drive and meaning

If you asked me a year ago what my purpose in life was, I would’ve told you that I wanted to build great and cool things (greatness is optional — coolness is required). I would’ve told you that the driving force behind my existence was to joust with interesting intellectual challenges that the universe likes to throw at humanity. I wanted to be on the frontlines of history, to create things that impact as many human lives as possible. I didn’t necessarily want to be remembered, but to live my life in a manner in which I die peacefully, knowing I lived as much as I could.

With this as my foundation, I very easily accepted the ideas promoted by George Hotz. A slightly crazed, highly motivated individual with immense technical skill and an approach to thinking that I personally found unique as to be a breath of fresh air. Although Hotz, and other individuals like him, namely Elon Musk, preach about cooperation in the scientific and technical communities, their philosophy is one that is highly individualistic — just in a mankind vs. nature way. To paraphrase Hotz, the ultimate win in life is to “beat nature” and “escape the simulation”.

Once I absorbed his philosophy, I started to want to be him. He lived in San Francisco, in close proximity to other highly motivated individuals performing highly impactful work. His trade of choice, computer science (specifically artificial intelligence and cyber security), is also mine. His claim to fame — being the first to jailbreak the iPhone, and then the PS3 — I found inspiring in a twisted, peculiar way. Although I’m not above praising — and at times even worshipping — tech companies, I found this gesture to be deeply satisfying; a highly intellectual “fuck you” at bureaucracy, and a reminder of the stark power of the individual.

Now, that sheer, raw ego is at the core of my current predicament. I used to associate intensely with this ideal — that life is one long series of opportunities to “beat nature”; that it was humanity against the universe. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t an anti-environmentalist take — I have, am, and always will love nature. What this philosophy instead proposes is that our greatest meaning in life is to conquer life itself — to hyper-optimize the game of biology, to have a quasi-infinite amount of power, energy, and time.

Now, I’m not so sure.

My love for science never came from a drive to solve problems — rather, it was born out of a love for perception. Ever since I was a little kid, I loved perceiving the world simply for the sake of perception. Bring me to a park, and I’ll just stare at the trees and the plants — first from a macro scale, and then a micro scale, where I can appreciate the incredibly detailed, incredibly eventful orchestra of biology and life happening all around us; on a leaf of a small plant, to the bark of a tree, to a stick on the ground, and the ant hill next to it. Bring me to a beach? I’ll stare at the sand underwater just to observe the shimmer patterns. I’ll rub my hands through the sand, feeling all the rocks and shells, and imagine how all those rocks and grains of sand were once part of a larger geological structure, broken off and eroded by the titanic forces of tidal patterns over millions of years. I’ll swim to the furthest point out into the sea, and hover still in the water — sensing the coldness of the water on my skin, the strength of the current ever so slightly tugging at my limbs, and I feel myself connected to the entire ocean.

Perception is also the driving force behind my love for math. Mathematics, when you understand it not as a stiff set of rules, but an artistic expression of the universe in all of her beauty and grace, is almost capable of convincing oneself that there must exist a divine artist. Alas, I am not religious.

However, I am now thoroughly convinced that the mentality that I adopted from Hotz and many other intellectual heroes of mine — an egotistical, anthropocentric perspective — is incompatible with me. I want to perceive the universe, not necessarily win its game.

To further build upon this idea, what I think to be a lethal combination in a highly competent individual is both an anthropocentric view of the world and tunnel vision. A competent person (or a collection of competent people) with tunnel vision can very easily solve the wrong problem. By solving the wrong problem, one can lose a small piece of the body of things that make them human. Have virtually infinite control over chemistry that you can simulate any taste with the right combination of chemical compounds? You get obesity, addiction, and you restrict yourself to artificially constructed cuisines that you ignore all the exotic tastes that nature can provide, and you most likely reject the vast culinary history that made up the ethnicity you were born into, instead selecting globally consistent, globally boring food concocted in a monochrome lab. Construct A.I. models capable of replicating manmade art? Although still woefully incapable, you introduce the world to the terrifying prospect that not even art, something we thought was core, fundamental, and immovable from the human condition, is safe from the overextending reach of machine automation.

Conclusion

To conclude, the blind pursuit of optimization and growth is not what drives me in life and dictates my everyday conduct anymore. I’m much more secure in myself, my pride, and my ego that I’ve allowed myself to accept that maybe all I want to be in this life is a passive observer; a true scholar of the universe. To be clear, this does not mean I do not want to build great things; I still do, but I will always hold closely in my mind the ethical implications.

This leads me to a tricky dilemma — do I still pursue artificial intelligence research, or not? On what hand, I find A.I. fascinating — the fact that the application of basic mathematical and statistical concepts can produce such complex behavior is something that I find to be simply wonderful. But as AI continuously advances (AI art and NLP models, to be precise), I began to slowly realize how much of an existential crisis AI poses on the human race. I am still a firm believer that AI can find its safe application within human society, but as it continues to demonstrate its weaponizability, I grow increasingly concerned.