FAQ about the Meaning of Life is ©1999 and ©2000 by Eliezer S. Yudkowsky. All rights reserved.
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The quest for a higher meaning is something I've never had the misfortune of experiencing. I was eleven years old when I first opened a book called Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition, thus learning that human civilization was heading towards a much better standard of living for everyone. I was eleven years old when my Midwest Talent Search results confirmed to me that I could make a difference to the future. By the time I hit thirteen, I may not have known about the Singularity, or about Interim logic, but I did know that there was a point to human civilization, and that I had a part to play in it. I do not know, except by imagination and observation, what it's like to not know one's place in existence.
After I wrote down the first version of the Interim logic and realized that it counted as a formal solution to the Meaning of Life, it occurred to me that there were a lot of people who really cared about that answer, who were spending a lot of time looking for that answer, and feeling mental anguish on account of not finding it, and maybe slashing their wrists, and I really ought to notify them - but there was always something more important to do, which is why I didn't write anything for two years. Sorry about that. But, as of 1999, here it is.
Since then, I admit, I've added other purposes to this Web page as well - used the polls to get some approximate feedback on how people react to the Singularity, even used the FAQ as an evangelical tool to promote the Singularity and recruit potential Singularitarians.
Now that the Singularity Institute has been incorporated (as of July 2000), the site may even generate some donations. So I suppose that I now have an "ulterior motive" for wanting you to believe all this. But the vast majority of the FAQ was written, posted, and linked to Ask Jeeves, more than a year before the Singularity Institute existed.
The primary purpose of the FAQ was, and remains, healing some of the pain in the world that's caused by not knowing why to get up in the morning.
The Singularity: I ran across the Singularity in a book called "True Names and Other Dangers", by Vernor Vinge, who invented the term. Essentially, I read the second paragraph on p. 47 (1) and thought: "Yep, he's right. Okay, now I know what I'm going to do with the rest of my life."
But by way of attribution, please note that Vinge only advocates the view that intelligence increase will break down our model of the future. Mine is the blame for advocating the cosmological perspective, the idea that this happens to every race and will happen to us. However, all credit for invention remains Vinge's - his Hugo-winning science-fiction novel "A Fire Upon The Deep", and "Marooned in Realtime", both take place on a galactic canvas.
The Meaning of Life: I had a practical use for the answer, to wit: Designing an AI goal system. If you want a real answer, there has to be a real problem with experimentally testable criteria for success or failure. There's probably some sort of law that states that a philosophical problem cannot be solved until the solution has practical ramifications. Nobody that I know of has deduced "The Meaning Of Life" by spending all day looking for it, but you can design an AI goal system to be safe, sane, stable, and self-knowing, then translate into human terms.
The other questions are just interesting tidbits I happen to know. In the course of trying to design an intelligent mind, I've picked up a great deal of knowledge about subjects generally considered inscrutable. I figured they were Frequently Asked Questions about Life, the Universe, and Everything, if not about The Meaning Of Life per se, so I tucked them in.
I'm not an observer sent by God, the Singularity, our future selves, the Galactic Federation, or the awakened sentience of the Internet, and I don't know anyone who is. If that's what you were asking.
"There's something quite sinister in AltaVista proffering this as an answer to an online query, as if the search engine itself was on its way to becoming William Gibson's nightmarish AI, Wintermute."Ask Jeeves is an Internet search company that provides natural-language parsing of questions, combined with a database of questions to which "Jeeves" knows the answer. They license their technology to AltaVista (though recently AltaVista seems to have stopped using it). This is the answer Ask Jeeves has in their database for "What is the meaning of life?"
-- Nick Montfort in FEED Daily
This site is not affiliated with Ask Jeeves or Altavista in any way. I did not pay them for the link, they did not pay me to put up the site, my opinions are not theirs, their opinions are not mine, you get the idea.
That said, I think Ask Jeeves is a wonderful concept and ask.com is one of my favorite search engines (2). Considering the favor Ask Jeeves did me in linking to this FAQ, I'm glad to say that a number of people have written to say how impressed they were that Ask Jeeves or AltaVista had an answer to the question "What is the meaning of life?" So if you're reading this, Jeeves, you linked to the right page.
Ask Jeeves is a trademark of Ask Jeeves, Inc., Copyright 1996-1999 Ask Jeeves, Inc.
The other interesting "Meaning of Life" site on the 'Net is The Meaning of Life by Diogenes, which has reasonably intelligent answers to several other questions that are often meant by people who ask "What is the meaning of life?"
For more about transhumanism, Extropy, ultratechnology, and the other things that make life fun, I most highly recommend Extropians and other Transhumans, the Anders Transhuman Page, and the transhumanist FAQ. These pages (3) are the ones that transformed my life - vast information nexuses leading to more beautiful and important things than I had dreamed existed.
You can visit my other Web pages at The Low Beyond. I recommend Staring Into the Singularity.
The Singularity Institute may be found at http://singinst.org/.
When you visit your local library, remember: It all begins with Great Mambo Chicken, and nobody should die without reading Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. Visit my Bookshelf for more books that everyone should read.
(In association with Amazon.com.)
If I've made a difference in your life, I'd enjoy a note telling me so, though I can't guarantee I'll write back. And if you want to help out with the Singularity, I'll have your email address around when and if there's an opportunity.
If you enjoyed this page, or if you loathed it, please feel free to say so in the Singularity Reactions poll, the FAQ Reactions poll, and the Guestbook.
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