Talking to a friend today, she complained about someone wanting her help with a project when that person didn’t even know what the point of the project was.

Prima facie that does sound kind of objectionable. But is it?

People definitely do a lot of things without much explicit account of the point of each of them. For instance, many people go to university without taking a stance on whether it is primarily fulfills a learning function or a signaling function or an associating-with-elites function or or a getting the hell away from whatever they have been up to so far function.

It’s not that people think of going to university as pointless, they just have a vague sense of it being good in some rich array of ways.

Are activities motivated in this way much less useful than ones done with a distinct purpose?

I doubt it. But it seems complicated.

I’d guess that if a person thinks explicitly about their purposes in university, they might make university-related choices somewhat better. For instance, if they clarify with themselves that a big component is meeting like-minded peers, that might change which courses they do in counterintuitive ways.

But on the other hand, if they too much trust their breakdown of purposes, I expect things to get worse again: I’d guess a teenager who decides on a specific purpose for their university attendance to make worse choices than one just heuristically and hand-wavily trying to do what seems nebulously good.

Likewise, if I’m running a party, I don’t think it should have a point. Though I do think considering the possible sources of value from it might help.

On the other hand, if someone really wanted to cause a specific unusual event, and could give no account of why they wanted to do that except for evidently thinking it ‘would be good’, I might not be that excited to help them.

When should you know the point of your actions?