Summary: To Succeed in Life, "6CED" It!
"Yet what is more awesome: to believe that God created everything in six days, or to believe that the biosphere came into being on its own, with no creator, and partially lawlessly? I find the latter proposition so stunning, so worthy of awe and respect, that I am happy to accept this natural creativity in the universe as a reinvention of 'God.'
- Stuart Kauffman, in “Reinventing the Sacred”.
“Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality.”
― Carl Sagan
Let us start with a high level, "executive summary" of the whole book.
Executive Summary of the Book
The book shows that, contrary to popular belief, it is very much possible to answer life's hard questions of meaning and purpose by following evidence and reason alone, i.e., without taking any leaps of faith.
The book first defines its methodology, which it calls Mindful Bounded Rationality (MBR), based on well known and proven scientific and engineering principles.
It then goes ton to define a framework, called the Meaning-Seeking Entities (MSE) Framework using this methodology as well as the huge body of existing scientific and engineering principles.
In the process, the book identifies what it calls the "6CED Tendencies" of the universe. These are ubiquitous and ever-present patterns we can readily observe in the structure and processes at play in the universe. Here they are:
Coherence,
Complexity,
Continuity of Existence or Identity,
Curiosity,
Creativity,
Consciousness,
Evolution and
Diversity.
The book also identifies the source of our desire for meaning, purpose and hope in life, and how the 6CED Tendencies can satisfy them.
The book concludes by saying that the way to find meaning, purpose and hope in life is to align one's life, to the best of their abilities, with these 6CED Tendencies.
The book further provides a concrete call to action by identifying 4 simple practices that anyone can follow in their own lives to make their life meaningful, purposeful and hopeful. These practices are:
Mindful Moments
Purposeful Mornings
Hopeful Evenings
Meaningful Life
For people even higher than executives, i.e. CEO's, here is an even shorter version:
CEO-Level Summary of "An Engineer's Search for Meaning":
Based on an overwhelming amount evidence and rigorous analysis, it has been shown that the universe exhibits the following ubiquitous and omnipresent tendencies that work in the opposite direction to the law of Entropy. These tendencies are: Coherence, Complexity, Continuation of existence or identity, Curiosity, Creativity, Consciousness, Evolution and Diversity.
We call them the "6CED" Tendencies.
The Meaning-Seeking Entities (MSE) Framework, built from First Principles using the methodology of Mindful Bounded Rationality (MBR), shows that realizing and mindfully improving our alignment with these “6CED” Tendencies is the optimal path to finding meaning, purpose and hope in our lives without having to rely on faith or opinions.
Or, in other words, use the MSE Framework to "6CED" in life!
And for even higher ups (i.e. random people on the internet that even CEO's have to bow to), here is a tweet-length summary:
The main message of "An Engineer's Search for Meaning" is that one can make their life meaningful simply by aligning it with the universe's inherent tendencies towards expanding and enriching life and consciousness. The book shows that this is isn't just a feel-good statement, but it has a strong basis in science and engineering.
After that, for you and I, let us look at a slightly more detailed summary.
Detailed Summary of the Book
The Meaning-Seeking Entities (MSE) Framework provides a way to find meaning, purpose and hope in life based on known scientific facts and engineering practices alone. No leaps of faith or reliance on someone's opinion are necessary.
Meaning-Seeking Entities are defined as conscious living entities, such as ourselves, that have an innate desire to seek meaning, purpose and hope in their lives. (A more formal definition is included further down.)
The MSE Framework is a First-Principles-based framework built upon the foundation of evidence and reason or rationality alone. It relies on rigorous explanations of reality that were painstakingly obtained using Bayesian Inference and the Scientific Method.
Unfortunately, rationality has limits, due to the existence of tremendous complexity, nebulosity and unknowns in reality, as well as our relatively limited cognitive abilities. This has been used as an excuse to say that concepts like meaning, purpose and hope are beyond the reach of rationality. But just because rationality has limits does not mean that we can suddenly jump to faith or magic or opinions as the basis for our thinking. We can do a lot with rationality, as long as we remain mindful of its limits and adapt to them.
In order to deal with these limits, the framework uses a modified version of rationality as its methodology, known as Mindful Bounded Rationality (MBR). This methodology is characterized by concepts from Bounded Rationality as well as the practice of Mindfulness, such as Satisficing, Heuristics, Present-moment focus, Grounding in reality (rather than abstractions) and Non-judgmental observation, in addition to the Thinking from First Principles, Bayesian Inferencing and Scientific Method mentioned earlier. Doing so ensures that we don't get carried away with zealous pursuit of abstractions and purity, and trying to fit reality to them instead of the other way round.
To build the framework, we start with the axiom that we live in something like an Ultimate Reality. We do not have direct contact with it. We can only experience it through our senses, as Physical Reality or via introspection, as Consciousness or Phenomenal Experience. Since both of them are fundamental and self-evident to us, we take them as axioms too. We do not privilege either Physical Reality or Consciousness as more fundamental because we have not seen any evidence of that. (If, at some point, we are able to prove how one emerges from the other, we can easily modify this part of our framework accordingly and the rest of the framework can remain unchanged.
Using many of the methods mentioned above, humanity has managed to discover and explain foundational natural phenomena such as:
Quantum Wave Function Collapse,
The Standard Model of Physics,
Self-organization,
Dissipation-Driven Adaptation,
The Free Energy Principle,
Active Inference and
Evolution.
Analysis of these phenomena points to the fact that the universe exhibits inherent, ubiquitous and omnipresent tendencies for creating:
Coherence,
Complexity,
Continuity of Existence or Identity,
Curiosity,
Creativity,
Consciousness,
Evolution and
Diversity.
We call these tendencies the “6CED” Tendencies since 6 of them begin with a C and one with an E.
Note that all of these tendencies work against the law of Entropy, and are equally real. In fact, we are beginning to see scientists propose a formal “law of nature” based on this idea.
With that background, we can now formally define Meaning-Seeking Entities as complex living entities that are
A result of all the "6CED" Universal Tendencies mentioned earlier,
Exhibit the tendencies themselves,
Have the desire for Meaning, Purpose, Hope in their life, and
Can experience them, too.
It can be shown that the practice of Mindfulness is a logical outcome of MSE's trying to perform and improve their Active Inference process, which they need to do in order to survive. Improving the Active Inference process entails improving perception, the internal model and effectiveness of actions in the world, which is exactly what Mindfulness also involves.
Also, as per the definition of MSE's above, all MSE's possess some level of consciousness appropriate to their level of complexity. On the basis of widely corroborated reports of introspection, it can be seen that the desire for meaning, purpose and hope ultimately arises in consciousness. We can postulate that this may be a result of consciousness itself trying to perform Active Inference, creating counterfactuals and then motivating us to go seek evidence for them. (Note that Active Inference is substrate-independent.) We can further postulate that this is because consciousness is really a new “virtual” life form that arises in complex living organisms.
The current thinking among psychologists is that the concept of Meaning in Life has 3 components: Having a sense of
Coherence or Comprehensibility,
Purpose, and
Existential Mattering or Significance.
Using the MSE Framework, we can show that MSE's can attain all of these by aligning themselves with their inherent 6CED Tendencies at all times and places. Thus, the MSE Framework defines that Meaning in life can be achieved by mindfully living in alignment with the 6CED Tendencies.
Given that these tendencies continuously give rise to coherence and complexity in the universe, some of which self-organizes itself into self-sustaining and (sometimes) conscious, creative and curious organisms that evolve and diversify, we can conclude that that is at least one of the purposes of the universe. And since we are Meaning-Seeking Entities ourselves that are a result of the same tendencies and continue to exhibit them ourselves, our greater purpose is the same.
Thus, our greater purpose is to continue our own existence, while facilitating the creation and maintenance of other self-organizing and self-sustaining complex entities, creating more coherence and richer complexity and diversity around us, contributing to the universal process of evolution, being curious and creative, and continuing to enrich our consciousness. Note that the complex entities mentioned here refer to not just living organisms, but also other entities that exhibit similar tendencies, such as organized groups or institutions of living organisms, bodies of thought, and even artificial organisms.
Doing so also provides Hope because the 6CED Tendencies have an incredible track record of surviving and even thriving through a very long series of extreme upheavals that have occurred in the history of the universe right from its birth. This unbroken track record gives us tremendous confidence that these tendencies will continue to exist and be in effect far into the future. Thus, if we define hope as the expectation of a meaningful future, then it is easy to see that this can be accomplished by mindfully aligning ourselves with the 6CED Tendencies.
Since we are Meaning-Seeking Entities ourselves, we can’t help but exhibit the 6CED Tendencies ourselves. Unfortunately, our consciousness generates many desires that aren’t aligned with these tendencies and our efforts to try to satisfy them lead to frustration. This is where the realization and mindful alignment with the 6CED Tendencies becomes critical.
To summarize, the MSE Framework shows that all MSE's such as ourselves (as well as any organized groups we belong to) can find meaning, purpose and hope by mindfully realizing, acting on and enhancing their 6CED Tendencies.
The MBR methodology also requires that we always keep in mind that reality contains a lot of complexity, nebulosity and many unknowns. As a result, these guidelines themselves are subject to moderation and should always remain amenable to revision as we learn more.
Many of the ideas mentioned here can be seen in various religions and philosophies also. So, one can say that the MSE Framework is not particularly against religious or philosophical ideas. Except here,
We have a far crisper definition of these ideas,
A far stronger basis for explaining them from First Principles,
A far better chance of developing strategies for accomplishing them,
Far better prospects of improving these ideas as we learn more,
Anyone can understand and verify these ideas themselves without taking anyone else's word for it, and
Given that they are based on the universal language of evidence and reason, there is a higher probability that they can be adopted by people with completely different backgrounds.
That concludes the discussion of the MSE Framework and our quest to find meaning, purpose and hope using evidence and reason alone.
This has been quite a journey, starting from absolute scratch to reaching our goal. Taking the "path less traveled" has certainly meant challenging some long held notions, opening my mind to new ideas and painstakingly working through various scientific results.
I wouldn't be surprised if what I have presented here has raised many questions and doubts in your mind. Allow me to address them next.
Last updated
