What changed in the saying

Well really, I think what Douglas Adams was saying in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is that the universe is the answer. And what we really need to figure out are what questions to ask about the answer that is the universe. And that the question is really the hard part. And if you can properly frame the question, then the answer, relatively speaking, is easy. So therefore if you want to understand what questions to ask about the universe, you want to understand the meaning of life, we need to expand the scope and scale of consciousness so that we’re better able to understand the nature of the universe and understand the meaning of life. And ultimately the most important part would be to ask the right question. But yeah, that is the foundation of my philosophy, is that I am curious about the nature of the universe. And obviously I will die. I don’t know when I’ll die, but I won’t live forever. But I would like to know that we are on a path to understanding the nature of the universe and the meaning of life and what questions to ask about the answer that is the universe. And so if we expand the scope and scale of humanity and consciousness in general, which includes silicon consciousness, then that seems like a fundamentally good thing.

If we are single-planet civilization, then we are simply waiting around for some extinction event, whether that is manmade or natural. But if you’re a single-planet civilization, eventually something will happen to that planet and you will die. If you’re a multi-planet civilization, you’ll live much longer. Also, multi-planet civilization, that’s the natural stepping stone to being a multi-stellar civilization and being out there among the stars. So now, this I think has two… This is not simply a defensive motivation, but it is also one where that gives meaning, man’s search for meaning.

Earth turns out to be this computer to figure out the answer of the meaning of life, and it comes up with the answer 42. And then it’s like, what the heck does 42 mean? And it turns out, well, actually the hard part is the question, not the answer. And for that you need a much bigger computer than Earth. So basically what Douglas Adams was saying is that we actually don’t know how to frame the questions properly. And so I think by expanding the scope and scale of consciousness we can better understand what questions to ask about the answer that is the universe.