Irrational life

Humans are often thought of as utilitarian, able to maximize individual and societal utility. In this scheme, however, life itself is irrational. With a hard constraint on time to expiry for the individual, society and the environment at large, extending all the way to the small part of an instance of the multiverse that is visible, utility itself loses all meaning. Utility, then, has to be defined in the micro – there is no impact an individual can make on the universe, she has been assigned to. But she could, certainly, enhance utility for herself within the hard constraints that exist – time, space and the limitations of knowledge.

Individual, then, provides any reliable subset of the measurement of utility. There are many parameters in this complex function, mediated largely by initial conditions. In very limited horizons, it appears sustaining herself is paramount. Sustenance, however, seems to have differing meaning for different people. The cost of sustenance appears to linearly increase with wealth. Perhaps, the slope of utility is a more meaningful measure for the individual. If so, those who start with a higher cost of sustenance are less likely to be able to enhance individual utility. For this cohort, life is even more irrational than the populace at large.

Life, a highly irrational notion, continues with inexplicable regularity.