Why are the smartest most ambitious people going into finance and consulting? Why are all the entrepreneurs building another enterprise agent?

Why are we not solving the world’s big problems? Disease, energy, politics, climate, quantum, consciousness.

I express this concern because I find myself drawn to these same paths for poor reasons:

• Source of predictable high income
• Socially accepted
• Generates self-esteem

But it also means playing a game that is hard to care about. You aren’t playing to win; you are playing to not lose.

If work is the most of your life, you shouldn’t settle for a suboptimal endeavor. It must be a journey worth pursuing. What is more worthy than working on the world’s biggest, most difficult problems?

Yes, they are hard and there is a high probability of failure. But if things go right, and we succeed, the future of humanity changes. These are step functions for human civilization. What is more inspiring than this?

This is a big, infinite game. There is always technology at the edge, and always problems to be solved. This has the makings of a worthy lifelong pursuit.

I understand there is reason to be pessimistic on technology. But that is not a reason to halt technological progress. That is a reason to do it with more care. Extreme pessimism does little to solve today’s problems.

Technology has the capacity to make our lives better in every aspect; any honest historical analysis finds this to be the case.