Human life IS absurd. And AI can’t help us find meaning in it.

Is there any ultimate meaning to human life? Maybe, maybe not. But if there is, where and how do we find it?

Let’s start by thinking about philosopher Albert Camus’ approach to this question. Then segue into philosopher Simon Critchley’s opinion that human thought & feeling is the only way to ever get there, and that AI is a dead-end.

Albert Camus was the great rebel philosopher who advocated living life in the face of the complete acknowledgement of its absurdity. And Camus himself did that to the hilt, totally involved in the social and political life of his time and place.

“You exist in an indifferent, Absurd universe that defies you truly knowing it and predicting it (and yet you keep trying!), and this leaves you alienated.
The absurd, for Camus, is the clash between our deep yearning for meaning and the universe’s indifferent silence.”

Here philosopher Laura Maguire very briefly lays out the problem (text only, not the podcast):
https://philosophytalk.org/blog/camus-and-absurdity/

Then, in the interest of bringing the issue right up to date, let’s read Simon Critchley regarding philosophy vs AI:
“Judgment is not calculation. It is the capacity to weigh, to discriminate, to sense that one answer is true and another merely correct. It is taste, discernment and the knack of thinking sideways. It is refined only through experience — through error, embarrassment, boredom, grief and the occasional hangover. Philosophy is the discipline of knowing what to do with experience: What to keep, what to discard, what to laugh at, what to junk.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/27/opinion/ai-philosophy-thinking-judgment.html
(you can access the NYT (free) via ‘online resources’ at any local library website)

~Michael