This is so closely related to a comment I just made https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49470026 that I am going to just risk and repost it.

> This hit me hard, I have been thinking about this a lot lately. I'm not sure it's what makes "us human" its what makes humans (us) better than other species. It was intelligence, this was used to create distinction between us and other living beings, different races etc... Now its kind of gone; in some ways. Loss of meaning, purpose, place etc... The one thing we used as a ranking metric is now a commodity, so....? I don't even know how to finish that. So why care, why work...shit just why? Capitalism makes it even worse because we are judged based on what we output, does that even make sense anymore? I think the article is confusing because the "state: is confusing; to me at least.

.... 3 responses ....

> Thats totally fair, and TBH - I am also very concerned for my wellbeing as well; I and many others are not doing so well because, in my case I no longer see this "vapid" state of existence as ephermial. I have been reading more and more; I guess looking ot knowledge as some eort of ends vs a means to an end for once. Camus, Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture), Dostoevsky's underground man etc...

Camus: The universe was always going to stay silent when you demand meaning from it; the answer isn't a better metric, it's to push the rock anyway ("imagine Sisyphus happy").

Dostoevsky [underground man]: Refusing to be a piano key in someone's optimized Crystal Palace

Stokely Carmichael: "Racism is not a question of attitude, it's a question of power. Racism gets its power from capitalism."

My conclusion: AI didn't take our meaning, It made me realize I have always been looking in the wrong place and thus reacting ignoratly when I felt "denied" this thing I feel entitled to.

Love.

Edit: Love; paradoxically, ive felt both entitled to and unworthy of so I'm not sure WTF to do with that.

To wit: Our love of self is so closely tied to our output and if we have no output do we have value?

Edit: tl;dr - I am not sure I understand the point of anything anymore and many others feel the same way. I do not think this is some "existential crisis" I believe it is a logical conclusion to draw given the evidence presented by the day and age we live in.

You raise a good point. If nothing is special, what's our motivation, our purpose? Maybe our purpose becomes being comfortable with no purpose, and I am surprisingly okay with that. I know that my existence is finite, and the time I spend and what I do with it give it importance. For example, spending my time teaching people how to make telescopes, keep a garden going and growing, and train dogs in field exercises would give it meaning. In the short term, figuring out how to use LLMs to take power away from oligarchs would be a good use of time.

Spending more hours working to make somebody else rich, yeah, no. Let's go through the archway in the forest.