Nothing wrong with the universe, from an Anthropic perspective it’s pretty optimal, we just have most humans running around with much of their psychology evolved to maximize fitness in highly competitive resource limited hunter-gatherer environments, including a strong streak of motivating unhappiness with regard to things like; social position, feelings of loneliness, adequacy of resources, unavailability of preferred sex partners, chattel ownership/control, relationships etc and a desire to beat and subjugate most dangerous competitors to get more for ourselves (men wanting to take down the men in the tribe next door who are likewise planning to murder them, women wanting to take down women outside of their immediate friend/family circle that compete for essential resources they need for their kids). We are designed to be to some degree miserable and discontent, with maladapted compulsions to make us work harder on things that don’t have immediate payoff, but that do improve our chances of survival and successful procreation over long term.
The fix would be hacking human brains (benignly) and figuring out how to rewire the innate negative psychological drives to enable greater contentment in a post-scarcity technological world. There’s a good chance that will become possible post singularity (if humans aren’t all dead)
Nothing wrong with the universe, from an Anthropic perspective it’s pretty optimal, we just have most humans running around with much of their psychology evolved to maximize fitness in highly competitive resource limited hunter-gatherer environments, including a strong streak of motivating unhappiness with regard to things like; social position, feelings of loneliness, adequacy of resources, unavailability of preferred sex partners, chattel ownership/control, relationships etc and a desire to beat and subjugate most dangerous competitors to get more for ourselves (men wanting to take down the men in the tribe next door who are likewise planning to murder them, women wanting to take down women outside of their immediate friend/family circle that compete for essential resources they need for their kids). We are designed to be to some degree miserable and discontent, with maladapted compulsions to make us work harder on things that don’t have immediate payoff, but that do improve our chances of survival and successful procreation over long term.
The fix would be hacking human brains (benignly) and figuring out how to rewire the innate negative psychological drives to enable greater contentment in a post-scarcity technological world. There’s a good chance that will become possible post singularity (if humans aren’t all dead)
How about animals? If they are conscious, do you believe wild animals have net-positive lives? The problem is much more fundamental than humans.