Web of Goals

An organizing principle is the web of goals where negative side-effects are eliminated as far as possible and goals are chosen to have mutually reinforcing positive side effects. If a goal is seen as a primary objective, side-effects may be seen as secondary objectives. However, when secondary objectives are mutually reinforced they may be more easily achieved and even turn into primary objectives (a change of strategy) should the original primary objective fail or simply fail to inspire.

Concretely, hobbies are chosen so they can align and reinforce each other and even lead to jobs. For example, writing scientific papers as a job (primary objective), which has the side-effect of editing skills, combined with creative writing and system administration as hobbies, can lead to an editing job (new primary objective) with the side-effect of typesetting skills. The typesetting skills combined with creative writing can lead to self-publication of a book.

The web of goals can be seen as an evolving life-story that automatically minimizes waste (any kind of negative side-effect) and allows for the maximum possible number of opportunities in a rich world, or maximum resilience in a poor world.