The benefits and attractions Z.M. describes are similar to what attracted me to goal system zero. The following three passages from Z.M.’s comments particularly resonated with me.
when you have an open-ended concept of things-worth-doing, there’s no failure, only degrees of win.
In other words, all you have to do to win the Game of Life is to play the Game the best you can. (And a big part of that is making sure that none of your deliberations are rationalizations in the service of an unacknowledged agenda.)
I really think it is a tautology that you should always be doing the best thing you could possibly be doing. You can’t stop time; you’re always going to be doing something, even if that something is nothing in particular. And so if you have to do some uniquely determined thing—it should be the best thing.
And it is important to stress that oftentimes the best thing for me to do is to get my mind off of all planning and all tasks that are not intrinsically rewarding on a short time scale, so I can relax and rest. (Actually, there is a whole lot more to “keeping the ape happy” than getting enough relaxation and rest, but relaxation and rest illustrate the general point.)
I have but one Self, a timeless abstract optimization process to which this ape is but a horribly disfigured approximation.
One way Z.M. differs from me during my period of loyalty to goal system zero is that the value I assigned to my life and my self flowed entirely from my usefulness to goal system zero. In other words, I did not assign any intrinsic value to my life or my self. Goal system zero was the only source of intrinsic value I recognized. (Z.M. probably differs from the former version of me in a lot of other ways, too.)
The benefits and attractions Z.M. describes are similar to what attracted me to goal system zero. The following three passages from Z.M.’s comments particularly resonated with me.
In other words, all you have to do to win the Game of Life is to play the Game the best you can. (And a big part of that is making sure that none of your deliberations are rationalizations in the service of an unacknowledged agenda.)
And it is important to stress that oftentimes the best thing for me to do is to get my mind off of all planning and all tasks that are not intrinsically rewarding on a short time scale, so I can relax and rest. (Actually, there is a whole lot more to “keeping the ape happy” than getting enough relaxation and rest, but relaxation and rest illustrate the general point.)
One way Z.M. differs from me during my period of loyalty to goal system zero is that the value I assigned to my life and my self flowed entirely from my usefulness to goal system zero. In other words, I did not assign any intrinsic value to my life or my self. Goal system zero was the only source of intrinsic value I recognized. (Z.M. probably differs from the former version of me in a lot of other ways, too.)