The Whole Book in One Flowchart
“Concern for man and his fate must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavors. Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams and equations.”
― Albert Einstein, Quoted in "Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing our Digital Future" by Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson
“Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will not die, but long after we are gone be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistence.”
― Daniel Burnham, American architect
Since I am an engineer, I like to draw diagrams / flowcharts to help me think and also to present my thinking to others. Here is a flowchart that captures how I have gone about deriving meaning, purpose and hope based on evidence and reason alone, starting from First Principles.
First, we define our methodology, which accounts for the existence of unknowns and nebulosity in reality, as well as known limits to rationality, but still stays within the bounds of evidence and reason. We call this methodology Mindful Bounded Rationality (MBR).
Then we use this methodology to build a framework for achieving our purpose. I am calling this framework the Meaning-Seeking Entities (MSE) Framework. (These terms will be fully defined in the book.)
The framework starts with a discussion of our Ultimate Reality, followed by Physical Reality and Life on one side, and Consciousness on the other. We discuss the relevant evidence and reasoning behind our observations.
We also note that, at present, we do not know the relationship between Consciousness and Physical Reality as well as Life. But we do not depend upon knowing such a relationship, and do not need to privilege one or the other to build our framework.
Note that we take all necessary care to avoid the typical pitfalls associated with other frameworks that attempt to define things like meaning, purpose and hope, such as needing to take leaps of faith or poetic licenses. We acknowledge our limits and yet make progress towards our goal.
Based on all of the above, we then recognize that we have incontrovertible evidence that the universe appears to exhibit certain ubiquitous and ever-present tendencies, which we call the "6CED" Tendencies. We define these tendencies and also define what I am calling Meaning-Seeking Entities (MSE) that emerge as as result of these tendencies as well as exhibiting them themselves.
Finally, this allows us to come up with rigorous, First-Principles-based definitions of meaning, purpose and hope that don't require you to take any leaps of faith or rely on someone's opinion.
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