Ask HN: What is the most important thing in life?

Does life have a meaning? Only in the minds of the life forms, who will not agree on the answer.

What is the most important thing in life? The answer will vary with who and when you ask.

It depends a lot on how you're wired, of course. Enjoyment maximization for some people might be getting married, having a bunch of kids, being the head of a household. For others it might be accomplishing career goals or financial milestones. For others it might be adventure, to seek out new experiences, etc.

The biggest trap you can fall into is living life by the standards of others instead of your own enjoyment. That's what would likely lead to regret. I'd say to some extent (for me at least) there is a local optima to be reached where you aren't the subject of ridicule by others, but beyond that you need to take a firm stance towards identifying what brings you the most enjoyment and pursuing that relentlessly.

I don't accept the idea that there is any universally applicable, objective answer to this question. I believe the answer varies for every individual and that each individual's answer is equally valid.

It is to deliver the maximum amount of utility to other people.

I find "utility" in this sentence to be under-specified. I like the general sentiment but it's too hand-wavy for me, to accept as "the" general principle of "what's the most important thing in life" even if it were possible to have such a general principle.

"be good and help everyone especially when they need it",

I think this is an excellent motto to live but, but I would stop short, again, of calling it "the" most important thing in life in a universal sense.

I do, as a point of fact, value helping others. Just to illustrate, I went to the local grocery store and picked up a case of cans of Campbell's Chunky Soup earlier this week and took to the local food pantry to help out with people who are struggling to get meals. Later I plan to go buy a few blankets and take over to donate for people who are homeless and need at least some way to keep warm as winter approaches. I do this kind of stuff because I like helping others. Same reason I spent a decade or so as a volunteer firefighter. I enjoy public service. But at the end of it all, I still would not necessarily agree that "deliver[ing] the maximum amount of utility to other people" is the most important thing in life. I'd just rank it pretty highly as "one of the important things".

— Kurt Vonnegut

https://archive.ph/LZPil

After this comes the question of how you use/direct this agency - the "meaning of life", so that you feel fulfillment, you know who you are, what your "story" is (and this story can be seen clearly only afterwards).

The state of constant happiness is bad. One needs times of sadness in order to understand/see/remember the state of happiness. One needs rainy days to appreciate sunny ones.

TL;DR: The most important thing in life is to maximize the utility you provide to others, not yourself. Value can be financial or emotional, and people’s happiness (utility) grows logarithmically with value — meaning spreading value widely helps more than concentrating it.

To live well, you should:

Maximize total utility you give others across your lifetime.

Distribute value fairly among people to raise overall happiness.

Give value when it matters most, since utility changes over time.

In short: Be good, help everyone, and do it when they need it most.

I'm not saying you should be wholly selfish, but you shouldn't be wholly selfless either.

"Love thy neighbor as thyself"

If you don't love yourself first, can you really love others to your fullest? Or in the context of your post, if your wellbeing is not the most important thing in your life, are you really able to do the best job at providing utility to others?

Too many wealthy people neglect their own wellbeing in the pursuit of providing utility to others, only to find themselves miserable later in life or die young due to poor health.

>> The meaning of life is what you make of it. Life does not have any meaning apart from that, for a human, a dog, a bacterium, or anything else. It is up to you what the meaning of your life is. So, it is partially under your control. If someone were to say “Life is just a bowl of cherries?” If that is the way you want to look at life, fine. If you decide your life is maximization of goods, then that is the meaning of life. We can have sympathy for you, but that is what it is. If you decide that your life is friendship, love, mutual aid, mutual support, a community of people who try to increase their own and other people’s happiness and welfare, then that is the meaning of life. But there is no external force that decides.

If a person decides I’m going to be a hermit, I’ll get myself a piece of land in Montana, I’ll farm it, I’ll live by myself, I won’t pay any attention to other human beings, I’ll have no form of communication with others, okay, that is the meaning of your life. I know people who have become hermits. I met one climbing a mountain once. The guy was living in a mountain hut and he just wanted to be alone. That is a choice you can have. For most people, life means warm, supportive social relationships. But you don’t know it in advance.

—-

That said, when you look at the state of the world, particularly political world, the amount of malice, nastiness, crime, scam, .. you wonder what is the meaning of life for the majority of population!

Personally, I’d recommend reading Nietzsche and Marx, or thinkers who came after them.

Nevertheless, it is interesting to see your and all of the comments which also have interesting ideas about it; what I mention above is only my own opinion.

I do agree with you that value is not just financial, and that you should not keep it only for yourself.

## The Strengths of Your Utility Framework

Your insight about logarithmic utility functions is particularly astute. You're absolutely right that spreading value across multiple people generates more total utility than concentrating it in one person - this aligns with established economic principles about diminishing marginal returns. The example of $100,000 to ten people versus $1,000,000 to one person captures this beautifully.

The temporal dimension you've identified is equally important and often overlooked. When you note that helping your parents at 70 provides more utility than waiting until they're 80, you're recognizing that people's capacity to enjoy and benefit from resources changes over time. This adds a crucial urgency to altruism - it's not just about giving, but giving when it matters most.

## Potential Refinements to Consider

However, I'd invite you to think about a few aspects that might enrich your framework:

*The Paradox of Self-Care*: Your model positions maximizing others' utility as "the direct opposite" of maximizing your own. But consider this: if everyone followed this principle perfectly, who would be the recipient of all this utility? There's a recursive problem here. Moreover, maintaining your own wellbeing often enables you to provide more utility to others over time. Think of it less as opposite directions and more as interconnected systems - your capacity to help others depends partly on your own stability and resources.

*Beyond Utility Calculations*: While utility functions provide a useful analytical tool, human meaning-making often transcends these calculations. Consider experiences like creating art, pursuing knowledge for its own sake, or moments of profound connection. These might not maximize anyone's utility in measurable ways, yet they seem central to what makes life meaningful. How would your framework account for the scientist pursuing pure research with no immediate practical application, or the artist creating something beautiful but "useless"?

*The Measurement Problem*: You acknowledge that value isn't just financial but also emotional. This is crucial, but it also introduces significant complexity. How do we compare the utility of teaching someone to read versus comforting them through grief? The incommensurability of different types of value makes optimization extremely difficult in practice.

## A Teaching Exercise

Here's a thought experiment to test your framework: Imagine you have the choice between two lives. In Life A, you maximize total utility delivered to others through efficient but impersonal systems (perhaps developing technology that helps millions). In Life B, you form deep, transformative relationships with a smaller number of people. Which life delivers more utility? Which would you find more meaningful? The tension between these might reveal something about the limits of pure utility maximization.

## Building on Your Foundation

Your three optimization questions are excellent starting points. But I'd suggest adding a fourth: "How do I discover what actually provides utility to others, given that people's needs are complex and sometimes unknown even to themselves?"

Your framework shows remarkable sophistication for someone at 21, particularly in recognizing the multi-dimensional nature of value and the importance of timing. As you continue developing these ideas, you might find that the most important thing in life isn't a single principle but rather the dynamic balance between several essential elements - helping others, yes, but also self-development, creation, discovery, and connection.

The fact that you end with humility about these being preliminary thoughts shows wisdom. The question "what is most important in life?" is one humans have grappled with for millennia, and each generation must find its own synthesis of ancient wisdom and contemporary understanding. Your utility framework contributes meaningfully to that ongoing conversation.

If you are currently trapped in survival mode and can't help yourself, look for someone else you can help.

As far your questions lead to sustainable happiness, they are worthy of your time.

Past that, those answers follow your experience and circumstances, things that are always in a state of change. Never stop reassessing.

If you're looking for yardsticks: Be kind. Do what it takes to learn empathy. Let other individuals' well-being become important to you.

Everything changes. Everyone is different. Support and encouragement can be as valuable as money to someone who is short of either or both. You have unique talents. Share them.

Yet, people confuse the means with the end, so money often becomes the end, rather than reasonable comfort and happiness, needing an army of bodyguards, hoarding money or putting it into mega-yachts, which, as the saying goes, are a hole in the water into which you pour money. Since someone else can always have more, the rich can never have what we slobs can, "enough".

And unlike our new AI overlords, there is plenty of joy in "working things out", because it's still (last time I checked) a world of people, and joy again in interacting with others with our unique (emphasis unique) knowledge, experiences, sensory and cognitive mechanisms, and emotions. That's what makes great literature, art, and even science exciting. Learn from others. Teach. Teachers learn more than their students.

Just as we "work things out" to solve problems, where it's the process that we learn and get to share, we can "work things out" with others, whatever the topic or need.

I'm in that 70's range, approaching 80, and still helping my scattered family with whatever's in the IRA and social security. This addresses two of your points. No immense wealth coming and living in the boondocks. I plan to move to address one of those.

Good for you for thinking about this now. I was quite preoccupied by the war and draft at your age. And we have turmoil again, internally.

Division as in "divide and conquer" is how this world gets into these detestable situations, and always for exploitation. I strive for a more just society based on Buddhist principles.

Only 4 of the 8 stages of the eightfold path are needed to transform the world, otherwise we just repeat these disasters over again.

1. Right understanding (all is change and process.) 2. Right intention (I like to think of this as un-greed, helping others and seeking "just enough". 3. Right Speech (be truthful, kind, and seek areas of agreement) and 4. Right action. ( I think of it as the golden rule, so scorned and reversed in our society.) You can add Right livelihood. I always took this for granted, never doing harmful things, even in aerospace. But people rarely think of the consequences of their work. You know what I mean.

You may find that helping spread these principles will make life better for everyone.

Life is not a formula. There is a squirrel climbing a tree in my garden as I look out the window. I could dedicate the rest of my life to squirrel study and still not know everything about squirrels.

Life is spiritual and physical. I trust in the ancient wisdom of the Bible which will be here after you and I, to understand life's meaning. I teach Tech and love learning. I find meaning through my faith and knowledge through my learning.