Hello Morelife Yahoo,

Over the past year I have taken notes on my thoughts in response to my
readings of Morelife.org and SelfSIP.org. I have decided that I will
begin posting them to the group for further discussion. This will be the
first in a series of such posts. I am currently considering posting a
single topic at a time, allow time for it to be responded to and
discussed, then, after it seems that immediate discussion has ended, I
will post the next set of notes on a different topic. I am open to
considering other methods of proceeding if anyone has a suggestion.

This post is in response to parts of the Theory of Social Meta Needs
(referred to as "SMN"). This can be found at the following website:
http://www.selfsip.org/fundamentals/socialmetaneeds.html

In my notes I give a heading name, which refers to the bolded heading in
the left margin at the above website. To eliminate the necessity of
switching between windows, I have quoted the passage my comments are
directed toward, so readers can quickly (re-)read the passage I am
referring to, and have it readily available to make comments to. Keep in
mind that I made these notes to myself, so I did not write with a particular
audience in mind except myself. Also note that these notes were made
some time ago, and I post them without modification. My reasoning for
doing this is that, at the time I made these notes, I had the following
responses to the material I was reading. While my perspectives may have
changed, the usefulness of sharing my thinking processes at that time
has not diminished.

My notes begin immediately below.

Heading: The Purpose of Life

"Although, the physiological pleasure/pain (Happiness seeking) Attribute
that humans retain from their evolutionary origins requires that
psychological egoism18 must be the initial guiding principle of human
Action, just as its counterpart is for other life-forms, the fully
developed analytical faculty of humans necessarily modifies this
principle away from merely directing immediately pleasurable
(hedonistic) Actions, as with most non-human life-forms, toward
directing those wider-seeing, longer-range human Actions whose purpose
is to optimally increase an individual human's total Lifetime Happiness.
Thus, does the thinking of a fully developed human transform
psychological egoism into ethical egoism19 by causing mere instinctive
animal behavior directed toward immediate gratification to become
introspective, thoughtful behavior directed toward his longest-range,
widest-view self-interest, and even to make such behavior mandatory if
he wants to optimally increase his Lifetime Happiness."

Comments on above:

a. The goal here seems to be "optimizing lifetime happiness". To do so,
humans must learn to think, plan, and act with a *long-term*
perspective, in comparison to the more instinctive short-term,
pleasure-seeking, hedonistic perspective. There may be a number of
reasons why this seems to be true.

One, many short-term-view, hedonistic actions can have negative
long-term consequences that greatly decrease Possible Future Lifetime
Happiness (i.e. consuming vast quantities of readily-available junk-food
can reduce lifespan and life-quality for the benefit of short-term
consumption pleasure).

Two, violence and aggression, when applied to extract resources from
another human, can have negative long-term implications, especially when
Negative Social Preferencing is applied against the individual
committing such acts. Violence and aggression also cause harm to
individuals - actors which may play some role in the Violator's future
happiness, and may no longer be able to play that role after being harmed.

b. There seems to be a problem with the personal and subjective
evaluation of "Expected Future Lifetime Happiness" or "Possible Future
Lifetime Happiness". Because of the subjective nature of this
evaluation, the seeming lack of metrics to conduct an accurate
evaluation, and the unknown variables associated with future events,
this evaluation seems fraught with difficulty, even for the most
diligent Evaluator.

c. By applying the longest-range, widest-view when attempting to
maximize Lifetime Happiness, a human will minimize the negative
consequences of engaging in short-term, negative, and/or hedonistic
actions. However, adopting this "longest-rage, widest-view" may require
such a large portion of resources (i.e. time in consideration of
alternative actions) and an extreme application of the practice of
"delayed gratification" that the application of such a view may *reduce*
Total Possible Lifetime Happiness. This possibility suggests that the
*longest* range, *widest* view (both words using -est suffixes
indicating maximization) may reduce Total Lifetime Happiness because of
the difficulties in implementing such an extreme (i.e. -est suffix)
view. Yet, there lies a problem in deciding how "long" of a range and
how "wide" of a view to implement, since future events are unknown. In
short, this is a difficult balancing act. Still, life, and the decisions
required of it, are not necessarily easy.

I will use a personal example to illustrate the above comment regarding
unknown future events. Note that I may be applying the idea of
"Lifetime Happiness" inappropriately here, as I will be using an example
of the consumption of a favorite food as increasing Lifetime Happiness.

I very much enjoy donuts. I love the taste of these treats. There are
a great number of other tasty foods I once enjoyed that I no longer
allow myself to consume, due to their likely negative effect on my
health. By implementing the "longest-term, widest-view" for maximizing
my Lifetime Happiness, I have chosen to *not* consume these foods,
thereby reducing short-term pleasure with the possibility of increased
health and lifespan. This increase in health and lifespan will, in my
opinion, allow me to accrue greater Lifetime Happiness than would my
current consumption of these foods. Alternatively, I might consume very
small portions of such unhealthful but intensely enjoyable foods, with
the intention of (a) maximizing my happiness and (b) minimizing the
negative impact of such a decision.

Regarding the possibility of unknown future events and the resulting
difficulty in applying the longest-rage, widest-view, medical
interventions may exist in the future to reverse the damage done to my
soma from the chronic consumption of the "treats" I describe above. So,
I may have foregone the happiness of consuming these "treats" when, in
fact, the future may bring about medical technology that would have
rendered "treat consumption" harmless - or relatively so.

However, in refutation of the above comment, there is currently no way
in which to tell the possibility of future events. Therefore, unknown
events, or the likelihood of an event such as the medical technology
described above, must be carefully considered by the Evaluator when
applying the "longest-rage, widest-view". This goes back to the
"balancing act" problem.

d. It is asserted in this essay that the primary goal of each human is
to maximize hir "Lifetime Happiness". A quite related variable to
maximizing Lifetime Happiness is life Duration (lifespan), which might
also be called Survival. This is because the longer one's lifespan (the
longer one "survives"), the more moments of happiness one can experience
and the greater the possible sum of Lifetime Happiness. What would be
the implications for SelfSIP if the goal of each individual is to
maximize Lifepsan, or Survival? (post-script from Max: I have addressed
this question of Happiness vs. Survival in a recent post).

e. (Previously considered) The perceived Lifetime Happiness Actions of
Human A may greatly reduce the Lifetime Happiness of Human B. For
example, Human A may find pleasure or happiness in causing great harm to
other humans, or in actions that greatly reduce the happiness of other
humans (i.e. killing animals or burning down forests). Is Human A
DisAllowed to participate in those actions that bring Human A happiness
if those actions decrease the happiness of other humans?

[Meta
Since this first post of notes that you made some time ago is about the purpose
of life and your previous post clearly states that you have very recently had a
major change in how you view the purpose of life, I think it imperative that the
very first comments to all the above notes should come from *you* (more than the
mere post-script note at the and of d) above). --Paul
/Meta]