E7: Humanity is the Solution's Problem; S14: Or Tony Stark (or maybe Cher). Hello Dolly. Goodbye. In 5 Billion Years (or less)

What this episode may be saying is that I am trying to figure out what to do with my life.So rather than describe the episode, I am going to present some possible answers for what I’m supposed to do with my life, based entirely on the evidence contained herein.Here are the top 15 candidates for how I’m doing with figuring that out:Make things. Apparently the effort required to make something difficult gives me pleasure, especially when I think it worked.Make unnecessary things. Necessary things already have people working on them. Also, Moby may eventually remix one of the unnecessary things.Solve problems. This creates new problems, which means I will never run out of work.Solve the problems created by the solutions to the previous problems. This appears to be most of human civilization anyway.Keep an eye on things. Air. Water. Crops. Disease. Weather. The Sun. Somebody should.Try not to confuse intervention with completion. We can solve things for a while. “For a while” may be the only available warranty.Figure out how much is enough. Enough pleasure. Enough challenge. Enough people. Enough attention. Enough likes, views, shares, and comments. Apparently I need some. Apparently I do not need all of them.Be consequential to a manageable number of organisms. Partner, dogs, family, friends, coworkers, listeners. Role pressure may be one of the ways a human body knows it exists.Commune with human thought. Sometimes this involves other humans directly. Sometimes it involves AI. If something interesting happens in my nervous system either way, I am increasingly unclear about why I’m supposed to be embarrassed.Create media so I have something sufficiently complicated to consume. Other people can consume it too if they want. That would provide additional likes, views, shares, and comments.Resist the proposition that more is automatically better. More may be lovely. Less may be lovely. The question appears to be whether the particular organism has enough to keep doing whatever strange thing it does next.Remain suspicious of urgency. The river is flooding. The grid is failing. The hospital needs power. PRIME DAY STARTS SOON. Unfortunately they are all competing for the same nervous system.Do not rely entirely on Tony Stark. Even after the difficult ontological work of making him real, we may instantiate the wrong cardiovascular continuity.If Tony Stark fails, try Cher. She appears to have demonstrated a more robust long-term maintenance strategy, although after losing Dolly we may need to increase the plastic-surgery budget to hold up her immortality.Keep going because we are in the middle. Earth ends. The Sun changes the terms. Every settlement is temporary. Every solution alters the conditions. Nothing here appears to come with a forever clause.So what am I supposed to do with my life?I don’t know.Look around. Something changed.Can I do anything about it?Probably.Will that change something else?Definitely.Good.That should keep me busy.