You Can't Move, You Can Wail and That's It

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I would suggest as I did talking to my, the incoming first years here at Shalem this morning, influenced by your talk, part of life, part of college. We don't really have much of a clue. And then all of a sudden you pass a certain place where now you do lots of things and no one other than imitating what everybody else does. So that's like our, our basic program. It's maybe the thing humans are especially good at is learning how to conform to one another.

Suppose all of humanity was infected by a virus that left us all infertile--no one will come along after us. How would you react to such a world? Agnes Callard of the University of Chicago says she would be filled with despair. But why does this seem worse than our own inevitable deaths? Callard speaks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the meaning of life, and what exactly about the end of humanity is so demoralizing. The conversation concludes with a discussion of whether humanity is making progress.