The Age of Em by Robin Hanson

There's no better way to fail than to convince yourself that it doesn't matter what you do. I call the first life we know of like, I call it Life 1.0 because it was really dumb,. If you look at a little bacteria under the microscope, it has interesting behavior. It'll figure out where there's higher sugar concentration and swim towards there. But that knowledge resides in its DNA and it can only learn from one generation to the next financial selection. You and I on the other hand, and our fellow humans, I call us Life 2.0 because we can learn which has enabled cultural evolution and made us the dominant species on the planet.