What is the meaning of life? What is the reason I continue to live? If I were to die right now — would I have any regrets?
In my philosophy class, I was introduced to a terrible human being but an interesting philosopher, Martin Heidegger. He too had similar ideas. His idea for purpose of life was framed through the view that death gave meaning to life. Only staring at death would you see the true meaning of what it steals. Dostoevsky and Viktor Frankl too had similar themes in their work.
Looking back from your death bed, would you regret [insert decision]?
A typical question that often gets asked when talking about purpose of life. If this is the instinctive question to ask then could we deduce that the purpose of life of is to minimize regret?
If we have the target variable regret and we wish to minimize it then we could in theory have a function where all the variables of life reach a certain value where the level of regret is as minimal as possible for given planes. Kind of like gradient descent for some ML model. Except we are seeking not the local minima but the global one.
In theory, a local minima could be the answer to YOUR life but might not answer everyone else’s. Or maybe the local and global minima change with the ever changing — time — is another philosophy topic we can discuss later.
While the variables in our lives will vastly differ, we can still figure out a rough model through law of large numbers. Kind of like medication. We can try out a drug on one person, and it might not yield the outcome we wanted but try it out on maybe 1,000 people and you start seeing what you expected. While the medication might not work on a specific person but it may work for the majority.
Likewise, if we gather information about regret on a large enough scale, we could maybe start to hone down on specific points that will be applicable to the majority. When someone is looking back in life, what they are essentially doing is a regret calculation. Assuming alternate possibilities exist, they would have chosen otherwise. This is how I am viewing regret to be our metric. Hence, if we could gather up major regrets for majority of people we can start heading towards the right direction. Luckily, we do have some research on this topic.
As we go more general, the more accurate we get. Since, broader we go, it allows us to capture a more general sense of what people regret.
!Bar graph of most frequent regrets of americans
I stole this graph from a meta-analysis done by Neal J. Roese and Amy Summerville in this study.
Bear with me …
Theory #1:
The study used participants that are from US. As such it is quite apparent why the top two choices are what they are.
Most people regret not furthering their education or not pursuing their interest in school. As it impacts rest of their lives.
Why would someone make the wrong choice in education. Two options:
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Lack of maturity
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Placing value on the wrong thing
Generally speaking, these are the most common ways things can go awry. You are too young to figure out what is the best choice for you. So, maybe you follow your passion. Which ends up making you live a monetarily poor life.
Other option is the exact opposite, which is where I partly fall. Placing all your value on money only and not realizing to live a good life — other parts are required too.
Two of the top two regrets’ [Education and Career] central theme are same on a macro level:
Money.
Too afraid won’t make enough or not worried about making enough.
Theory #2:
As suggested by the paper, there is a far more sense control over outcome when it comes to education; what you pursued/ or didn’t pursue. Whether or not you like your career and you decide to do something about it falls solely under agent-in-question’s shoulder. That also goes for not asking that girl or guy out, wishing to have spent more time with lover or even calling one’s parents more often etc.
There is a sense of regret that gets generated by percieved scale of agency over ones’ actions. If you were convinced that you could have chosen and acted differently then you were more likely to reason that things could have gotten better than out things played out in your current choice of life.
Death by a thousand “what-ifs”
So rather than being an error by the agent when making said choice — it is an error of the mind. Placing value on a different choice simply because the item behind the curtain was never revealed.
In a world both vast and wide,
Your purpose isn’t one to hide.
To shape, to solve, to create with might,
A future where there is no sight.In justice, care, and balance true,
Your life’s work finds a path to pursue.
With wisdom deep and passions bold,
Your purpose is to shape, to mold.To better the world with every deed,
And plant the seeds of hope, indeed.
So walk the path both brave and kind,
Your purpose, friend, is in your mind.— Chat GPT 3.5
To be continued…