> What I am trying, but apparently failing, to get across, is that optimizing a cost benefit analysis is not the primary mode of human existence.

I get what you're saying, but, with respect, I think you're wrong about that.

> It may be, in some uselessly wide tautological sense, an inevitable aspect of it,

As far as scientific consensus goes, I think it's pretty common to encounter the belief that life is "just" biological machinery and, ergo, evolution is a chemical tautology.

> but it doesn't characterize the human experience in toto.

But here it seems to me that you're verging into mysticism, which personally I don't mind but you have to call it out.

> Most human beings do plenty of things which they don't consciously evaluate in such bloodless terms

Yes, I agree, and in fact it seems to me to be a very recent, even modern, thing that people are doing that at all. I mean, accounting only began around 5k years ago, eh? ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuneiform )

> there is no universal notion of cost or benefit, its unclear what your imaginary perfect analyzer would be up to in the first place.

There is a universal notion, but it's self-referential: success at replication.

Again, this is a IRL chemical tautology: success at replication engenders new conditions that then bring about changes in the (virtual) fitness landscape engendering new adaptation. (E.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxygenation_Event )

Thus the universal notion of benefit is a verb not a noun, further, it's a self-defining "emergent" notion.

Evolution and meta-evolution occur at the same time, are the same process.

From this POV, it's absolutely fascinating (IMO) that this process created self-aware individuals with intelligence that can, e.g. look at the night sky and see stars in all their celestial glory (as contrasted to mere tiny lights on a fixed fabric.)

> Thus, if we are to preserve as valid the vast majority of human activities...

(Just to mention in passing, I don't think we can evaluate the validity of human activity en mass for at least a few hundred million years or so. If we talking apes can't survive longer than the unintelligent dinosaurs I don't think any of our civilization(s) can be considered valid.)

...we must deny the idea that literally every moment needs to be consciously optimized...

(Again, I'm not saying that, and I don't think WalterBright meant that either, but it's not interesting IMO)

...and embrace the counter-notion: that society be organized in such a way that we can sometimes, perhaps as often as possible, chill the fuck out.

Now, here, you are talking my language friend! I mentioned elsewhere in the thread that I'm a fan of Bucky Fuller, in part because he basically said that our tech can support us with a high standard of living w/o "disadvantaging anyone" and we should be able to retire at 25 (etc.)

So, yeah, slack off. :-)

That's the other interesting question, IMO: is the evolution of intelligence the end of evolution or a change of form? (And this Q is complicated by the fact that intelligence is ambient (cf. M. Levin's work.))

I mean, what if we all slack off ("Let the robots do the work and we'll take their pay.") and get enslaved by Klingons or degenerate into blobs?