Five more years

GO GO GO GO GO GO GO GO GO GO

There’s a group of people I’m surrounded by who believe humanity has, as a median estimate, only about five more years before transformative AI either kills us all or delivers us utopia. What if they’re right?

If they’re right, how would I spend those five more years?

My most immediate reaction is that I would stop doing bullshit. But this is almost a cliche thing to say, and it’s a little bit unclear what it means. One man’s bullshit is another man’s calling. But I think I would try and cut out a lot of the fat in my life, removing the things that sap my energy and tag along everywhere I go, giving me nothing but inertia.

Then, the most pressing decision I must make is: do I spend those five years trying to save the world, or taking advantage of everything it has to offer? I could grind my ass off, doing anything I could to leave my mark, and push the needle towards a safer future. Or, I could drop away from all responsibilities, and figure out what kind of lifestyle my basest desires would carve out for me. My guess is that it would look something like Chris McCandless.

And this dilema is where I run straight into a philosophical brick wall. The great unanswered question, of whether you are in total ownership your own life, or if you have a duty to your community, your country, your species.

Let’s try turning to trying to be cool. This is a philosophy that got me out of a similar philosophical rut over a year ago. I decided that I should live my life according to my own, arbitrary, un-justifiable perceptions of aesthetics, and act in such a way that I always move closer to a more realized, “cooler” version of myself.

I think this works reasonably well here, but it comes into conflict with the only other philosophical rule I’ve layed down for myself, a rule that inspired the title of this blog (no, it’s not about drugs), and one which I consider so fundamental I consider it nearly a complete axiom for how to live your life. The rule is simple: you must try to be happy without lying to yourself.

This rule means that your happiness only counts if you’re living in the true world while you experience it. You must be aware of true reality, and not delude yourself in any way. Thus, whenever you are at your happiest, you must constantly question whether there is some massive lie you had to tell yourself in order to feel like this. As much of a killjoy as this may sound, this is the tax you must pay in order to get to live as a true hedonist.

Attempting to resolve it

I think the axiom is the most fundamental (as axioms have a habit of being), and the coolness must come second. You must make sure that your standards for coolness do not arise from lies. Thus, we’ve resolved this conflict, but made no progress on our dilemma between saving the world and experiencing it.

I’ve always told myself that I would give the world my twenties, selflessly grinding away at it’s greatest problems, and afterwards, I would retire to become an adventurer/husband/father. And this is really where my conflict is coming from. This life plan sounds super duper boring if I never even get past twenty five.

Ignoring the problem

I’m not shy about my dislike for philosophy, and it’s proven inability to solve my problems. Therefore, I will mostly move past the conflict without resolving it, leaving it up to my future self to decide in-the-moment.

I will make one caveat before I move on: I think there are a few ways to approach the conflict between personal enjoyment and your goals. A bad mindset I’ve fallen into in the past has looked at self-sacrifice as necessary, almost directly tied to, any success in other areas of my life. I would tell myself that I would suffer in the moment, missing out on countless opportunities, but it would all be worth it in the end when I achieved my greatest dreams.

I think this is a bad mindset. It’s self-defeating, leads to burnout, and is often simply not true. Pain is not the unit of effort.

Instead, I want to discuss a different approach to life. Although in many ways, this will sound like having your cake and eating it too, I think it’s a better way to do it, or at least, the way I prefer to do it. The most cliche way to describe this is as “work hard, play hard”. You must live your life to the max, living the extremes, alternating between periods of monk-like, single minded focus, and extreme hedonism.

GO GO GO GO GO GO GO GO GO GO

Sometimes this manic energy comes to me which causes me to feel an extreme need to SPRINT through life, pushing through tasks and fun activities at tremendous speed. I think mania is not sustainable for a period for as long as five years, but the energy I feel when I say this comes from a real place, and I want to direct it somewhere it will actually push me forward.

What I actually wanted to say.

I had some thoughts I wanted to say when I started writing this, which I was hoping I would segue into naturally. It seems my keyboard took me in a slightly different direction, but I think the things I wanted to say are important, so here it is

1. No more bullshit. This counts especially for relationships. I can’t afford to sit on my hands and wait for the perfect opportunity to present itself. After reading David Sedaris’s “Guy Walks Into a Bag Car”, I’ve promised myself that I would never be the type of person to let Bashir leave the train without kissing him.

2. Seriously no bullshit. I would probably kills myself before the AI’s do if I found out that I spent the majority of the five years I have left on this planet trying to achieve something simply because society told me I should, despite it not ending up being important to anything I care about. This could be a college degree, although I like college for other reasons.

3. Shoot for the moon. Every spring break, every big road trip, there comes a moment when you are able to make a decision to do something really hard. You can climb the crevasse-covered mountain you’re completely unprepared to climb. You can attempt to hitch hike the two hours back to Phoenix rather than paying for the shuttle. You can jump in the ocean in January. You can wake up at 1am to try and find the childhood friend you left behind in the city you haven’t lived in since you were eight, who the only thing you know about is an address. Whenever you have to make this decision, you must take it. Because you’re really never going to get that chance again.

I guess there’s nothing too profound here. This basically all just boils down to “live true to yourself, and live life to the max”. Living like you only have five years to live can be scary, but it can also be quite freeing, and a bit fun, too. It’s something you can fall back on anytime you feel weak, or uncertain about what you should do. Because even if “they” are wrong, and I still have a full life ahead of me, I’ll have had a pretty incredible start to my twenties.