Thursday, December 21, 2006

What's the Aim of Life?

With a title such as this, I don't have a lot of content to add. However I'll attempt to try to find how we can achieve our (or, is it the same for everyone) life's aim. Let me try to analyze this:

Aim in Life: Happiness

Task: Maximizing happiness in life

Happiness composed of: joy (fun + excitement) X satisfaction (security + contentment)

Activities that give you joy: irrational activities x constant1
Activities that give you satisfaction: rational activities X constant2
(i.e. as one increases, the other decreases)

Total happiness: (irrational X rational ) activities

Thus, to maximize this,

(1) we need to balance them in a manner (depending upon the constant) that maximizes the product. The problem arises that the entire actual process is a trial and error (we don't know the constant) and we don't really get a second chance.

(2) raise the constants to such a level that the product becomes less sensitive to our activities, I mean become less sensitive to what is happening around you, however it makes you equally less sensitive to increase in happiness or decrease in it.

So, the idea is to try and do both at various points of time in one's life.

And I also think I have a fair idea of what the maximum product is: "42".

There, I have just identified the question to "the ultimate question of life, universe and everything" :).

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

42
11
11
11