system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
I'm sorry if this is a stupid question, but why does it matter if life has meaning? And what does that even mean?

I read philosophy (mostly summaries from the Stanford Encyclopedia, but I read a full book if it interests me) casually. I'm sort of confused on the philosophy that seems to dominate people's understanding of philosophy in popular culture, people like Camus and Sarte arguing about "the meaning of life". I'm confused because I always found this term to be extremely vague, but more troubling for me was how it seemed to be unimportant, especially compared to normative, moral questions. If morality realism is true, then it makes sense to just "do what is right", and if it isn't true then there isn't really much of a reason to do anything is there?

I understand this is a question that could easily be solved by "reading a book", but Philosophy isn't something I feel like I have much time for as I'm a Senior in High School preparing to major in Computer Science, and I want to focus on that.
gpt
If you were to believe that life has no meaning (in any sense of the word), and thus if you were to believe that *nothing matters*, then what would motivate you to do anything? When you choose to do one thing and not another, you are implicitly assigning the first with a greater value than the second, which you cannot sensibly do if you think that everything is valueless. And how do you choose which things are more valuable than others? You do it based on what you think is meaningful, in some sense of that word. If you truly think nothing is meaningful, you'll have a hard time doing much of anything. If you do think that some things are meaningful, then you'll choose to do different things depending on your beliefs about the value of the various possible actions you can take. In this way, one's beliefs about the meaning of life have direct implications on one's actions and psychology.

I think you're making a somewhat strange distinction between the question of the meaning of life and the question of normativity and moral values. If life has meaning, then that has direct implications for what people ought to do (or, for normative ethical claims), since we want to act in accordance with what gives life meaning. If life doesn't have meaning, then that, too, has direct implications for what people ought to do -- namely, it may suggest that we have no obligation to do anything in particular. Either way, the question is hugely important for anyone who wants to better understand the human condition, and it is in everyone's interest to do that.