you’re right, those are pretty scary, but Existence itself is scary. this isn’t a trite claim that “the world is a scary place”, but more that the required acceptance of consciousness as a material phenomenon can be a pretty horrifying concept, and we have to come to terms with it. so maybe that helps: Understanding that this dread is more fundamental than just the knowledge humans – like every other species in history – inevitably must go extinct, and that extinction will perhaps be sooner and more ignoble than we hope. This is a dread which you really would strive to master in any lifetime. whatever happens, there is a good chance it will be interesting to watch at least.

Now, before you conclude this is just totally tangential rambling, I’ll refer to something specific you wrote: “I spend 5 days a week maintaining software that charges people for turning on their lights.” This is definitely not an irrational observation. you should be concerned about whether your work is meaningful and so on, and you should be prioritizing whatever you need to do to change that. Obviously, youd’ve put a lot of work to get the career you have now and it probably feels, at least a little, like you’re stuck on a certain path, but the guys freighted to Treblinka weren’t even on a fixed path, so suppose with me that a software engineer has more than a couple degrees of freedom. I trust you can find some meaningful use for your talents, and eventually you wont need to waste them on any worthless Smart Home SAAS anymore.