There are seemingly good reasons not to bother with living intentionally, all revolving around uncertainty. Admittedly, no one knows everything there is to know about every potentiality in life. In every choice we face lies the possibility that there was something significant we missed or that a better choice existed, even when we do all we can to analyze the choice before making it. Any serious advocate for intentionality must make a case as to why doing the best you know equates to doing the best there is. The best argument relies on belief in a just, all-knowing God who will orient you to the best eventual outcomes here and hereafter, through incremental increases in understanding, as you do the best you know. However, a sufficient argument can be made simply by appealing to how robots handle this problem.
Robot pathfinding algorithms create interesting patterns that grow like slow-motion forks of lightning, with the robot fluttering between potential paths while incrementally investigating the very next segment of the most attractive path so far. If the additional information provided by the present exploration causes the present path to become less attractive compared to an alternative fork, the robot will go and continue exploring the other path.1
There is an optimal path that maximizes your purpose, and the way you will find it is through incrementally adapting your strategy as you learn and grow.
Footnotes
- 1. The keen observer will note that, unlike autonomous robots, human decisions almost always feature high costs for additional attempts. Life is short, many decisions can only be made once, many of the most important decisions must be made early, and many decisions offer choices with catastrophic consequences. For all such problems, you’ll find the only adequate solution is the existence of a just, all-knowing God who will orient you to the best eventual outcomes here and hereafter through incremental increases in understanding as you do the best you know. ↩