There's a ton of references at the YouTube site.
The overall finding is that healthy relationships with others is the single most important determinate of happiness. What does that imply about living in a world of "intelligent" machines? I hear and read people wondering, What will we do when machines are smarter than any of us? Setting aside the fact that I don't (really/quite) know what that means, perhaps that worry is misplaced. Perhaps we should be thinking about guiding the development and deployment of AI in directions that allow us to develop more fruitful relationships with others.
Back in my undergraduate years at Johns Hopkins I took a half-dozen or so courses from Richard Macksey. He always had one of more guest lecturers in his classes. One of these guests was an Episcopal priest named Ralph Harper. I forget just what he brought Harper in to talk about, but it may have been mysticism, which is certainly one of the things I thought a great deal about in those days (still do). I remember Macksey recommending a book that Harper had written. I forget the title, but it might have been Human love: Existential and mystical. In fact, I'm sure that's the book, which I got (and is now in storage somewhere in suburban New Jersey). In there Harper said something to the effect that the answer to the question, What is the meaning of life? is not some kind or proposition or statement. It is something we can do. What can we do?
Love? Cultivate our relationships? If so, isn't that orthogonal to this strange and wonderful technology we're now developing?
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