like chairs to sit in table to put things in the set or shoes to be repeated and what he has shown through his experiments is that this knowledgeable it’s plastic So when you set a certain goal then what you see is things that help you tame that So that means that perception seemed to be very closely linked to goal and goal ten and other things as in showing which is closely related to this is the brain’s reward system motivational circuits also seem to be related to goal and goal attendant meaning that what makes you quote unquote happy as a release of dopamine and serotonin the brain is not achieving a goal but it’s doing things that work towards ago and both of these fundamental insights which I think one of the few things we know from psychology experimental psychology is that for. Your brain to work in a way it really matter is what you set your goal and so that’s idea Number three now we’re going to ID number for him before which is let it go to number three is that appropriate way to look at the brain it’s not a uniform entity but as a collective of different psychological centrists with varying motivations that won’t necessarily be coordinated on its own so this comes from personality research essentially where you find that certain center is the brain act almost as separate let’s say personalities that have different desires and that there are parts of the brain that coronet this but that one part of being effective is to simply cordon it your own brain and there are three just three examples I went to for mention briefly for how to do this one is to have a goal and write it down it’s a way to align different parts of the brain specifically to align this Arab Language Center with the visual part of the cortex which is the biggest part of the second is attention we don’t completely know effective attention but we do know that it is the sorting in coordinating mechanism so that whatever you pay attention to sort of sort out in the brain and integrate different parts of the brain and there are also some speculative theories which I think hold credibility that attention also seem to reduce entropy wherever you look for summaries and the third example it’s like so part of in addition to setting goals and doing well the tenement part of the way you are able to navigate in the world is accurate signals so when you say something that’s a lie you’re essentially corrupting your own signals a bit because part of your brain believes it and this is also shown to be the fact and well experiments where people for example there was one experiment where they said they had done a task even though that was just instructed to set and shown that they had considerably less motivation to do that task later this was wretched students and this sort of shown is that basically a part of the motivational center and Ray. More or less believe that task is already complete so it believes it’s own life so that’s that idea now I did I’m a five it’s upgrading your utilitarianism So in choosing what to work and I have in mind the idea of doing meaningful pains then you want to do positive meaning and one of the best ways I’ve found so far to think about this is utilitarianism meaning the most good for the most possible people or you could say one variant of utilitarian isness reducing suffering which is sort of the inverse of some idea one thing that I found that helped me a lot in thinking more clearly making using little its own essence to choosing what to do is to put some kind of weight on people in the future and other people than you are so they should probably be some kind of discounting but by putting some belly in people in the future and people other than you it seems to me that you adapt more correctly so you want to reduce suffering but they don’t want it or they want to reduce suffering both you and across people for optimal adaptation so if you can imagine like the meaning thing doing things that as you say variance then you want to sort of weight those actions things that high variance tilted towards the good and what is that good well this is a good contender the one that I find most persuasive I like to do that when I am telling myself to document code I say well I might not need to do it now but if I put some weight on to the people that are going to have to look at this in the future some of those people might be me and so yes I should document today yeah that’s definitely a little ultras The There were some that they’re. OK And now the last idea that I want to consider is the problem that I faced and I think what people face when trying to figure out let’s say big questions like what to do or purpose the least is that they can seem impossible or intractable because the problems are so large and there is so much to take counter So how do you move forward and this ideas. In a different computer science and that is one method for solving intractable problems is well let’s say shit meaning what if you remove the constraints impose a constraint on the problem you’re solving in order to make a qualified guess you know so then make multiple guesses under different constraints and see if there is any overlap so to use cases where this is relevant in your own sort of way the software is one when Taleb rating your own beliefs so it seems to me and a certain test but when it seems to me that beliefs may be a form of constraints in it’s fundamentally meaning that beliefs are sort of axioms assumptions that we believe to be true and which we use to constrain problems we consider so because we assume that whatever those beliefs are based on the knowledge tree that they were based on is a ballot so calibrating your own beliefs then becomes incredibly important to calibrate the constraints you will impose on any situation so the second use case is choosing the same purpose for yourself so by using constraints to make a guess you can come an answer very quickly if you leave all Doris open the computation required to solve a problem is sort of close to infinite and you’ll be like just thinking your whole life and never get to that conclusion but you no doubt has many detrimental facts see the previous ideas so which instead but which you found in Cuba science as the way to solve this problem is by imposing constraints and then just go in with thinking a little bit and then go on with your best guess while of course being open to modify and proving that in the future so samples could be a sort of cliche once well what would you do if you had six months to live what we do if you had a million dollars The billion dollars that are these are examples of constraints that make it easier to come up with things and then we can contrast and compare your answers across constraints and see if you get some so one P.S. when it comes to doing this things like calibrating believes to sing a purpose S. That seems to me that one of the he writes the way the brain had solved this is. I process these and not definite answers so I latest helpful and you kind of have to choose believes choose a purpose the way it seems to me that the optimal way to navigate going forward is to have this pattern up continues improvement so that what you’re aiming for is really not a specific belief or specific purpose fundamentally but it’s in for the highest possible good and the most true thing so that you have this metter patterned process going in the background that allows you to update beliefs and purpose you encounter at risk right so that was the idea thread I brought this on and I can mention briefly my own conclusions from this and then look to get your criticism on Actually I wonder if it would be OK surrender if we could just ask you questions right now unless you think it makes far more sense for you to give your conclusion some questions so I just want to make some space for high to Seppi and Michael to ask some questions now if they happen to have some Yeah I had a question about the third question actually you leave out of the beginning about reference frames or how this related to that question and so reference frame it’s OK So specifically if you think about the problem of perception and setting a constraint both of those are actually referenced for a solutions it’s like Applied reference frame so when thinking about what to do you’re not operating in number and it’s space you’re operating in a very constrained space which is that you inhabits point in space time and you have certain capabilities that you have a party and a brain and a context and you could structure that and say that that is your relevant reference frame and when apply a reference frame to everyday life that is essentially the problem of perception what is relevant which space sort of and I are pretty and it seems to me that the space that are operating in is kind of evolutionary space which is where what you’re looking for as utility crews are. Go and the constraints that you put in is what is relevant to us situation so it doesn’t make any sense to talk about what should be done with Alpha Centauri star system file where you can’t do anything about it so it’s not a relevant reference right so we do this all the time we do constrain a reference frame I find continuously anyway but people aren’t aware that doing it this sort of just think that of course it doesn’t make sense and the reason is that yes it doesn’t make sense to use different reference frames the reason I mention it is it is that often when people talk about these questions they invoke irrelevant reference frames I just found that to be the case in conversations like people who say yeah but that doesn’t really matter because the universe.

Where to matter I’m just one person and it to me seems to me just an example of using an irrelevant reference for that we don’t to us we don’t do it in everyday life I would be impossible to operate it I suppose anything that you don’t have agency over would be in a sense an irrelevant reference frame and so you might want to always constrain any problem that you have if you’re trying to decide what action to take you certainly want to constrain the problem in the sense of thinking of it as only being in the frame of reference that matters to you know the things that you can do with your body and walking around the world and making actions Yeah I think that’s a great lead to get I think in everyday life when having a lot could apply I think you can increase somewhat because you know effects can have effects and fair enough Yeah that makes sense any other questions or maybe I should say Any other comments are observations right now yeah so I spent. About MIDI and of medical apps and I think that sometimes called to on this and all because you consciously or by the action of the moment the way you could then maybe sometimes you would to see you know understand how consequential and in action it is and we suspect more back you know and also one of the side that usually many people meant you need middle of series of many people at. Taking in the back and if there is not one action that is the very big.

In the future Oh yeah yeah they know which means that even when you fail to take a concrete action today you can always quite correct you know a way and just follow through on minimal actions and you feature on that with P.T. Craig I don’t be able to let you go up into that miniscule future that will want to add Hell I also agree with the concept of having thinking of decision in the context of who do you have family or if you have what I have had an impact on the wall and it also helps you to put your vision into context right so if we wait the light from the not that our part of the I think the company may not be as strong as we wanted to be or would think it is yeah there’s two interesting points so to take the first one that it’s a difficult child to lessen the weight so to know I think that’s certain history and that said I do think that sometimes we can identify obviously meaningless tests so it seems to me that this problem is something that the brain already has good functions but I actually haven’t read that as much research on this as her one lecture on how the brain calibers meaning but it seems to be basically this way and so that means that what I’ve found is that when your television threatening that you have allowed yourself to as a girl you can sort of use a sickly the signal that something feels meaningful as a signal that you’re going to read where it’s like it’s a conscious signal complex helplessness so in the background and certainly we know that when something feels completely meaningless we usually able to identify that like if you went out today and just stayed and failed to hold back again I think after not long what sort of get this feeling this is pointless and how do you end up with that realization I think that that’s basically the kind of calculation we’re talking about here done by the brain so that’s one I think practical use the other one S. to at least for the big questions so it’s. Fine things that reasoning is fine to have meaning so this comes back to one of my conclusions like that’s a space collapse a Chanel’s seems to me to be a high meaningful activity given all the possibilty that might possibly fallen in space you can then logic find that some things have. And then sort of put that in the category of beliefs there after that I think you need to figure out every time you can think about it consciously on some big strategist and then you can rely on the basically emotion in everyday life feeling makes sense. So Sondre you’ve given us a tantalizing collection of tools to hack our brains into choosing what to do which was the original problem you put to us but I’m wondering if there are some contradictions in those tools in particular I wonder if the number two to all which was meaning to maximize future meaningful moments kind of an evolutionary approach the idea of evolving like I think of lean startup also has kind of the same concept where you enter rate towards a solution without necessarily knowing the final plan right away and I guess I wonder how that reconciles with some of the other tools that you proposed having to do with having a final end goal because evolution doesn’t have a goal in mind having a goal would even be a negative thing because it would prejudice the winnowing process and I wonder if purely engaging in a series of iterative local maximize ation steps might be more true to the philosophy that you’re bringing up here and having a grand goal at the end of things might be actually wholly inappropriate that’s a great question and that is often if you want those two things are on the surface and complex I find them to be reconcilable in the following way so when trying things as a experimenting I think in a start up. To try and what I found in my own style of life is that there are things you can try or actually close to infinite but each cast this cost that’s the thing that I’ve found so interesting work to try I find that trying in a certain direction is a way to constrain your experiments which you have to do anyway you have to constrain experience because you can’t Internet experiments because there’s a cost construct chick’s damaging and if you think about it like just in daily life that’s all that makes total sense like if you arrive at a door and there’s no knob on the door you don’t know how to open the door if you want to get through the door and you can see then these two principles operating in the situation go get through the door but then again you don’t want to you want to be listening to the results of your small experiments of getting the door open like pushing one side feel around for another person about a person try to pull its words you so there are a bunch of things you can try and what sort of becomes quickly insane if they if you don’t listen to their selves of your experiments so you try one thing in a try the same thing over and over again even though it doesn’t work and I think these things are not really in conflict because obviously you can also do you an infinite number of other things in that situation that you could pick your nose you could eat an apple none of those things will help you get through the door but if you don’t have the goal of going through the door what she tried becomes through and so yeah it may work but in with direction so you have to constrain it anyway and by constraining it towards the goal you can still do in everyday life sort of operate towards complete explanation and testing so another example like you’re going to start up a New Testament and I do this all the time so you know start a new customer Geez what do you listen to so this other day a friend that is archivists is showing features to in a user friend and it gives them various feedback and this of course was a platform technology platform and one of his feedback was that well he’s actually going to hungry to me so hamburgers and that’s a user feedback you know why don’t I listen to that weapon makes that feedback less relevant of course you could say maybe other people.

I think the reason you could I probably just missed the feedback is that because it’s not enter direction that should go in and even when you constrain you find that you have almost like you still have a huge number of things to do so that you can see these two ideas having the balls going in a direction it’s a way to strong what you experiment but being evolutionary within that approach meaning thinking about what works in response to Tibetan Buddhism to update think both your beliefs and I think you can also update what you’re going for on evidence but I do think you need something to go even though you’re jumping OK great thanks I think about this collection of tools as almost an algorithm or something that could be potentially turned into rather high level algorithm that could be taught to a computer or programmed into an attempt at an artificial general intelligence so I’m wondering if the way you’re characterizing decision making you’re turning it into something that can be made into a process where I think in the past there’s a certain amount of mystique attached there’s the myth of the genius startup founder and the idea that they just know what’s best and there’s no process attached to it it just seems to be a divine inspiration that they come up with these ideas and there it is and I wonder if this takes some of the myth out of that and turns it into an algorithm because often the best executives the best leaders follow a process perhaps one resembling the one that you’ve described rather than making decisions from their gut like George W. Bush like to say that he made his decisions from right or maybe that was just Stephen Colbert satirize ation of him but nevertheless there’s two schools of thought follow your gut or follow or process and it definitely seems like decision making might be far more vulnerable to automation to being turned into a process than perhaps we imagine right now perhaps an executive is basically an assembly line were. Career but just operating on a different level of abstraction I think that that’s absolutely true and actually some things I considered including in this thing which it didn’t which I think it’s absolutely programmable when it comes to this which is also a computer is an affair of this computer science that it’s like you do a random generation you generate random solution in a direction you do sort of selective retaining based on some criteria and this to me seems to approximate what you call creativity which is actually comes back to you expect question Michael which is what you try well it’s a sort of a I think can try anything then the problem constant tractable but if you know it then you can do random you know it to be on something and have some selective mutate based on whether what is generated by the algorithm makes sense alone some kind of rule then you I think you can make both creative computers and just in decision making so yeah I do think that we can certainly in the near future can imagine someone making supporting decision making tools created machines that help you figure out what to do in a situation and that I think is helpful when one of them that bring about whether deconstructing this thing takes the myth out I don’t think it has to the way I think about net sort of the myth as of the founder who just knows let’s say a lot of things other myths is that and it’s to some degree also just abstractions at least how I think about it so it’s the same with belief so it’s useful to make abstractions So for example having the myth that someone is pure good friend of us or them if that someone just not us is actually just it’s a way to operate so that you by default trust that person and whatever when you’re deconstructing something it kind of feels like you’re taking the myth out I can imagine that you can still return Jen obstruction even knowing that there is a process behind the outcome I think so that is just will come undone that it is possible I think it’s possible to reconstruct in everyday life if these two things are usually. Conflict but that is in my view just because people treat the myths and us explanations instead of abstractions and that it obviously becomes false in a way and disproven by seeing that there is a process to the models that’s a great observation have often been I have heard that if you develop a reputation for being an early riser then you can sleep in until noon every day I think that’s a quote from someone anyway it seems like you can build up a myth for yourself and then relax what you actually do maybe that’s another life hack you can add tearless there any other comments from anyone in the room before we wrap this up guys I have one comment which might turn into a couple of other comments I would say I really like your presentation because it’s a manifestation of mathematics and computer science into the reality lots of the and meaning of life which is by itself creative and novel so I enjoy that and the concept that I took. Your speech was a utility that you talked about how the percept shen is basically based on the utility that the Percivale we can never be sure be Percy of everything I mean the only thing we are sure is that we can never persecute everything so and I think the concept of infinity that be having our brains is by itself only a manifestation of the idea that we don’t know if there is a barrier it’s like the only thing we can be sure of is that we don’t know and that by itself is an infinite situation that we are and so because we don’t know if there is a barrier at the end of the universe or Maki or so or whether or there is at the same time we can’t Percy what it means to be infinite so that my comment that the only thing we can be short of is like we just don’t know and I feel like that’s a good meaningful thing to start it for the current human. Being as you said mean if people confuse me with explanations and cut a concept or them as explanation instead of an abstraction but what I would say here is that we can never be sure that we are not doing the same mistake in the current time because I think anything that we come up with as the most meaningful and up to date explanation of today is still an abstraction but the only thing the only thing which I always prefer to be interesting in the end belief that every person is a religion and the most true religion is the one that most people follow so I think that only legitimate explanation of the human condition is the one that is most popular So there is no other or Thore theory that based on that you can legitimize any explanation to the human condition that’s one comment I have here and about the human brain when you commented on human brain I thought of a couple of things One is that the concept of consciousness of you hear a lot that it’s something specific to humans or makes more as an amount that they have lower regions of it but what I have seen in some other people discussing and what I believe myself is that consciousness is something that is I mean human brain is a medium that reflects an increase in networks and information surrounding itself onto a different medium so human brain is nothing but a respond to the stimuli outside and what happens on top of that so let’s say a stone is responding to the it’s and by defining by having a crystal of some solid state material which is rigid but the only difference is that a human brain is like you fluid kind of soft material that do any response to the Vironment even though it forms some crystallise hard structure that holds some information in the longer. Times but at the same time it has parts that are most volatile and it changes so quickly so I would say there is no difference between a conscious as I was gone and the human brain other than complexity so complexity the only thing that we could grab as a distinguished factor between different consciousness and different objects and creatures that we can perceive and then my last comment would be the entropy here because I feel it’s we should be all entropy to talk about it a little bit have you discussed this idea is going to talk about many well meaning in the meaning of life so I think the latest we know about entropy is that it’s expanding it’s increasing in the US. So that’s the latest So if the latest up to the minister to his outfit. And I had to give this that’s literally agent to be honest that’s a starting point of religion we can’t construct that’s the missile issue we can base our meaning on so for now all we can say is entropy is increasing and that’s why all the human and trying to expand in everything so what is sustainable that this us an ability is nothing but aiming eternity why do you want to keep doing what you’re doing why do you want to do that why do just yeah you did it who ate this and why so we want to turn to you at ten it is a form of weight entropy would say expansion and the opposite of in he shin and we like to I things we like to repeat things so I guess entropy increasing entropy is a good start to see if I once tried to come up with a more rally T. that cosmic or ad if the end last thing I could come up with a couple examples we don’t like feeling our own kind because of we feel like a human being is more to pay a bill of increasing entropy in his lifetime more than by dying so if you die yeah like you might increase the entropy by just so expanding your mind. Using the planet but I think if a human being leaves end of things you might accomplish probably increases entropy more then so increasing entropy could be a starting point I feel or thinking enter in painting ourselves with the meaning perhaps we should introduce a legal system that makes it illegal to increase entropy more than is necessary.

Yeah many an interesting point just one thing on the first one you said which I think is a very good point that this process do you deal with things you don’t know and it seems to me there were very easy ways to run like yourself recursive self replicating process that is ever improving with every quote aiming at perfection and this is also I think we’re a reason tech intrapreneur ship is such as a good way to get mode to operate in you know to get at it is that some of these things are built in to help people start ups like it’s quick it’s ration and being able to create something in a different life from scratch whereas previously was like as a tech entrepreneurs all takes this to most effective TRIBOLET is trade policy and one of the difficult things is changing existing systems very difficult because it’s not self directed and it’s not the pace of self-improvement it’s not necessarily there plus you have in politics like ideologies which pop up which have definite goals and just want to mention that that process was one of the things that a recent attack in proposed ship was probably the best way to spend my time I must comment on what you just said about recursive processes because I read that research recently that bay based on some more successful novels in the history of beauty which are come up with this pattern that a story that success was storytelling is when it’s syrup you are so it starts from one point cakes you through a journey and brings you back and. It doesn’t necessarily mean there has to be one single one there is a large circle starting from the end beginning on now and then ending there and also there are smaller journeys so the periods of the circles are multiple of them and there’s a larger one and you’d have correlated with human psychology how a brain works and the weight even lived basically our lives is the way we have a home for example like we call out and we come back so there’s always the returning point there way we sleep go out we do multiple things then we come back and then in security actually shows up when there is an uncertainty in returning because if you don’t return if you don’t have a good ending if you don’t have you know I suspect you don’t foresee that you’re going to get back to where you where you’re going to feel and secure and not enjoying your journey and it’s also another research shows how he membrane only remembers the last part so you for example there isn’t the man who will see a lot of pain people giving birth is that for example they do it once and it’s horrible it’s painful but at the end though it they get rewarded mentally and psychologically and next time when they think of it they remembered the last part they remember at the end of it it was good so they think of the whole process as a good thing and they want to do it again so that by human brain only remembers the last part of every process so if it is a good ending we like this story go with Think of it as a good thing or if it what bad ending so this recursive process that you mentioned in mind and they are the whole human brain psychology you’re bound to see the war as we are and I think that’s a very good observation of stories to seem to be one of the main with this information or the least in the brain narrative floorman it’s all a slope from A to B. and then.

It’s happened and do something so common so do so to me See that a lot of things in life are recursive and a recursive self. Hatter but I do think that it’s not all those recursive things are equally good where I tend to think of it is that you could have a stagnant at or like mystically copy paste but just like copying something in there like pasting control be over and over again if you know theory or cursive but it’s not good because it was in a strict circle but what sort of I think it’s better is to have a circle that has the possibility of proving its own circle so spreading out late some kind of Internet buried fractal instead of a copy paste and that the difference between the two is just whether you’re aiming for something specific or whether you’re reading or continuous improvement that to me seem to be the sort of core difference between ending up in either of those situations so I think that’s a great observation and given that but it matters which we trust you running like these comments on complexity entropy and connection between them and also recursion here but we are past time and I’d like to give just Seppi a chance to reflect on things maybe he can have the last word or the second last word if you would like to go ahead Giuseppe Please go ahead I just want to comment on the sentence that Hans said about remembering only the last movie I did like that and the fact is true I would beg to generalize it a bit remember the first and the last so I would say the last with this before seeing this is if this can be moderated by the court system there are certain forces actually the potential of something is always certain things can be modded about but I should just happen at the beginning of the app and this is a very I think very analogy so I think I’m being really be moderate by forces the just my last remark on this it’s a great point some guys call him Barry So if I could sneak in a comment because there branches then I think that this is also relevant to dealing with the throwing of love the bridge. To doing with the problems of suffering is that it seems to me that suffering joy and other things are like self correcting mechanism so that what makes something worse that later. Mentioned childhood is whether it’s good in the end and a way to see that is it worth it you know at the end of the requests at the end of the movie yes I do think that that is a very way of understanding how the human brain works absolutely I just don’t know much about it but my intuition definitely overlaps with OK.

Yes thank you very much Senator for taking the time to discuss your decision making philosophy I’m sure we’d all agree that you’ve given us a lot to think about before we take our next action in life so thank you also to our panelists to just sappy Hussein and Michael Yeah I’m glad thunder accepted our invitation I like how different our I felt it was very different than our previous recent recordings that I appreciate again you coming in and I wish you come back and we can talk to you later and other topics as well absolutely record to do it in the future Thank you Sandra Fuller and I know it’s.

Especially when you know you started for some level different meaning and so on I think it was very well structured You can join us so we think about it me and I appreciate this conversation but comments I learned a lot so I think this is worthwhile to consider every month or so minutes to where to spend Sunday morning or a Sunday evening in my case thank you very much All right guys well thanks so much and talk to you next week but by everyone.

By right let’s make future music to.

Tell to.

Keywords

thing (76) reference frame (16) human brain (9) decision making (6) everyday life (6) maximize future meaningful (2) future meaningful moments (2) computer science (4) billion people (3) irrelevant reference (3) increasing entropy (5) relevant idea (2) copy paste (2) brain works (2) perceived utility (2) starting point (2) big questions (3) good thing (2) interesting point (2) great observation (2) effective actions (2) question (23) problem (26) constraint (11) action (20)