Two types of goals

When we wake up, we decide what we’re going to do. How do we do this? Some things we do because we want to, some because we have to, and some live in an intersection — things we must do in order to do things we want to do. We’ll sort them in two flavors, though:

Terminal goals [1]

Things we find intrinsically valuable. Stuff we want to do for happiness. The only heuristic is how you feel about the goal. Completely subjective. It’s important to note that we’re strictly talking about Human terminal goals — those physically observable and achievable by humans given the horizon of time granted to us.

E.g. becoming a pianist, helping 1,000,000 people, visiting a Buddhist temple.

Things we find intrinsically valuable. Stuff we want to do for happiness. The only heuristic is how you feel about the goal. Completely subjective. It’s important to note that we’re strictly talking about Human terminal goals — those physically observable and achievable by humans given the horizon of time granted to us. E.g. becoming a pianist, helping 1,000,000 people, visiting a Buddhist temple. Instrumental goals

Things we must do to achieve terminal goals. There are generally right and wrong answers here. The scope of these goals is for the most part dependent on our abilities.

E.g. buying a piano, gathering capital, reading a book on Buddhism.

Side-note: orthogonality thesis [2]

Graphical representation of the thesis

The formulation is quite simple — ability and size/difficulty of terminal goals are orthogonal, i.e. they are completely unrelated from one another. Meaning that you can be very capable, but strive for ‘simple’ things in life, or be not too capable, but shoot for the stars. There’s no correlation between ability and setting goals.

Two extreme worlds

Dystopia

In a zombie apocalypse scenario, or a dragon-slayer scenario, the terminal goal is carved out for you. Like in video games, the road to success and happiness is linear, no matter how much people try to hide it — a swarm of zombies or a dragon tyrant is dominating your world. You need to solve the problem. There’s no two ways about it, you gotta train hard, gather resources, rally people, unite the world against the threat, and eliminate it.

This is great, because it leaves you with very few possible terminal goals. Not only that, but most things you do can be accounted as meaningful/good instrumental goals to this end, since any incremental step towards the solution is a much more meaningful one, considering the fact that the threat is extreme i.e. the risk:cost ratio is off the charts. Training just one more rifleman/warrior can be a key to your success, and as such is a valuable thing to be doing.

Utopia

A post-scarcity civilization, you live on a planet/space station of your own. You can terraform planets at will, carving the world around you like a god. You fear not hunger nor boredom, and have all the resources you can desire. No instrumental goal is of value to you now, since you’re as close as you can be to doing anything you want, and any incremental step you make is tiny.

This is great, because the nature of this scenario is that you’re fully reliant on terminal goals now. You must find something that your heart desires, and do it. It is not out of your reach, but you have to decide. Your only job is to search for intrinsic joy, suited for you and you alone.

Our world

We live in neither of these mentioned scenarios. Due to lack of knowledge, heterogeneity across the world and difficulty in proper quantification, we’ll idealize and assume that we’re somewhere exactly in between the two worlds.

Dystopia >>>>> Here and Now <<<<< Utopia

Let’s try and quantify another thing — the ratio of ‘available’ terminal and instrumental goals. Availability is in quotes because very few goals are truly unavailable, and terminal goals are often set in such a way to be either unreachable or very difficult to reach by their nature, so it mostly boils down to doing instrumental stuff. If your goal’s reach is further than what your immediate/medium-distance community can + will accommodate, you can often find workarounds. If none of those actually go through, only then will you call a goal unavailable.

During a zombie apocalypse, very few people (if any) will let you spend valuable resources on doing, for example, particle physics research.

Another thing is important to note explicitly — the scopes of available goals is an environmental thing. Even now, people from different communities, economic classes and geographic locations have different sizes and shapes of terminal and instrumental goal sets. This is a factor we barely have any control over.

Here and now, you can basically go after anything you want. Some of the obvious instrumental goals that are almost universal are (in no particular order, especially so since even though they all contribute to most any terminal goal, their weight changes for each individual instance of said goals):

Capital acquisition

Where you’re going, you’ll need money. Preferably lots of it. This allows you to buy things, hire people, and create leverage.

Where you’re going, you’ll need money. Preferably lots of it. This allows you to buy things, hire people, and create leverage. Fame and status

Some things money can’t buy. Whatever you’re after, you want people to trust you — your values and aptitude — when you make decisions, especially ones that may sound bonkers.

Some things money can’t buy. Whatever you’re after, you want people to trust you — your values and aptitude — when you make decisions, especially ones that may sound bonkers. Lore knowledge

You live in a society, and it’s a good idea to know a lot about how it works. Whatever you’re after, there is a group of meta-skills and meta-knowledge which will be useful to have. Things like maths, history, physics, economics, politics.

You live in a society, and it’s a good idea to know a lot about how it works. Whatever you’re after, there is a group of meta-skills and meta-knowledge which will be useful to have. Things like maths, history, physics, economics, politics. Value system establishment

Having a solid grasp of how you, your close ones, and the broad society see things, feel about things, decide on action/inaction, praise and punishment. Useful since it builds a framework, a soft filter which can eliminate many ideas quickly based on a simple ruleset, and significantly shrink the workload of detailed analysis of ideas which pass through.

Having a solid grasp of how you, your close ones, and the broad society see things, feel about things, decide on action/inaction, praise and punishment. Useful since it builds a framework, a soft filter which can eliminate many ideas quickly based on a simple ruleset, and significantly shrink the workload of detailed analysis of ideas which pass through. Creativity

You need to be able to come up with original ideas, creative solutions to problems. This is true in basically all professions, and especially ones which will grant you capital and status.

These, of course, can function as terminal goals as well, but as it turns out, they start waning. They’re phantasms, unreachable, always on the horizon. As instrumental goals, however, they’re great — you need to realize them either way, and they’re transferable to other terminal goals (they’re abstract, thus have high generalization).

The Problem

A few people I know (including myself) have a lot of trouble with picking the right terminal goals. We experiment through life, do a lot to find out what we like and dislike, and end up never quite settling. Steve Jobs has some nice words about it [3]:

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

Issue is, the situation of “‘No’ for too many days in a row” happens all too often. Feels like there’s really no way to find the right thing, especially because lore knowledge keeps growing, and creativity keeps expanding. More and more terminal goals become available, as do more and more instrumental goals. One ends up feeling that yesterday’s terminal goal is not right, since there are bigger, better ones available now, which should be sought after instead.

This is a curse, and it has to be stopped. It’s difficult to spot it in the first place, and even more difficult to shatter, since by its nature, it is resilient to doubt. Rationality says that you should stick to your guns, but it also recommends you explore all options. Exploration costs time — time which could be spent completing instrumental goals towards the previous terminal goal. It’s a catch-22.

Proposed solution

We assume that when we obtain sapience, we are presented with the world and its two main sets of available goals — terminal and instrumental. Let’s assume (but remain aware that it’s a leaky assumption) that the size of these sets is equal.

size(terminal goals) == size(instrumental goals)

While they’re theoretically available, they’re not available to us from the get-go. We need to advance in certain ways in order to grab the reins and head towards completion of these goals. These advances often come in the form of getting capital, advancing skills and knowledge, or any similar improvements overall values and aptitude.

Once enough work is done in this direction, an emergent property of self-advancement displays itself, and two major things happen.

The number of terminal goals shrinks due to us understanding that some things are intrinsically uninteresting to us, are not a good fit for our aptitude, are already being handled by another entity, or are not important and/or urgent. Some of these factors are caused by ascetic pursuits of knowledge, others by absorbing the world via eyes, ears, mouth and skin. Both experiential and academic cognition are to be mixed for best results.

The number of instrumental goals grows due to our growing abilities and aptitude, and our honing in on terminal goals. The less terminal goals there are, the more detailed instrumental goals get, since when we’re trying to land very precise strikes, even the smallest effort in directing the hit to its target helps significantly. Through gaining knowledge about the broader World, we learn that we can do much more than we’re taught growing up, and this grants confidence and motivation to try the stranger, more specific things.

The strategy, then, is to not rush with picking and sticking. In exploring the world, increasing lore knowledge and aptitude, and experiencing different parts of the world, different facets of society, you can decrease the number or feasible terminal goals, and significantly increase the number of available and viable instrumental goals. Day by day, week by week, month by month, you can home in on a terminal goal that makes sense, and one you can stay with for a longer period of time.

Obtaining envious amounts of capital is a very good strategy. It’s an easy way to get a broader perspective on things and as such eliminate many quasi-terminal goals from the pool, and it can buff up your instrumental goals — money is great leverage. Find something to work on, put all your resources into it, gain a more refined value system, higher aptitude, and more capital. Rinse and repeat.

All our experiences are meant only to serve as stepping stones until we find a few things we’re not sad about doing all day every day.

So get searching. The clock’s a-tickin’.