Life is meaningless

Let’s get this straight: there is no inherent meaning in life.

(4‑second read.)

But before we get there, let’s look at “free will”.

During my research stay at Harvard, I sometimes joined the lab meeting of Prof. Florian Engert, because I was (and still am) fascinated by his philosophical, thought-through approach to science. In his lab, there’s a tradition: after the lab meeting, people keep talking - about the science, the meeting itself, or new experiment ideas - and then some go outside with Florian for a cigarette. (You don’t have to smoke, you can also just enjoy the discussions that emerge.)

At one of the first lab meetings I attended, I joined the conversation outside, and he asked me whether I think free will exists. Back then I was a determinist, and I answered: no, there is no free will, because everything is predetermined.

Let me explain.

I believed in a world where everything can, in principle, be described in clean, simple formal rules. If you break reality down far enough—say to two atoms—and you know all factors in their environment, then you could predict every behavior. And if you can predict every behavior, you can predict the future. I also think we humans will never reach that level in practice, because you can’t fully understand a system you’re part of (or didn’t build yourself). But in theory, I thought it should be possible.

Florian answered that I might be right about the conclusion, but wrong about the reason. His view was (and is?) that there’s no free will not because everything is deterministic, but because everything is fundamentally random. Same outcome—no free will—just with a probabilistic explanation instead of a deterministic one.

If we turn this into a thought experiment: you can choose between an apple and a banana. In a deterministic universe, if everything is identical down to the smallest detail, your choice is the same every time. In Florian’s view, even if all factors and the environment were identical, your choice would still not necessarily be the same each time—because the process itself contains randomness.

Either way, we briefly argued our perspectives… and ended up in the same place: no free will. And if we can’t even influence our life (or its outcome), where should meaning come from? In one concept, your life outcome is random. In the other, it’s already fixed. In both cases, there’s no real room for conscious influence.

I think this idea feels deeply unsatisfying to humans, because we want to see ourselves as self-determined (German: selbstbestimmt) and important. I also think we’ve been struggling for a long time with the question of a “meaningful life”—and partly because of that, we invented things like religion.

Now, that’s a pretty depressing thought: that there is no meaning in our life. And I’d argue very few people can actually live with that feeling for long. So here’s the twist: there is still meaning in life—just not a universal, built-in one.

Everyone has to define their own meanings. Set your own values and goals—choose what you want your life to stand for. One simple “meaning” is reproduction. Another is creating something, helping people, exploring, learning, building, loving.

Every value is valid—because you are the one assigning it.