A Brief Introduction to Step 1: Determine Your Objective Function
Your objective function is a statement of whatever you are trying to maximize with/in your life. It is the metric by which you judge whether an action is a good or bad thing to undertake.
Typically, an objective function represents a desire to maximize whatever group of things you believe has intrinsic value. These things may involve personal happiness, pleasing God, reducing suffering in others, or any number of other things people believe have value.
Anything you do that serves your objective function is a “good” thing to do from your perspective and anything that hinders your objective function is a “bad” thing to do. Because of this, deciding your objective function is perhaps the single most important decision of your life. Your objective function sets the metric by which you judge all other decisions. Any person thinking with clarity should be referencing their objective function before any major decision.
We use the term “objective function” and not “purpose” in part because it allows for more flexibility in how you define what you want to achieve with your life. Specifically, while a purpose is commonly conceptualized as a singular goal, an objective function should be thought of as a weighted combination of the things you believe hold intrinsic value.
It requires more intellectual honesty to explore the concept of an objective function than it does to explore the concept of purpose. If asked about their purpose, a person may say they want to maximize their own happiness and that of others, whereas if asked their objective function they would have to say they value their own happiness five times as much as the happiness of others.
Should this person happen to live in a first-world country and follow through on their claimed beliefs, they would almost certainly benefit others more than 5X themselves by giving all their money to help children in the developing world. That they don’t means either their stated beliefs should be altered (i.e., they actually value their own happiness 1000X that of other people), alter their actions, or accept that they choose to live a systematically immoral life. Of course, if someone alters their objective function just to make it easier to maximize without making radical changes to their lifestyle, they will need to do some pretty serious self-reflection.
This chapter of the guide will help you determine your objective function by exploring what you believe has intrinsic value. To help you consider intrinsic values that may fit well with you, we will present you with the most common conclusions people make. Each intrinsic value we introduce is accompanied by thought experiments, arguments for and against, a discussion of tough implications, and important points of consideration.