For every problem, there are specific solutions that address the immediate obstacle, and meta-solutions that incorporate the very nature of the problem into future approaches. At the furthest extremes, the specific is a simple negation of the individual occurrence of the problem - if you run into an obstacle, turn around and go back the other way - while the meta is a pure evolutionary algorithm, virtually a definition of life: When obstacles are encountered, iterate in all directions and default to the pathway with greatest energy profit / least net loss. Where the future of humanity is concerned, the ultimate specific solution to our problems is equally simple and pointless (extinction), and a multitude of possible beginnings lead to this same, singular end. The ultimate meta-solution, however, though it contains an infinite number of unknowable futures, begins in just one direction: Up.
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