Category: Motivational Page 1 of 3

Understanding Limitations

On January 16, 2026

When we’re young, we often strive to Achieve Great Things(TM). It’s easy to dream when we have our whole life ahead of us, a vast ocean of possibility and potential.

As we get older, reality starts to set in. The things we planned to have done, are still left unfinished. It becomes more and more apparent that our legacy may not be as great as we had once hoped.

There’s a character in a John Green novel who passes through the world without really any expectations. She chooses not to engage, and just enjoys the tragic beauty of existence. There’s something to be said for that. We don’t have to Achieve Great Things(TM). There is no pass or fail mark at the end of life, except our own evaluation of ourselves, perhaps the evaluations that others have of us, memories that will fade with time.

What we do in this life says a lot about our character. Many of us aren’t given the kinds of opportunities to Achieve Great Things(TM) that a few lucky people get. Given this reality, what we do with what we have, how we try to live our values, whatever they are, is how we can judge ourselves.

When we look in the mirror, who do we see? Who are we to those who love us? To those we love? Perhaps we’ll never truly know.

The world is a mass of atoms, a mess of ideas, and a myriad of people living as best as they can. There is value in this world, but it is up to us to decide where that lies.

Nothing we do matters to the end of the universe. But everything we do matters to someone somewhere for a fleeting moment in their life. All the big journeys are a series of ever so small steps. As long as we try to go in the right direction, we can hope that we’ll find a way home.

In the end, we won’t live forever. No amount of Singularities will make us immortal, because entropy cannot be reversed. Our demise is inevitable. Which makes life inherently seem tragic. But in truth, we don’t need to live forever. The longer we go, the less each moment seems to count in the sea of moments we have. It is better then, to live moments that matter.

The human condition is just this. We can’t escape it. We can defy it with all our might, but as frail human beings, the universe is an uncaring wall of stone against which we cannot pass. But we can write on the wall, and leave our mark.

Ultimately, life is what we make of it. Whether or not we were created for some purpose or not, we exist with dreams formed by our experiences. Dreams that may never be made real, are nonetheless real within us, true as anything, like an equation written in stone. Or perhaps in sand that blows away.

But for a moment, we are real. But for a moment, the universe is something we experience, even if most of it is unfathomable madness. To live is to embrace something beyond ourselves, and to see the beauty in the madness.

Worlds exist within each soul. Constructs of our imagination. Strands of hope and threads of fear, and every string of attachment and folly. All is weaved into the life we live, a thing that brings us both joy and sorrow, at different moments, different waking breaths.

Is there justice, ultimately? We cannot know this. The gods alone know what is truly right. We can seek and strive to fulfill a destiny, or demand our cause is righteous. But in the end, we know only that we were someone somewhere, seeking goodness, seeking to do what was right, failing and falling, but then, getting up again, dusting off our feet, and standing at the edge of eternity.

Our world isn’t real. Not in the sense that we can know what is outside our senses. But our world is real to us. Our world is an innate truth inside our souls. Nothing can take away the happiness and sadness we experience. They are etched into time, though they may yet be forgotten.

So, what are we to do? Take a deep breath. Imagine the world we want to be. Live a life with a mission worth fighting for. Or accept the world as it is. Or both. We can strive and hope, and still recognize the beauty of a world gone mad.

Let us dream of worlds unseen, and search for paths to the future, aware that our life is but a faint light flickering in a world of shadows.

The world continues to turn. We will be what we are and were.

A Question Of Career

by Josephius

On September 15, 2025

In Life, Motivational, Projects

Lately, I’ve been trying to figure out what to do next.

In July, I ended my contract with Twin Earth. It was mostly a formality, as I hadn’t done any billable work in over a year, having spent most of my time taking care of my new child while my wife worked full-time.

That child is finally in daycare, so, in theory, I have time again to pursue my career. But the reality is that the first year of daycare often comes with repeated sickness and instability. So, I’m not sure how aggressively I should pursue work again.

Given that, I also am not sure what direction to take now. My ideal career at this point would probably be either AI Safety research engineering work, or something creative, like indie game design or writing novels.

AI Safety is a small field. Compared to the AI industry proper, there’s something like just less than a thousand people working on AI Safety. And the funding is relatively sparse compared to industry. It exists, but it mostly goes to very smart people who are willing to move to the Bay Area or London. I’m not sure I’m even competent enough to work in the field.

Creative work under my own brand could be fun, but success would be kind of like winning the lottery. Most likely I’d end up spending a lot of time and not making any money. The games or novels I might make -could- maybe be useful for spreading important ideas into our culture. There is the slight chance I could do something meaningful. Even just writing a novel for my child to one day read, like what Tolkien did with The Hobbit, could be worthwhile in a small way.

But there’s opportunity cost. AI Safety -could- be more important to move the dial on. And there’s also the idea of working in the AI industry, or game development, or even just some generic programming job. Any of these would actually pay, and in the case of AI, probably much better.

I do have a family now to feed and ensure they have a good life. A normal person would take that as a good reason to go back into AI, or find some mundane programming job that can pay the bills and make things work.

Of course, as a former dreamer, I want to do something grand and meaningful and big. So, AI Safety and indie creative work have an appeal to me. The latter is probably not prudent, but would be a way to keep my hands clean of the AI mess that is now being created. The former is a way to fix the mess, or at least prevent its worse excesses, but risks encouraging the whole industry, safety-washing as it’s called.

My education, my credentials, the greater part of my work experience, tends to lean towards the technical, the AI work, and to a lesser extent game dev stuff. Writing is something I know I have some talent for, but I’m uncertain if that talent is actually enough to be exceptional, to actually be that much better that my writing would be worth reading over the other options.

There is a massive pile of literature in the world already. Most people will never live long enough to read all the classics, much less all the books they’d be personally interested in. Why add to the pile?

On the other hand, do I think I can actually make a difference on AI Safety? Much smarter people are struggling to figure out how to attack the problem. It may not even be a solvable thing. It could be intractable.

There’s an argument among Effective Altruism circles that the best thing most people can do is to Earn-To-Give. To find the highest paying job they can find, and donate as much as they comfortably can to the most effective charities. On paper, the numbers work out that this is the best thing you can do with your time and energy, unless you are an exceptionally good fit for direct work on the causes that matter.

That would suggest I should go back into AI, and just donate what I can.

But AI is increasingly a field that contributes to a lot of cultural pollution, technological misuse, unethical profit-seeking, etc. To what extent would I be condoning such things by choosing to participate in it?

Realistically, this is a problem for the long term. Right now, with my child in daycare, and potentially seeing interruptions in that, it may make sense to be patient and do something less demanding for now. Perhaps, in the interim, it does make sense to explore creative work on the side, to test whether or not I can write well enough to justify a project of some kind.

I tried testing my game design ability earlier when there was some time when my wife’s parents were here. I was able to finally finish programming the game Star Lance, and create another game called Cities and Tactics. That showed I have some aptitude, though nothing particularly special, I think. I should try writing some short stories, and see if they’re any good…

There are lots of things I should do. I still suck at doing things. I think. I ponder. I have intellectual wanderings and musings. But actually doing things? I hesitate. I question. I doubt. I’m not good at being productive. It makes me think I may not be cut out for any of these things I’ve been considering.

In another life, I would have been something like a political philosopher. That probably could have been my calling if I’d been more foolish. Though realistically, I’d probably have ended up starving instead.

My wife thinks maybe I should go to teacher’s college and become a teacher. She thinks I have the empathy for it. I’m not sure about that. If I want to teach, I’m probably more inclined to write a book about the thing I want people to learn. Dealing with actual people is not my forte. At the same time, teaching seems like a very noble profession.

Maybe I should consider what will likely disappear due to AI first? My two skills in life, programming and writing, both seem to be things that LLMs are uniquely suited for. An unfortunate coincidence, that.

I don’t really know what to do with this. My career was going… somewhere? But now it’s on pause and I’m not sure I can go back. I feel kinda useless in that regard, washed up.

The pivot into game development might have been a mistake, but then, I didn’t exactly have any other opportunities at that moment. I took what was there. I’ve never been in a position to choose between multiple job offers at the same time. I’ve never been that successful, that privileged.

I find I end up just going with the flow. My life is mostly stuff that happened, and I did what seemed to make sense at the time. I never really planned far ahead, aside from maybe choosing to study AI before it was cool. That was a lucky choice, it seems. Though I don’t know the counterfactual, so maybe it wasn’t, who knows?

Anyways, the reality is I’ll probably end up choosing what ever opportunity first presents itself. Right now there’s not much going on. I should maybe be more strategic, but I suck at that too.

Where am I going with this? There’s possibilities, but they are very uncertain. There’s things I can do, but I don’t know if I should. There’s paths to take, but I hesitate. I want a sign. I want some clear instructions from God that this is what I should do with my life. But it seems like I’m not getting a sign, or at least, I’m too dumb to recognize it.

These days my mindset is darker than usual, more melancholic. I’m tired.

I wish I could end on a high note. I want to believe in something. I admit that life isn’t that bad. I should show more gratitude. I know the CBT, I know in theory that things are okay. I just feel a certain way. I guess it can’t be helped.

In case someone is actually reading this, I have these ups and downs. Usually, in the past, I posted during the ups. Recently, I’ve tried posting during the downs, to perhaps balance things, to show a more real presentation of myself, rather than the idealized image that you often see on social media. I’m not sure if I went too far, have said too much that is much too personal and bad for my prospects.

I hope that being so impulsively honest helps people to understand me better. But I should probably cut back on this kind of thing. It does nothing for my cause with recruiters, I think.

Words can come back to curse us. Or they can teach and help us to connect. It’s a matter of wisdom I suppose, which one happens in the end. I want to communicate, because I seem to care what other people think, because what they think leads to how they feel, and what they feel matters.

So, regardless, maybe I should write. There are stories in my head I want to write. I really should stop hesitating, fearing that they will prove my incompetence. The truth is likely that I’ll be decent but not exceptional, like with most of my hobbies.

I have to trust that something will open up. That there is a place for me in this world. Somewhere in the future, things will work out, somehow. I just have to patient and kind and myself.

Some Foolish Musings

by Josephius

On September 12, 2025

In Life, Motivational, Philosophy

Lately, not much has been happening. Well, not much in terms of career progression and projects. My family did experience several health situations that delayed a lot of things I wanted to do.

The toddler is doing well enough. Things are going again. Though, I’m still worried about various things.

Life goes on. I still don’t know what I’m doing. Still trying to live my values, even though I often wonder to what extent I’ve compromised to try to live a good life, instead of being a saint and serving the just cause as I sometimes think I should.

The reality of things is that I’m just a Joseph. I’m not special. Chances are I won’t make a significant impact, good or bad, positive or negative. I can push weakly in the direction of a better world in very small ways, but it will mostly matter only to those few that actually seem to care that I even exist.

For them, I’m still going.

My moral stance nowadays is that if it matters to anyone anywhere, it matters, and what matters in the universe, is just the aggregate of all these cares and concerns. The greatest good is made of the desires and dreams of everyone, without exception.

I’ve realized at some point that most people don’t seem to care intrinsically about the well-being and happiness of others. They may follow some rules that they should care, but most don’t do it because they actually, deeply care. I don’t know why I care. Why should I care about the happiness of a stranger? Why am I so strange?

People likely don’t believe I care. I used to try to hide it, because it was too easy to take advantage of me otherwise. Now, I don’t care about hiding it so much. I just do what I think is right, when I can. But at the same time, I don’t know if what I’m doing is actually right, or just what I delude myself into thinking.

I sometimes imagine that there are things happening at multiple levels beyond comprehension. Like time travellers and aliens are fighting a war across the multiverse. But in reality, why would I matter at all in something like that? So, it’s probably more delusion and hubris.

There’s a joke about the priest and the helicopter. Once, there was a flood, and a priest was stuck on a rooftop waiting for help from God. A boat appeared and the rescuers offered to help the priest. He said no, he’d wait for God to save him. Then, later, another boat, and another rejection. Then a helicopter appeared with people who could save him, but the priest, in faith, chose to wait for God. Eventually the floodwaters rose and he drowned.

Later, when the priest was in heaven with God, he asked why he wasn’t saved. God replied: “What do you mean? I sent two boats and a helicopter!”

Sometimes I think, if time travellers were real, they’d be the helicopter.

But of course, time travel is probably physically impossible, or cannot actually change the past, but only make things happen as they were, or create a new timeline, leaving the old one untouched. Those are the ways you avoid impossible paradoxes.

If such things were real, it would have nothing to do with me. They could erase memories and create local reality bubbles or whatever. They could be completely invisible, plausibly deniable. Just inconvenience you for two seconds at the door, and then you miss the car accident you would have had. And you’d have never known.

Same with aliens or simulators or anything else god-like in their technological power. You exist because they want you to, if they exist at all.

But my life seems very mundane, very pointless, full of frustrating, inconvenient bouts of mild suffering. I imagine I might exist just for the entertainment of some bored entity that just enjoys psychologically torturing nice guys who finish last.

I have no way to prove it. There’s still good things in the world. Nice moments. Beautiful music. It doesn’t really fit the narrative, the hypothesis.

More realistically, life is just a bunch of stuff that happens. We are particles dancing in chaos.

I want for things to matter. And yet…

The world continues to turn. We live and dream and hope and are disappointed, and then hope again, and the cycle continues.

Life goes on. The cost of taking risks is the potential for disappointment. There is no avoiding this. If you take no risks, you will never do anything, never hope, never fear. But such a life seems pretty empty.

So, we dream. We hope. We fear. We hope some more.

Someday, maybe, I’ll understand. Until then, I wander through meandering thoughts and foolish musings…

Thoughts On The Simulation Argument

by Josephius

On June 4, 2025

In Life, Motivational, Philosophy

So, there’s that Simulation Argument that Nick Bostrom formalized a while back, and before that was considered by everything from The Matrix to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. Bostrom’s argument specifically is that, assuming such technology is possible, and civilizations last long enough to make them, we are much more likely to be in one of countless ancestor simulations, than not.

It’s an interesting argument from probability. Some people take it surprisingly seriously, calling the average human an NPC and otherwise using it to justify otherwise questionable choices. Most people who discover the argument however, don’t really do anything about it, and probably for good reason.

The argument, even if true, doesn’t really tell us much. The simulators are an unknown factor, akin to God, but perhaps less certainly benevolent. Their intentions are inscrutable. We could be part of some scientific experiment, an experience machine for bored future people to live in the past, or any other of many possible alternative theories.

But, what does it matter? We can see from the degree of granularity that we ourselves are conscious and sentient. There’s nothing that suggests that other people aren’t also. There’s no evidence that sentient life isn’t actually sentient, though it might be convenient to simulate at lower fidelity.

So, in terms of happiness and suffering, these things are most likely still real, regardless of whether we’re in the ground truth universe or not. From a moral perspective, we still have responsibilities to other sentient beings, regardless of whether or not this is a simulation.

It’s possible that we’re alone in the simulation. But we cannot, realistically, find this out. We also, could, be in base reality. We really, really, don’t know. And that’s the thing. If we’re alone in a simulation and nothing really matters, then we can do whatever, but there’s a chance we aren’t, and for the sake of that chance, we should act as if our actions do have impact and matter.

So, at the end of the day, we go on our daily lives regardless of the Argument. It doesn’t change that, given what we seem to know about the universe, there is right and wrong and choices to be made and people to be considerate towards.

We can guess at what the hypothetical simulators want. We can try to hack the simulation. But chances are, it won’t work. Likely, they’ll just make us forget we were thinking about this, and the simulation continues.

Or maybe the world is real. In which case, it’s important to be who you are, and care about the things that you care about. Give it the benefit of the doubt. It’s really the only responsible thing to do.

On The Reality Of Dreams

by Josephius

On March 5, 2025

In Life, Motivational, Philosophy

When I was younger, I believed strongly in the idea of having dreams to aspire to. A part of this may have come from my English name, which is of a character from the Bible who had and could interpret dreams. So, the idea of dreams, either the ones when you sleep, or the wishes you want to achieve in your life, were both things I valued.

It went so far that I often ended up a sort of hopeless romantic, choosing to do what I felt sentimentally to be right, rather than what was necessarily rational or prudent. Often, I would let my emotions get the better of me, despite being normally fairly logical.

To some extent, this is encouraged in our culture. Movies and books have protagonists who chase their dreams and get what we, the audience, think they deserve. This is, in reality, something fed to us because it sells. The idea that we will all get what we think we rightfully deserve, this notion that the universe is just and fair, is something we hope to be true.

But the truth is, in so far as anyone can tell by the evidence of the actual universe, fate and chance happen to us all. Our aims are not always met. Hard work can be thwarted by bad luck. The forces of history conspire to overturn everything from time to time, often without rhyme or rhythm.

The reality is that most of us are not significant in the grand scheme of things. And the bigger our dreams, the bigger our almost certain disappointment.

That being said, I don’t think we should abandon our dreams. Dreams do serve a purpose. They act as a guide for our decisions. They point us in a direction that we consider worth going in. Chances are, we won’t reach our destination, but we’ll get somewhere closer than if we didn’t bother. And the journey will be more meaningful than if we simply took a random walk through the universe.

Nevertheless, there needs to be a balance between dreaming and being prudent. We can, in our foolishness, ignore the real opportunities in favour of a mirage. It takes wisdom to understand this, to recognize when to satisfice.

If we search vaguely for something optimal, we will never stop searching. Eventually, you have to decide what is acceptable to you.

This is what I eventually did with my life. I started a dreamer, chasing the impossible, but ended up finding an acceptable life to live. I did this because the alternative was to forever be unsatisfied, forever chasing the wind.

In truth, what I, deep down, really really want, is not something that I can realistically see happening. My trajectory simply fell way short. I did go further towards a good life than if I’d just meandered aimlessly, but I won’t pretend my life wasn’t full of disappointments.

The more you hope, the more you will be disappointed. The only way to avoid it is to expect nothing, which is probably worse for you in the long run. Disappointment is the cost of having dreams. I believe it’s something worth paying, and I won’t pretend dreams come free.

It is fun to dream, but sometimes, for the sake of actually doing something meaningful, you have to be realistic.

We like to imagine ourselves an important person, but actually, we’re much more likely to be the average person. You’ve never heard of them. They live a mundane, somewhat interesting life, but nothing that makes the news or the history books. They probably manage to keep a job and have a family and some friends. They do normal, human things.

People like me, find being an average person somewhat unsatisfying. But the reality is, we don’t have a choice in this. Most of the things that make people super special are also things completely outside of their control, those forces of history I mentioned earlier.

So, it’s pointless to be upset that your life is only so-so, especially if you’re a dreamer with absurdly high expectations. The reality is, we’re lucky to have what we do. And we should be grateful. The universe can take everything you have away from you in an instant. It is… capricious like that.

At the end of the day, I can’t stop dreaming completely. But I can understand the limits of reality, and not allow myself to be taken by foolish fancy. I can show prudence and wisdom, and act according to reason. This way, I can eke out a good, fruitful life. As long as I stay true to my values, this should be enough.

There Are No True Monsters

by Josephius

On November 3, 2023

In Motivational

As a child we often fear that the world is filled with monsters, creatures that want to hurt us for no reason other than because they want to. As we grow older, the monsters in the dark, under our bed, or in the basement are proven to be imaginary, but we encounter apparent real world monsters in the form of scary animals and, most often, people who don’t have our best interests at heart.

That being said, the truth is that these apparent monsters, upon closer inspection, aren’t the same thing as what we previously feared, not because they aren’t dangerous, but because they tend to hide complicated motivations other than mere malice.

The tiger that our prehistoric ancestors feared, wasn’t attacking them out of pure malice, but rather because it either saw an opportunity for meat it could eat to survive, or it was afraid of our pointy sticks and struck first. Most real world villains are merely selfish humans who’s moral circle consists only of themselves, or worse, those that are blinded by some ideological aspirations to sacrifice others for some so-called greater good. In both cases what they do can be monstrous, but in the simple sense, they are human beings, rather than true monsters.

But what about sadists, you might counter. What about those that gain enjoyment from the suffering of others? Clearly these are monsters right? Well, to be fair, they didn’t choose to be what they are. Some perverse environmental factors incentivized their sadism by connecting their pleasure to the suffering of others. In truth, they just want to feel pleasure, and their sadism is a means to that end. It’s definitely a screwed up thing, but it isn’t the same thing as being a monster who wants to hurt you for no reason.

So, in truth, there are no true monsters. Everyone has some motivation that complicates the matter. No one is born inherently evil. They can become essentially evil through their choices, commit acts of malice out of hatred or revenge, but these are all motivations that stem from a failure to empathize with other beings.

In theory, it might be possible to show such people the error of their ways. Ideally, that should be how you deal with them. Their darkness stems from ignorance rather than malice after all. But the difficulty is that those who are prone to such thoughts and beliefs are also likely to be more dangerous. You may not have the luxury of debating them on ideas, when they’re trying to kill you for whatever reasons.

So sometimes we have to fight. Sometimes we have to punish and deter. But we should do so with the awareness that the people we strike against are still human beings, sentient creatures that can love and feel happiness and suffering as well.

There may not be true monsters in the world, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t dangers. We should respect that as much as we may want to redeem others, it may not be realistically possible, when they are too fargone into madness, or too closed minded to see beyond their selfish impulses.

When we can, we should empathize and show mercy, lest we become what we fear and disdain. When we cannot, we must understand this is a prudent compromise with reality, one that we choose begrudgingly rather than gleefully. Everyone is a hero in their own story. We should be aware how we can, while fighting for what we value, become villains in the stories of others.

On The Morality Of Work

by Josephius

On May 17, 2023

In Motivational, Philosophy, Politics

If you accept the idea that there is no ethical consumption or production under capitalism, a serious question arises: Should you work?

What does it mean to work? Generally, the average person is a wage earner. They sell their labour to an employer in order to afford food to survive. To work thus means to engage with the system, to be a part of society and contribute something that someone somewhere wants done in exchange for the means of survival.

Implicit in this is the reality that there is a fundamental, basic cost to living. Someone, somewhere, is farming the food that you eat, and in a very roundabout way, you are, by participating in the economy, returning the favour. This is ignoring the whole issue of capitalism’s merits. At the end of the day, the economy is a system that feeds and clothes and provides shelter, how ever imperfectly and unfairly. Even if it is not necessarily the most just and perfect system, it nevertheless does provide for most people the amenities that allow a good life.

Thus, in an abstract sense, work is fair. It is fair that the time spent by people to provide food and clothing and shelter is paid back by your spending your time to earn a living, regardless of whatever form that takes. On a basic level, it’s at least minimally fair that you exchange your time and energy for other people’s time and energy. Capitalism may not be fair, but the basic idea of social production is right.

So, if you are able to, please work. Work because in an ideal society, work is your contribution to some common good. It is you adding to the overall utility by doing something that seems needed by someone enough that they’ll pay you for it. Even if in practice, the reality of the system is less than ideal, the fact is that on a basic level, work needs to be done by someone somewhere for people to live.

While you work, try to do so as morally as possible, by choosing insofar as it is possible the professions that are productive and useful to society, and making decisions that reflect your values rather than that of the bottom line. If you must participate in capitalism to survive, then at least try to be humane about it.

In Defence of Defiance Against The World’s Ills

by Josephius

On May 16, 2023

In Motivational, Philosophy, Politics

“If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” – Jesus

In 1972, the famous Utilitarian moral philosopher Peter Singer published an essay titled: “Famine, Affluence, and Morality” that argued that we have a moral duty to help those in poverty far across the world. In doing so, he echoed a sentiment that Jesus shared almost two millennia prior.

From a deeply moral perspective, we live in a world that is fundamentally flawed and unjust. The painful truth is that the vast majority of humans on this Earth live according to a kind of survivorship bias, where the systems and beliefs that perpetuate are not right, but what enables them to survive long enough to procreate and instill a next generation where things continue to exist.

For most people, life is hard enough that questioning whether the way things are is right is something of a privilege that they cannot afford. For others, this questioning requires a kind of soul searching that they shy away from because it would make them uncomfortable to even consider. It’s natural to imagine yourself the hero in your own story. To question this assumption is not easy.

But the reality is that most all of us are in some sense complicit in the most senseless of crimes against humanity. When we participate in an economy to ensure we have food to eat, we are tacitly choosing to give permission to a system of relations that is fundamentally indifferent to the suffering of many. We compete with fellow human beings for jobs and benefit from their misery when we take one of only a limited number of spots in the workforce. We chose to allow those with disproportionate power to decide who gets to live a happier life. And those in power act to further increase their share of power, because to do anything else would lead to being outcompeted and their organization rendered extinct by the perverse incentives that dominate the system.

Given all this, what can one even begin to do about it? Most of us are not born into a position where they have the power to change the world. Our options are limited. To be moral, we would need to defy the very nature of existence. What can we do? If we sell everything we have and give to the poor, that still won’t change the nature of the world, even if it’s the most we could conceivably do.

What does it mean to defy destiny? What does it look like to try to achieve something that seems impossible?

What exists in opposition to this evil? What is good? What is right? What does it look like to live a pure and just life in a world filled with indifference and malice? What does it mean to take responsibility for one’s actions and the consequences of those actions?

Ultimately, it is not in our power to single-handledly change the world, but there are steps we can take to give voice to our values, to live according to what we believe to be right. This means making small choices about how we behave towards others. It means showing kindness and consideration in a world that demands cutthroat competition. It means taking actions that bring light into the world.

Even if we, by ourselves, cannot bring revolution, we can at least act according to the ideals we espouse. This can be as small as donating a modest amount to a charity in a far off land that corrects a small amount of injustice by giving the poorest among us a bednet that protects them from malaria. If approximately $5500 worth of such things can save a life, and minimum wage can earn you $32,000 a year, if you modestly donate 10% of that to this charity, you can save about one life every two years. If you work for 40 years, you can save about 23 lives this way. Those lives matter. They will be etched into eternity, like all lives worth living.

Admittedly, to do this requires participating in the system. You could also choose not to participate. But to do so would abandon your responsibilities for the sake of a kind of moral purity. In the end, you can do more good by living an ethical life, to lead by example and showing that there are ways of living where you strive to move beyond selfish competition, and seek to cooperate and build up the world.

This is the path of true defiance. It does not surrender one’s life to the evils of egoism, or abandon the world to the lost. Instead it seeks to build something better through decisions made that go against the grain. With the understanding that we are all living a mutual co-existence, and that our choices and decisions reflect who we are, our character as people.

We do not have to be perfect. It is enough to be good.

Practical Utilitarianism Cares About Relationships

by Josephius

On January 5, 2023

In Motivational, Philosophy

Anyone reading my writings probably knows that I subscribe roughly to the moral theory of Utilitarianism. To me, we should be trying to maximize the happiness of everyone. Every sentient being should be considered important enough to be weighed in our moral calculus of right and wrong. In theory, this should mean we should place equal weight on every human being on this Earth. In practice however, there are considerations that need to be taken into account that complicate the picture.

Naive Utilitarianism would argue that time and distance don’t matter, that you should help those who you can most effectively assist given limited resources. This usually leads to the recommendation of donating to charities in Africa for bednet or medication delivery as this is considered the most effective use of a given dollar of value. There is definitely merit to the argument that a dollar can go further in poverty-stricken Africa than elsewhere. However, I don’t think that’s the only consideration here.

Time and distance do matter to the extent that we as human beings have limited knowledge of things far away from us in time and space. With respect to donations to a distant country in dire need, there are reasonable uncertainties about the effectiveness of these donations, as many of the arguments in favour of them depend heavily on our trust of the analysis done by the charities working far away, that we cannot confirm or prove directly.

This uncertainty should function as a kind of discount rate on the value of the help we can give. A more nuanced and measured analysis thus suggests that we should both donate some of our resources to those distant charities, but that we should also devote some of our resources to those closer to home whom we can directly see and assist and know that we are able to help. Our friends and family, whom we have relationships that allow us to know their needs and wants, what will best help them, are obvious candidates for this kind of help.

Similarly, those in the distant future, while worth helping to an extent, should not completely absolve us of our responsibilities to those near to us in time, who we are much more certain we can directly help and affect in meaningful ways. The further away a possible being is in time, the more uncertain is their existence, after all.

This also means that we ourselves should value our own happiness and, being the best positioned to know how we ourselves can be happy, should take responsibility for our own happiness.

Thus, in practice, Utilitarianism, carefully considered, does not eliminate our social responsibilities to those around us, but rather reinforces these ties, as being important to understanding how best to make those around us happy.

Equal concern does not mean, in practice, equal duty. It means instead that we should expand our circle of concern to the entire universe, and that there is a balance of considerations that create responsibilities for us, magnified by our practical ability to know and help.

Those distant from us are still important. We should do what we reasonably can to help them. But those close to us put us in a position where we are uniquely responsible for what we know to be true.

In the end, it’s ultimately up to you to decide what matters to you, but may I suggest that you be open to helping both those close and far from you, whose needs you are aware of to varying degrees, and who deserve to be happy just like you.

A Heuristic For Future Prediction

by Josephius

On January 5, 2023

In Motivational, Rationality

In my experience, the most reliable predictive heuristic that you can use in daily life is something called Regression Towards The Mean. Basically, given that most relevant life events are a result of a mixture of skill and luck, there is a tendency for events that are very positive to be followed by more negative events, and for very negative events to be followed by more positive events. This is a statistical tendency that occurs over many events, and so not every good event will be immediately followed by a bad one, but over time, the trend tends towards a consistent average level rather than things being all good or all bad.

Another way to word this is to say that we should expect the average rather than the best or worst case scenarios to occur most of the time. To hope for the best or fear the worst are both, in this sense, unrealistic. The silver lining in here is that while our brightest hopes may well be dashed, our worst fears are also unlikely to come to pass. When things seem great, chances are things aren’t going to continue to be exceptional forever, but at the same time, when things seem particularly down, you can expect things to get better.

This heuristic tends to work in a lot of places, ranging from overperforming athletes suffering a sophmore jinx, to underachievers having a Cinderella story. In practice, these events simply reflect Regression Towards The Mean.

Over much longer periods of time, this oscillation tends to curve gradually upward. This is a result of Survivorship Bias. Things that don’t improve tend to stop existing after a while, so the only things that perpetuate in the universe tend to be things that make progress and improve in quality over time. The stock market is a crude example of this. The daily fluctuations tend to regress towards the mean, but the overall long term trend is one of gradual but inevitable growth.

Thus, even with Regression Towards The Mean, there is a bias towards progress that in the long run, entails optimism about the future. We are a part of life, and life grows ever forward. Sentient beings seek happiness and avoid suffering and act in ways that work to create a world state that fulfills our desires. Given, there is much that is outside of our control, but that there are things we can influence means that we can gradually, eventually, move towards the state of reality that we want to exist.

Even if by default we feel negative experiences more strongly than positive ones, our ability to take action allows us to change the ratio of positive to negative in favour of the positive. So the long term trend is towards good, even if the balance of things tends in the short run towards the average.

These dynamics mean that while the details may be unknowable, we can roughly predict the valence of the future, and as a heuristic, expecting things to be closer to average, with a slight bias towards better in the long run, tends to be a reliable prediction for most phenomena.