I have moved from Advance Science to Save the world, as I have aged.
Nudging the world is not hard, many people have nudged the world. Especially people who have created technology. Knowing what ripples that nudge will cause later is another matter. It is this that makes me sceptical of my efforts.
I know that I don't feel satisfied with my life without a big goal. Too many fantasy novels with a overarching plot when I was young, perhaps. But it is a self-reinforcing meme, I don't want to become someone who goes through life with no thought to the future. Especially as I see that we are incredibly lucky to live in a time, where we have such things as free time and disposable income to devote to the problem.
Sometime ago Jonii wrote:
When I'm hungry I eat, but then I don't go on eating some more just to maximize a function. Eating isn't something I want a lot of. Likewise I don't want a ton of survival, just a bounded amount every day. Let's define a goal as big if you don't get full: every increment of effort/achievement is valuable, like paperclips to Clippy. Now do we have any big goals? Which ones?
Save the world. A great goal if you see a possible angle of attack, which I don't. The SIAI folks are more optimistic, but if they see a chink in the wall, they're yet to reveal it.
Help those who suffer. Morally upright but tricky to execute: James Shikwati, Dambisa Moyo and Kevin Myers show that even something as clear-cut as aid to Africa can be viewed as immoral. Still a good goal for anyone, though.
Procreate. This sounds fun! Fortunately, the same source that gave us this goal also gave us the means to achieve it, and intelligence is not among them. :-) And honestly, what sense in making 20 kids just to play the good-soldier routine for your genes? There's no unique "you gene" anyway, in several generations your descendants will be like everyone else's. Yeah, kids are fun, I'd like two or three.
Follow your muse. Music, comedy, videogame design, whatever. No limit to achievement! A lot of this is about signaling: would you still bother if all your successes were attributed to someone else's genetic talent? But even apart from the signaling angle, there's still the worrying feeling that entertainment is ultimately useless, like humanity-scale wireheading, not an actual goal for us to reach.
Accumulate power, money or experiences. What for? I never understood that.
Advance science. As Erik Naggum put it:
Don't know, but I'm pretty content with my life lately. Should I have a big goal at all? How about you?