The Origins of LIFE

March 2024 - Human Programming

Towards the end of high school I became concerned that I wasn’t living my life well and didn’t even have a methodology for living a good life. I figured that I could solve this quandry by producing a system that, when followed exactly, would cause me to eventually lead the best life I could. So I got to it.

For some reason I called the system “LIFE”. The acronym doesn’t stand for anything. Here’s the first version:

LIFE program v1 description

Complete the following activities without fail.

Daily: Write in your journal about how your day went and any thoughts you have about how to live your life better.

Weekly: Review last week’s journal entries, then update this reflection program in order to improve this program’s ability to acchieve its goal: to help you lead a good life.

…And that’s it

That was the whole program. A minimal strange loop that seeks to improve itself with time. It wasn’t much, but I figured it was enough to pull itself up by its bootstraps. If I could follow this system, in time it would grow to become an ideal guide.

So I got started, and 8 years later the LIFE system is still going. It and I have evolved a ton, and I hope to write about that coevolution soon.

- DS