The Purpose of Life and How to do Good Work
Purpose of Life
The universe, for some reason or no reason at all, created life. In particular, the universe used evolution to create conscious life. Our survey of the scene concludes that life is rare, and conscious life is even rarer. Conscious life is capable of thinking and feeling and discovering more about the universe that created it which is exactly what we have historically been doing. We as a species like to build, explore, and grow.
As our creation of tools and understanding of science progressed, we have been able to expand the creation of even more tools and understand even more science. This progress loop is a function of conscious life. The more we learn about the universe, the more we can then learn about the universe in the future. While we cannot say the universe wants to maximize this function (because we do not know what the universe wants, if it wants anything at all), we can nonetheless say the universe has this function for conscious life. Since we have historically been feeding this function, pushing it to greater and greater bounds, I am willing to believe the purpose of conscious life is to maximize this function. In particular, this means creating tools and building our databases of knowledge is the purpose of life since doing those things is how we expand our consciousness.
Concrete examples of expanding consciousness: The human eye can only see a sliver of the electromagnetic spectrum. Using computer vision technology, we can capture light waves in the non-visual spectrum, convert the values into the visual light spectrum, and display them on a screen. Thus, we achieved night vision. Telescopes and microscopes allow us to see far beyond the native zoom features of our eyeballs. We can control evolution (to an extent) with artificial selection and forced breeding of genetic material expanding life's capabilities, such as GMO drought-resistant foods. It is estimated that this century we will create sentient AI robots. These beings will have unparalleled abilities to continue expanding their own consciousness, thus discovering even more about the cosmos that created it.
One question might be if it is necessary for conscious life to expand consciousness. We as a species do not have a choice in history. The events of history happened regardless of our opinion of them. Expanding our knowledge of the cosmos has been something we have been doing since the first creation of tools. While some individuals and societies might regress to simpler times, they cannot escape the desire to understand and maintain their worldview. Even religion fits into the category of expanding consciousness since religion seeks to explain the cosmos and metaphysics. To not want to expand consciousness means to give up consciousness. Therefore, expanding consciousness is necessary for conscious life. We are fated to be curious about the universe that created us.
If the purpose of life is to expand consciousness then morality should be defined such that expanding consciousness is moral, and hindering the advancement of new knowledge and exploration is immoral. Morality then becomes utilitarian-like calculation about our actions except towards expanding consciousness and not vague words like calculating "good". Or, "good" becomes what actions aid us in learning and creating.
Moral philosophy is often presented as very rigid and searching for the absolute. While I am making a claim about the one purpose of life and how it influences morality, the one rule of expanding consciousness can be taken rather loosely. For example, going on vacation, playing a game, or watching a movie is not necessarily against our moral duty since our minds and bodies need time to rest (moderation, of course, being key). Raising children is vital since they could grow up to help expand consciousness, so maintaining a healthy family and community fits into our moral duty.
The moral duty of expanding consciousness has a wide range of ethical implications. Some examples:
Should we care for the environment? To destroy the environment means we cannot adequately live and prosper, and therefore cannot expand our consciousness. So we should take care of the environment.
Should we exploit animals? Expanding our moral circle to include animals [1], potential aliens, sentient AI, and any other moral patients [2] has direct positive benefits for ourselves. Leaving the cruelty aspect aside, there are many benefits of not using animals. Animal agriculture is a major contributor to climate change [3]. Not experimenting on animals requires us to find new in vitro and computational models for biological experiments. Plant-based and lab-grown meat requires new science that will be required for space colonies (or do you think there will be cattle ranchers on Io?) Furthermore, we would not want the same treatment done to us by, say, AI or aliens, because that would limit our potential. That is, we should not play “betray” in the prisoner’s dilemma [4] since playing “betray” is not optimal.
If expanding our consciousness is a moral duty, this places a positive value on consciousness beings in both quantity and quality. Having more humans means more problems get solved, more knowledge gets created, and more new hypotheses get generated for testing. Increasing the quality of life such as a right to quality education or fighting for global health allows more able minds to expand humanity’s consciousness.
We can at times justify other ethical frameworks within the one purposed here. It might take an egoist to build an empire of new technology allowing electric vehicles and novel rocket systems to get us to Mars [5]. It might take a hedonist to build the technology to create a hedonist reality [6]. Virtues are the ones that help expand consciousness. Most juggernauts in the Effective Altruism community are act utilitarians which often involve helping humanity. In turn, helping humanity helps expand our consciousness.
There are many more implications that could be teased out in another essay.
Knowledge is the key to our survival. Even if we control climate change, circumvent nuclear disasters, create safe and loving AIs, and defend against all possible biological weapons and viruses, one sufficiently sized asteroid could end all conscious life on Earth. Whether we build an asteroid defense system or populate space, we need new knowledge on how to do these things to protect ourselves. Knowledge requires expanding our consciousness of how the universe works and how we can control it. Our biological function is to reproduce. But our survival requires us to understand the world around us and proactively prepare for the worst of scenarios.
How to do Good Work
Since the goal is to expand consciousness, how best can one work towards this? There are three subcategories: direct work, tools and inquiry enhancements, and ancillary functions.
Direct Work: This one is the most obvious. Work directly on questions that when answered expand our knowledge. Scientists, philosophers, software engineers, economists, and artists are all such examples.
Tools and Inquiry Enhancements: While most people do not separate themselves from this line of work, this category nonetheless exists. Someone doing direct work might ask a question about the nature of high-energy particle physics while someone else might be creating the tools required to see those particles as they fly at high-energy. The latter are enhancing the tools the former uses to answer direct questions. Philosophers could be refining what it means to do science. Statisticians design new forms of experiments and sampling. Mathematicians might create new math that will be used by engineers decades later. All these roles and projects exist to create better tools and methods of inquiry to then help those doing direct work. In practice, many of these two categories will overlap.
Ancillary Functions: These are roles less talked about in spaces where one considers how to do good in their career such as 80000 hours [7]. Take a company like Beyond Meat. While they require organic chemists and molecular biologists to create plant-based meat, at the time of this writing, no such positions are open at Beyond Meat. Current positions include HR, accounting, distribution operations, and Asian brand ambassadors. The “meat” processing plants require packing, quality inspection, and distribution. Policy experts work with regulatory agencies to ensure the product meets safety standards. Marketing and content creation are required for social media and general web presence. All of these roles are required to keep Beyond Meat afloat, yet do not have anything to do with directly expanding the knowledge and capabilities of plant-based meat. Since they are required, they should not be shunned, overlooked, or considered less important than the scientists working on plant-based meat.
This approach to doing good for work is broader than Effective Altruism. Effective Altruism aims to do the most good one can do while I’m suggesting doing at least some good with one’s work. My motivation is from a common criticism (at least on the sub-reddit [8]) for Effective Altruism from individuals in their mid-life, with a family, unable to go back to school for a Ph.D., etc. yet still want to contribute. Instead of discouraging those individuals, they could navigate their careers and skills to seek out work in tools and inquiry enhancements or ancillary functions. They could still do some good work. And unlike Effective Altruism, doing good is not minimizing utilitarians' notion of suffering, but helping to expand our consciousness. One could work outside Open Philanthropy's cause priorities [9] and still be following their moral duty. That said, anyone able to work within Effective Altruism’s most pressing problems probably should.
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016328721000641
[2] https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/topics/moral-patienthood
[3] https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impacts-of-food
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk
[6] https://www.hedweb.com/
[7] https://80000hours.org/
[8] https://www.reddit.com/r/EffectiveAltruism/
[9] https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/