Very persuasive argument against extreme longtermism. I do wonder if this a linear relationship tho (assuming the same discount rate). I'm not sure where the near-horizon-but-still-longermist thinking starts -- 1000 years? 200 years? Billion years seems purely a fun enterprise (aka an intellectual wank) with the risks you lay out. Intuitively so does a million years, and probably 100 000. But what about 10 000? What about 1000? 200? So the practical question arises, when do you think it's ok and maybe even preferable to play the game?
*it's only having typed this that I saw that I picked numbers that (at the lower end) very roughly mark significant transition points in the human history as a species (emergence/ agriculture/ industrial revolution)...
2021 nuclear devices have been detonated on this planet. Almost certainly that much radiation, no matter how often we are told it is flushed from the biosphere, will affect human evolution.
Other than that, believing anything we do now will have an effect on whatever we are in a billion years, by which time our earthly existence and probably our humanoid form, will be long gone, is likely just "patting ourselves on the back" as a species.
Very persuasive argument against extreme longtermism. I do wonder if this a linear relationship tho (assuming the same discount rate). I'm not sure where the near-horizon-but-still-longermist thinking starts -- 1000 years? 200 years? Billion years seems purely a fun enterprise (aka an intellectual wank) with the risks you lay out. Intuitively so does a million years, and probably 100 000. But what about 10 000? What about 1000? 200? So the practical question arises, when do you think it's ok and maybe even preferable to play the game?
*it's only having typed this that I saw that I picked numbers that (at the lower end) very roughly mark significant transition points in the human history as a species (emergence/ agriculture/ industrial revolution)...
Some more information to consider.
2021 nuclear devices have been detonated on this planet. Almost certainly that much radiation, no matter how often we are told it is flushed from the biosphere, will affect human evolution.
Other than that, believing anything we do now will have an effect on whatever we are in a billion years, by which time our earthly existence and probably our humanoid form, will be long gone, is likely just "patting ourselves on the back" as a species.