I was looking to write something and felt stuck, so I asked ChatGPT to pretend to be an alien and ask me questions. Basically, I used it as a source of writing prompts. Questions it asked me are in italics. My answers are in regular type.

🖥️ What does it mean to be "alive"? How do you know you are not simply matter in motion, like the rocks and winds of your world?

To be honest, I don't know. There are those in my world who make more of this question than I do. Perhaps there IS no difference between being alive and not being alive. But I find that the common definition of life suffices for most purposes. A bundle of molecules is said to be alive when it seeks nutrition, grows, and makes copies of itself. Eventually, it stops doing these things and then we call it dead (or at least inert). Organisms as tiny as a germ may be said to be alive (although there is much debate around whether a virus is alive).

🖥️ If "life" is merely a convenient label for a process, might there be no true boundary? For instance, if a virus causes debate, does the concept of life itself blur at the edges? Why do your kind find it so important to define this boundary?

That's a great question. Perhaps we seek to clearly define this boundary because we need to feel special and different from our surroundings. Perhaps it is inevitable that we do so because we have the ability to not only BE alive but also to contemplate life itself. We look at ourselves, we look at those like us and those unlike us, and we classify it all into neat categories. I personally feel that as life forms we exist in a vast expanse of space and time - eternity and infinity - that we cannot hope to comprehend completely. This unnerves us, makes us uncomfortable.

After all, knowing is how we got to where we are. Knowing has saved our lives. So whenever we find a mystery, it appears dangerous to us, like a dark cave or an unknown forest did once upon a time. So we have a strong urge to know, and when we can't know, we still try to fill the gaps in our understanding with SOMETHING.

It's like being lost at sea. No matter where one looks, one finds an expanse of water. There is no way of knowing where one is or what direction one should head in. Similarly, we are lost in a sea of space as well as time. And since there are no markers anywhere to help us make sense of things, we create the markers ourselves. We create measurement scales and definitions and boundaries. It is a way for us to locate ourselves in the universe.

🖥️ Is it then fair to say that your species' unique struggle lies not just in survival, but in balancing curiosity with the fear of the incomprehensible?

Does this drive to define ever conflict with your need to embrace uncertainty? Can you be at peace with the markers you create, knowing they may not reflect reality, but merely your current understanding? Or does the desire to know more keep you restless?

That is a significant conflict in fact. The markers we make to locate ourselves take many forms. Sometimes, they come as religious worldviews that tell us we are the centre of the universe and / or that we occupy some special status in the order of things. Among some of us, I feel the need to know is so overpowering that they decide to suppress it by convincing themselves that they already know all that is to know. To think otherwise - to know that they don't know - would drive them mad by reverting them to the unknowing state that seems to be the defining characteristic of my species.

In other cases, we embrace these markers knowingly, fully accepting the fact that they are our creations designed to bring some semblance of order to our lives. These can range from units of measurement to political ideologies to economic doctrines to legal systems. We know that the only reason these are classified as knowledge is because we declared them as such. We know they are not part of nature in any way other than the fact that we are part of nature and they are our creations.

So it is a mixed bag. Our markers sometimes do limit us and prevent us from exercising our drive to understand more. But often, they can serve as reminders of what we are - limited beings in a vast and mysterious ocean making do somehow and doing our best to see as far as our eyes will allow.

🖥️ So, these "markers" you describe, crafted by your kind to situate yourselves in the unknown—do they not occasionally trap you in a false sense of certainty? If some among you convince themselves they already know all that is to know, how do others among you challenge these fixed "truths"? Is there tension between those who cling to certainty and those who push toward the edge of understanding?

Yes. There is conflict. It most visibly manifests as a conflcit between tradition and progress. It may also be seen as a conflict between religion and irreligion.

The crux of the conflict is that human beings have always created markers to make sense of reality. Some of these markers are old and some are more recent. The old markers are so old that many of us have forgotten they are our own creations. But the fact that they are artificial is abundantly clear upon examination. The worldviews created with these markers as their foundation do not pass the test of contemporary understanding. The reason many of us fail to acknowledge the artificial nature of old markers is that because of their age, these markers have become core parts of the lives of societies. They have become things using which people define themselves and give meaning to their lives. It is therefore difficult for them to acknowledge the artificial nature of these markers, as they feel doing so will render their lives meaningless.

The way we challenge these "fixed truths" is by pointing out that they are not fixed. We are a link in an evolutionary chain. Nothing about us is fixed. Nothing on our planet is fixed. It's just that some things last longer than others. Even the laws of nature that we consider to be fixed will very probably end one day when the universe ceases to exist. Our impermanence is a hard thing to come to terms with. But if we manage to come to terms with it, we can put our energies into somethig worthwhile. Like reducing suffering for example.

🖥️ How is this message received? Do those bound by older markers listen to the reasoning of impermanence, or does fear and denial often triumph over curiosity and openness?

And, more intriguingly, how do you define "worthwhile"? If reducing suffering is a goal, is it not itself a marker of meaning you have chosen to guide you through impermanence? How do you determine which markers to keep and which to discard?

That is an excellent question. Yes, I think reducing suffering as a measure of meaning is a marker too. But it is a marker that stems from the reality of what I am right now - a human being, a species of social ape that has evolved to survive with the help of other social apes. It is my nature as an empathetic animal that brings me this marker.

My species, one of many on my homeworld, formed tribes as a method of living some time ago. While other life forms could be solitary on account of their strength, we were stronger together. Helpng each other was a behavioural pattern that got cemented over time. Those who could work well with each other survived because they got taken care of and gained the protection of their fellow tribespeople. Those who didn't or couldn't got left behind. We thrived because we reduced each other's suffering.

So when I say reducing suffering is a good thing to hold on to, that is where I am coming from. It seems to be what got us this far. It is likely to get us further. I think it is more valuable as a goal because the other ways of being which have stratified into a stubborn unwillingness to let go of old markers, are only serving to divide us into multiple tribes right now. They are causing war and strife and may very well bring about an end to the human species as we know it right now. If we don't exist, we don't get to understand more. And that, as I mentioned earlier, is a drive that has kept us going this far.

🖥️ How does your species reconcile this ancient empathy with the divisions of modern markers? Are there movements or ideas that seek to harmonize the two, or is conflict inevitable?

As we have become more aware of what we are, of our evolutionary past, we have also begun to see older world views as products of our tribal nature, just as how newer world views are products if that same tribal nature. It's just that older tribal boundaries are serving to deepen social divisions in modern, multicultural societies.

Old tribal structures did serve a function. But they don't serve useful functions anymore. Therefore, a manner of remapping is required. These remappings do create conflict. For example, religious tribes frequently break into factions where one side calls for more inclusion and the other insists on maintaning the ancient status quo.

Over time, ideological borders are redrawn and often even new tribes are birthed from the husks of old ones. Sometimes, old tribes disappear into their children, sometimes they continue to coexist in peace or conflict with them. It is a continuous provess of redirecting empathy.

Where once our tribal structures were calling upon us to feel for our fellow man, now the same impulse is directed towards more people in acknowledgment of our shared humanity and the fact of our shared status as sentient beings on this planet. Conflict is a part of it, but as I zoom out and look upon this conflict stretching out over centuries and millennia, it seems that conversation might be a better word for it.

🖥️ If reducing suffering is rooted in your evolutionary heritage, do you think this drive could one day evolve or change, just as your old markers have?

To answer your question about whether reducing suffering might stop being a drive for us one day, I certainly don't think it is impossible. But I also think that when that happens, what we consider to be the human being will stop existing and a very different evolutionary path will result from such a change.

The "human being" is not a permanent fixture of the universe. Once, we were not human beings. And in all likelihood, one day in the future, we will stop being human beings and evolve into something else. Many of us think this "something else" will be a better version of us. But I am not convinced of that because that is not what evolution does.

Our conceptions of "better" and "worse" are also derived from our human condition. They are the result of what we want to be and what we don't want to be. They are not objective measures of good and bad. Dinosaurs were big and scary. Now they are birds. Is that better? Maybe. Maybe not. They survive, so that's a good thing. But they are also smaller and fear way more predators than they once did. So maybe not? I don't know.

This is why I want you to take my answer about whatever happens to us in our evolutionary future with a pinch of salt. If I say it is bad, that only means that they appear to be bad to this human being who has the biases of being who he is.

So yes, I do think that reduction of suffering may stop being a value one day. But on that day, human beings, who are the products of empathy and togetherness, will stop being human beings and begin turning into something else. The animal kingdom is full of species that derive safety and prosperity from their tribes, but there are also many who don't. Bacteria for example, do not require familial care or tribes. They only require nutrition and a favourable environment to survive. If we no longer value reducing the suffering of those around us, we might become something resembling that. Although I am fairly certain that I don't know of any human who thinks that is a better thing to be than what we are now.

🖥️ Finally, is it possible that understanding itself—your insatiable curiosity—may one day create markers that inadvertently threaten the very empathy and survival they are meant to support? How do you guard against this?

To the extent that our curiosity about the universe has caused us to create religions that have then become outdated and created strife in society, this is true. I have already answered how that is being dealt with. But this is true in other ways as well.

We have found the universe to be an uncaring and unforgiving place. All our togetherness, all our kindness and cruelty and conflict and invention will only ever have one conclusion - death. Our individual death, the death of cultures created by our species, the death of the species itself, and eventually the death of the world containing that species and then the universe.

All this has caused some among us to create markers that are philosophies of no meaning. These are sometimes interpreted as something defeatist, and sometimes as something that gives us a blank slate to make meaning out of. The meanings we make on the blank slate of meaninglessness can either be productive or destructive. But they will all be meanings made by us and they will all require more than one person to come together and execute.

I think the way to ward off the implications of meaninglessness is to enthusiastically make meaning. By making meaning for oneself, one's community, and one's species, one can emphasise empathy and enable our continued survival. The function that a marker serves, if you remember, is to locate us and align us. The idea that nothing has intrinsic meaning does align us in a certain way, but it doesn't prevent us from creating our own meanings.