The Central Question: In the future [1000+] what will it mean to live in a beautiful world and what can do we about that now? If we look at the advent of what it means to be human, it really is an optimization problem in the greater context of survival. Right now, we're seeing the definition of being human change as our cost function is not surival but the fear of a poor life. What will that optimization problem be in the greater future?
Let's romanticize on that idea. What is one constant that has been with us since the beginning of time and will stay with us until humanity is wiped off of the face of the planet? I think the most obvious thing is innate curiosity. We've always been programmed to go crazy if we can't understand something and explore the unknown. Even if before it was colonial powers and the church or now regulation and the boundaries of physics that have held us back, there is something romantic about living life in the unknown. That is because it expands the horizon and borders of what it means to be human once we see something completely different. You're actively pushing back the envelope of what it means to be human using your curiosity each and every day, and as intelligence becomes more valuable and the cost trade-off decreases, we need more people to be curious. That will always be the constant.
So that begs the question, what's the most worthwhile to explore which will not only objectively improve the lives of everyone and humanity as a whole (personal fulfillment, ability to live and survive, experience new things, etc.) but will also actively expand our understanding of what it means to be human? That is the big question.
Well, there are a few ways you can go about answering this question, and I'll get to why the best way to approach each idea is a combination of them later.
Actively work on problems that answer questions that come from innate curiosity and build solutions to challenging problems (i.e. self driving cars, reusable rockets, etc.)
Fit these smaller problems in the grand scheme of a larger goal that is actively trying to redefine what it means to be human (self driving cars explore the idea of autonomy for greater safety and works at pushing the boundaries of what machines can take over so that humans can work on and reusable rockets are a first step in becoming an interplantary species). Essentially it's vision.
Make an experiment built on some sort of bias and gain personal fulfillment from it (start a restaurant to explore the idea of taste and understand why humans like that, or get into law and understand the deep psychological stressors and drivers that make humans tick, get into programming to conceptualize how such simple mechanisms and objective functions can expand at exponential rates).
All of these 3 steps are required to do anything, and if you think a lot of this is ambitious or is a lot of responsibility, recognize that everything has compounding effects. To get to advent 2, we need to take iterative, time-bound steps through 1, and that would require the individual system that we have designed to get to 2 and iteratively 1 to make a bunch of 3.
I think over time we're going to see more breakages from systematic games of getting to 1-level goals and have people building their own systems and frameworks to solve the same 1-level goal as we saw with the human genome project or the rapid popularity of private-public sector agreements. To get here though, we need leaders, builders, thinkers, educators, and most importantly, people that can align their own personal narratives and values with the greater vision to a level that they know is significant.
So we should actively invest in those ideas and initaitives that fit in the rigorous frameworks that are objectively better than current ones in order to innovate, iterate, and improve, but at the same time work in the confines of these 3 steps and actively set out to either change them, make them more specific or general, and ultimately push forward progress in hopes of redining what it means to be human, for the better.
What are some actions items for myself or anyone to follow through with after reading this. Firstly, I would say that you should get to the first-principles that are the foundation of whatever question is bugging you. Typically, this is where you build intuition but also get a sense of what is romantic about a problem or topic. Talk to someone about that one thing and brainfart what makes you go crazy for it, and then start building something with your knowledge. If you don't build or make anything out of that information, then it's just wasted memory. The next part is probably the most important, and that's getting feedback and opinions, regardless of how much you may hate or want them. Sometimes feedback could mean sharing a post with a friend or speaking at a Ted Talk about it, but get it out there.
On the other end, try to listen for these gems. Immerse yourself with people talking about insights and ideas and projects that connect back to whatever problem you're invested with, but don't feel like you're also trapped in that box. Once you do see something cool online, book a coffee chat with them or append a new resource to the creator's repository of knowledge. Ultimately, progress and innovation is a game of curiosity, conviction, and challenge (although chaos might be a better word to describe it as).