[HN Gopher] The scarcity of the long term
___________________________________________________________________
The scarcity of the long term
Author : galfarragem
Score : 108 points
Date : 2024-02-09 10:41 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (kk.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (kk.org)
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| Scarcity of attention is one thing. It is complemented by
| scarcity of commitment. The digital world gives the illusion that
| everything is possible and easy. In such a world, why bother to
| do anything?
|
| Over the years I also noticed students getting ever more
| abstracted into wishful thinking. They hugely underestimate
| research and development. Proposals are filled with the word
| "just... ". On realising that something is difficult, they recoil
| and abandon the whole project.
|
| Although the article talks about the hubris of planning over
| multiple lifetimes, we have more serious and immediate problems
| of getting people to plan over mere weeks or days. Everything
| seems to be making that worse, "AI" in particular.
| graemep wrote:
| Take a look at would be start up founders and software
| projects. "I have a great idea, I just need it implemented", "I
| have a design done, I just need someone to make it work".
| roenxi wrote:
| This is almost a solved problem; institutions are capable of
| sustaining intentions for insane periods of time. The major
| organised religious institutes have been pushing some basic
| standards for ethical living for millennia. There aren't a lot of
| projects that humans have considered worth a millenium of effort.
| Due to the limited abilities of humans that long ago they are all
| philosophical projects. But we can do it.
|
| And on a smaller scale, institutions can keep grinding away far
| longer than makes any sense. A grant and a trust fund can last
| centuries. Look at the educational institutions like Oxford for
| interesting examples of maintaining a culture. It is pretty easy
| to imagine a group like that sustaining long term technical
| projects.
|
| I don't think a millenium of sustained technological effort is
| actually that hard to achieve. We've obviously never done it
| before because industrial society is less than 1,000 years old.
| But assuming we don't self-immolate as seems likely then setting
| up ultra-long-term-projects isn't that hard to see.
| 5y345ywy wrote:
| Doesn't this really only hold true if you handwave away the
| emergence of new denominations within those religions over
| time?
| graemep wrote:
| Not really, many old denominations have persisted for a very
| long time. Catholic and Orthodox churches, for example.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| Institutions sustain _themselves_ or rather the jobs of the
| controlling minds of the institution. Today's Catholic Church
| would be viewed by its founders as some kind of uber-hippy
| bunch of democratic maniacs out to destroy civilisation.
|
| I think the difference here is we can view a company /
| institution as a machine to do a job, and between a company
| that has a controlling mind able to change its own machine
| "code" hence chnage its job.
|
| Without software the two things are needed - but with software
| we can concieve of a programmable company that just does its
| tasks as assigned for as long as inputs occur. If those tasks
| involve say sending jobs out to gig workers the idea kind of
| works
|
| It does mean you could build a Death Star using robots in place
| of gig workers (which is the obvious multi-generational
| solution)
|
| But it does imply something about our companies - that once the
| whole company can be specified in code, splitting off the
| "controlling minds" bit (ie management, plus developers) into
| seperate location seems interesting
|
| It also explicitly makes the issue of who decides what chnages
| and how come to the fore
| js8 wrote:
| > Today's Catholic Church would be viewed by its founders as
| some kind of uber-hippy bunch of democratic maniacs out to
| destroy civilisation.
|
| Are you sure? It seems to me that Jesus would be dismayed by
| how establishment they've become and not nearly radical
| enough.
| Filligree wrote:
| These can both be true.
| Loughla wrote:
| And the money in the temple thing, too.
| lukas099 wrote:
| I don't think they were thinking of Jesus as the founder of
| the Catholic Church. Although I think that is what the
| Vatican itself would say (?)
| JackFr wrote:
| I think the Vatican's perspective would be that it's a
| theologically meaningless and mostly ill-formed question.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| If we go with Constantine, I guess his strong impression
| would be how tame and uncommitted modern politics are.
| graemep wrote:
| Yes, but they believe in eternity, or reincarnation, of
| something longer than a lifespan. They also often believe in a
| defined obligation to future generations. Our contemporary
| culture does not.
|
| > Look at the educational institutions like Oxford for
| interesting examples of maintaining a culture.
|
| They have changed over the centuries though. The ethos and aims
| of Oxford are hardly what they were when it got its royal
| charter in the 13th century. True, it still values scholarship,
| but it has also changed in a lot of ways.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| In the olden days, students at Oxford mainly studied
| Divinity; nowadays there are schools of Business, Islamic
| Studies, high-energy physics and so on. There is still a
| number of Oxford "halls" devoted to Divinity, but the number
| of students and fellows engaged in that kind of work is tiny.
|
| So I agree: it's no longer the same institution at all.
| graemep wrote:
| > Islamic Studies
|
| Not that different a subject. A different focus
| traditionally, but still related to a monotheistic
| religion.
|
| > Business
|
| Definitely very different, especially in ethos.
|
| > There is still a number of Oxford "halls" devoted to
| Divinity, but the number of students and fellows engaged in
| that kind of work is tiny.
|
| and I believe the powers that be at the university would
| like to get rid of them?
| lukas099 wrote:
| Seems like survivorship bias. A lot of projects fizzle out.
| Vietnam War comes to mind.
| roenxi wrote:
| Now I'm not exactly sure what the Vietnam war was supposed to
| achieve, and insofar as it fizzled out we need to define
| what, exactly, the aim was. I suspect it was pointless and
| fizzled out due to pointlessness eventually overwhelming the
| ability of the Americans to fight.
|
| However, if it was to combat communism/the USSR, which is my
| hazy understanding of the official justification, note
| communism has largely been expunged as a political ideology.
| All the communist states failed. The majors (USSR & China)
| have moved to capitalism. Well, China did. The USSR was
| removed from the map.
| lukas099 wrote:
| > Those who argue that the United States' opponents won the
| war cite the United States' overall objectives and
| outcomes. The United States entered Vietnam with the
| principal purpose of preventing a communist takeover of the
| region. In that respect, it failed: the two Vietnams were
| united under a communist banner in July 1976. Neighbouring
| Laos and Cambodia similarly fell to communists.
| Furthermore, domestic unrest and the financial cost of war
| made peace--and troop withdrawals--a necessity, not a
| choice.
|
| From https://www.britannica.com/event/Vietnam-War
|
| In fairness, it also says that some people think the US won
| because it won the major battles and inflicted more
| casualties. That sounds like winning the battle but losing
| the war, to me.
| keep320909 wrote:
| > The chief hurdle in constructing a Death Star is not the
| energy, materials, or even knowledge needed.
|
| Any proof for that? Death Star is big as a Moon, it has energy of
| several millions of Suns (it can blow up entire planet to pieces
| in seconds, just calculate energy needed to overcome gravity
| well). The only thing we know that could even remotely
| theoretically approach it, are impacts with asteroids at almost
| light speed.
|
| Saying the only thing preventing us from building it, is unstable
| political system, is just delusional! We really need to get away
| from this "technology will solve anything" mentality!
| lukas099 wrote:
| They go hand in hand. The materiel and personnel cost make the
| project less popular as time passes, and the shrinking
| political will makes obtaining those less viable.
| dobin wrote:
| Many cathedrals took hundreds of years to build. The following
| around 500 years: Cologne Cathedral, St. Vitus Cathedral and
| Milan Cathedral. Sagrada Familia was started in 1882, and Gaudi
| is dead for 98 years. If the emperor demands, it will be built.
| kibwen wrote:
| Cathedrals were public works projects that guaranteed
| generations of employment for local craftsmen. Plenty of
| cathedrals were left half-finished after funding dried up.
|
| _> If the emperor demands, it will be built._
|
| The emperor rules for 50 years at best. His descendants may
| have different demands.
| admp wrote:
| Cologne cathedral didn't actually take 500 years to build --
| construction was restarted after a 250+ year halt.
|
| "Construction of Cologne Cathedral began in 1248 but was halted
| in the years around 1560, unfinished. Attempts to complete the
| construction began around 1814 but the project was not properly
| funded until the 1840s."
| Timwi wrote:
| That seems to me irrelevant to the point being made.
| samatman wrote:
| So it took 500 years to build.
|
| If a building took one year to build, but they didn't work on
| the weekends, would you object and say no, it only took 260
| days?
| zokier wrote:
| Lets take an example closer to home. Babbage famously
| started working on his Analytical Engine 1837. He never got
| it very far though, and the project remained dead for
| 150ish years. Until jgc and friends got the idea to
| complete the project and construct the Engine.
|
| So would you say it took 200 years to build Analytical
| Engine, or would you consider the Babbages original attempt
| and the current day attempt two separate projects?
| Xelbair wrote:
| >Sagrada Familia was started in 1882, and Gaudi is dead for 98
| years.
|
| and you can clearly see which part was done by which architect,
| as it's style, and structure shifts. Is the same vision of
| Gaudi still present in more modern parts of it?
|
| (personally i think no, after seeing on vacation)
| darepublic wrote:
| > I am asking myself what would I need to hear and get from a
| past generation to convince me to complete a project they began?
|
| For me a language, culture, sexual arousal.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| For many others, especially with regards to cathedrals and
| religious institutions more generally: religiosity / God.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > The only real scarcity would be of a long attention span.
|
| I get the author's drift, and broadly agree. But I don't think
| it's really a long attention span that would get in the way of
| (e.g.) a Mars colony, or interstellar travel; it's that people's
| views change from one generation to the next. My kids have been
| imbued with _some_ of my attitudes, sure; but I 've not had much
| of a hand in the raising of my grandchildren. And kids rebel
| against their parents' views, even if they're objectively less
| sensible than the latest kids' fashion.
|
| The Death Star, to take the author's example, is the product of a
| particular hypothetical society that looks a lot like fascist
| authoritarianism: a Glorious Leader, militarization, and
| oppression. But how many societies like that have lasted 500
| years? The Golden Horde lasted about 250 years; the Roman Empire
| lasted about 200 years. Chinese imperial rule lasted much longer,
| maybe 1,500 years? Egyptian pharoahs about the same, if you treat
| the Early, Middle and Late as distinct empires. But these empires
| changed their character as the centuries passed, and were not
| characterized by any particular continuity of social outlook or
| collective goals.
|
| I have only a vague knowledge of what the attitudes of my
| grandparents and their generation were - too vague for me to
| either support them or to rebel against them. So I think it's not
| so much a matter of attention-span, and more a question of plain
| old memory; history lessons and books are no substitute for
| talking to the people who were there, and after 200 years there's
| nobody left who "was there".
| lloeki wrote:
| So essentially the problem is one of being able to foster a
| meme+ that outlives the scale of an individual's life.
|
| + the original meaning, not the internets one, which is only an
| extremely short-lived subset.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > to foster a meme+
|
| So, I guess, pyramid-building; that's a collective project
| spanning a few centuries. I struggle to think of any
| collective project that spans centuries, that isn't
| fundamentally a religious enterprise.
| NeoTar wrote:
| > I struggle to think of any collective project that spans
| centuries, that isn't fundamentally a religious enterprise.
|
| Certain parts of mathematics and science may qualify.
|
| Yes they have practical outcomes (as do certain religious
| projects - building a cathedral will employ craftsmen), but
| isn't the pursuit of 'pure' mathematics a collective
| project which serves no purpose apart from intellectual
| satisfaction.
| lloeki wrote:
| Maths has a constant "next step" which makes it very
| iterative though whereas a pyramid or a cathedral is only
| complete or not-complete, and it's not-complete over
| these decades/centuries.
|
| > religious
|
| Probably the most enduring meme.
| NeoTar wrote:
| I think I respectfully disagree almost entirely.
|
| Maths requires a huge amount of creative effort and there
| often is no logical next step. There was a reason that it
| took three hundred years to go from an idea that a^x +
| b^x = c^x has no integer solutions when x is greater than
| two, to a proof of that, and it involved some crazy
| twists and turns of thinking.
|
| However, while a pyramid may have a definite endpoint,
| cathedrals have historically been in a near constant
| state of flux - a bishop wants to show his influence and
| rebuilds a tower higher, a burgher of the town want to
| show his power by adding a side chapel. New windows are
| installed, a porch is demolished and replaced with
| something more beautiful. For the cathedrals which took
| five hundred years to complete, it wasn't that they were
| abandoned building sites during that time - they just
| took that long to reach the state that we see as final
| today. Maybe in-between there was a wooden roof instead
| of a stone roof, or a tower was capped at thirty meters
| tall rather than fifty!
| pm215 wrote:
| It depends a bit, I think, on how much drift you accept
| without considering the project to have changed so much
| it's not the same thing. But for instance some of the older
| universities in Europe are pretty much the same
| institutions working on the same goal (educating people) in
| the same buildings for many hundreds of years. The details
| of what the education provided ought to be, the balance
| between education and research, and the administrative
| details have changed quite a bit, but I think you can still
| make a case for this being the same non-religious
| collective project.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd11xx/EWD1175.PDF
|
| > _In the Western world, 66 institutions have enjoyed a
| continuously visible identity since 1530. Among those 66
| are the Roman Catholic Church, the Lutheran Church and the
| Parliaments of Iceland and the Isle of Man. What makes
| these 66 so interesting --and I owe the knowledge of this
| fact to our President Dr. Berdahl-- is that the remaining
| 62 are all universities!_
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| This nails it I think
|
| The basic unit of humanity, the human, does not have consistent
| long term desires or goals.
|
| In fact within the span of a lifetime the same individual is
| expected to have completely divergent goals and conception of
| reality when they are 20 versus 50 versus 80.
|
| In effect this means that a consistent, coherent goal state for
| human action is not possible to define that would satisfy the
| self-reported desires of any individual.
| psychoslave wrote:
| I don't know, look at how Knuth is still at work on TAOCP.
| Sure not everyone is Knuth (I am definitely not at least).
|
| Having a life long goal require a conjunction of passion for
| a topic that requires that much attention span and relevant
| available resources to explore it. I dare to say that having
| enough resources at hand including not being interrupted too
| often with other hassles and hazards from life is the biggest
| source of scarcity.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| I'd argue that is something different than I'm suggesting,
| though I certainly agree that having a consistent project
| across a lifetime is rare but not that rare.
|
| The difference is that Knuth is providing something of
| value to others, while your grandmother's fully complete
| American Girl doll collection she started at age 5 is of
| limited value.
|
| Your last point is really the key takeaway: How do we
| create a global society that gives every single human the
| freedom, opportunity and resources to produce their version
| of the computing bible? We have more than enough natural
| resources to make that happen
| WillAdams wrote:
| I would settle for a society which:
|
| - afforded every citizen access to whatever education
| which they might choose/be interested in
|
| - the chance to become the best version of themselves
| which is possible
|
| - the leisure time to apply their talents to a project
| which makes the world a better place
|
| It's kind of hard though, when the best school I ever
| attended, one which separated academics from social
| classes and allowed students to work at their ability
| level (up to 4 grade levels ahead through 4th grade, but
| after, one could work as far ahead and as fast as one's
| abilities allowed, and faculty members were dual-
| credentialed as high school teachers and professors at a
| local college, so students could easily graduate high
| school _and_ be conferred a 4 year degree, some students
| received multiple college degrees when graduating at age
| 18) which excelled at education was deemed an illegal
| arrangement by the Mississippi Supreme Court because it
| conferred an unfair advantage to those students who were
| able to apply themselves and take advantage of it, with
| no commensurate compensation for those who were unable to
| do so.
| lukas099 wrote:
| > the Roman Empire lasted about 200 years
|
| I thought it lasted much longer than that in the East?
| denton-scratch wrote:
| I guess about 500 years, if you include Byzantium? But
| Byzantium was a very different creature from Rome.
| NeoTar wrote:
| According to the popular conciousness, the Roman Empire
| lasted from 27 BCE to 476 CE in the west (i.e. 503 years),
| and from 27 BCE to 1453 CE including Byzantium (i.e. 1480
| years).
|
| But that's a _really_ bad way to think about it. A Roman in
| 30 BCE and 20 BC probably wouldn 't notice much difference.
| There was still a Senate, still elections, still powerful
| men exerting massive influence over the lives of ordinary
| people. Essentially someone had just written 'Augustus' in
| chalk at the top of all the organization charts.
|
| Similarly, in the west a Roman in 470 CE and 480 CE
| wouldn't have noticed much difference. There was still a
| Senate, and powerful 'barbarian' generals were still
| exerting massive influence over the lives of ordinary
| people. There even was still an Emperor who was nominally
| in charge - he was in Constantinople, but the Emperors
| hadn't lived in Rome for decades.
|
| The fall of Constantinople was probably a bit different
| since a whole new political regieme was imposed, but even
| there I believe the Ottomans actually claimed to be the
| inheritors of Rome and the rightful emperors (Rome was
| Pagan, then Christian, why couldn't it now be Muslim?)
|
| Realistically, there were a series of political regimes
| which evolved into each other time:
|
| * Aristocratic Republic,
|
| * 'Constitutional' Monarchy,
|
| * Absolute Monarchy,
|
| * Military Dictatorship,
|
| * Theocratic Dictatorship.
| robinzfc wrote:
| > the Roman Empire lasted about 200 years.
|
| The Roman Empire lasted about 500 years - from 31 BC to the
| fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476. If we include the
| period of existence of the Eastern Roman Empire it would be
| almost 1500 years - until the fall of Constantinople in 1453.
| JackFr wrote:
| And that ignores the five centuries of the Roman Republic,
| before the empire.
| crabbone wrote:
| One of the unexpected effects of learning Hebrew for me, was
| something I didn't realize at first. Only almost thirty years
| since I could confidently use the language I accidentally
| watched a video where someone was researching the phonetics of
| the language (it's more or less generally agreed that nobody
| really knows how ancient Hebrew sounded). So, the researcher
| asked people from different communities (eg. Yemenite Jews,
| Samaritans, etc.) to read aloud a passage from Genesis.
|
| It was very surprising to me that I could, more or less,
| understand what they were saying, despite the accent. Then came
| the realization that I could actually understand something
| written thousands of years ago by someone whose mind worked in
| a very different way, and yet I could, sort-of, communicate
| with that person.
|
| ---
|
| I had to move a lot in my life. So, I don't have any childhood
| photos, nor do I keep in touch with my classmates from wherever
| I studied, I had to switch the language I use in my everyday
| life at least twice. I always "traveled light", so, I almost
| don't have any objects that are more than some ten years old.
| Except for the razor my grandfather brought from Germany in
| 1945 (now, I realize that it was probably looted, but many
| years back I was kind-of proud to inherit that). It says on it
| that it was manufactured in 1939.
|
| I've never really met my grandfather -- he died when I was one
| y.o. I don't know what kind of person he was in his everyday
| life, in fact, I've ever only seen a single photograph of him.
| And yet I know that in many ways, subconsciously, I continue
| things he was doing. We have very different perspectives on
| life: he was a member of the Communist party, and I'm strongly
| in the Humanist camp. He liked gardening, and I hate being in
| the country etc. But, in a more broad sense, I keep a lot of
| the same culture he was part of: I'm pretty sure we learned the
| same multiplication table, or that we both had to read War and
| Peace at school, we both have the same idea about alphabet or
| using a dinner table for, well, dinner. And in that sense, I'm
| distinctly farther away from someone who sits down on a mat to
| eat their dinner, or, like ancient Greeks, who semi-lied down
| on a bench for their dinner.
|
| In fact, it's very easy to trace my and my grandfather's
| differences to a common ancestor. It's not hard for me to
| understand why would he think the way he did, even though he's
| in the opposite camp. It's much harder to understand those who
| cannot disagree with me because they don't even know what they
| can possibly disagree about.
|
| ---
|
| We don't have an obvious structure for projects that take
| multiple generations to complete. Not like the cathedrals that
| used to be built for hundred years or more, or even the books
| that used to be written by generations of scribes. But we still
| carry out such multi-generational projects by following
| conventions. We read books written by the previous generation,
| reinterpret them and embed their discoveries in our own.
|
| It would've been nicer if we could organize this inheritance
| better, but it's not fair to say that it doesn't exist.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > Except for the razor my grandfather brought from Germany in
| 1945
|
| Hah - I also have an old razor. I inherited it from my Dad.
| He seems to have bought it in about 1935, from a cutler in
| Cambridge, where he went to University. It was made in
| Sheffield, but is engraved with the name of that Cambridge
| shop. He would have been about 20 when he bought it - perhaps
| his first razor.
|
| I've tried to sharpen and use it; but it was pretty rough. I
| find that modern razors from the likes of Dovo are much
| better.
|
| > I've never really met my grandfather
|
| My paternal grandfather died before I was born. My father
| says he was sitting in his chair; then he just coughed and
| died. I hope I am lucky enough to die like that.
|
| I knew my maternal grandfather quite well; I used to visit
| him when I was 13 - 15, most Sunday afternoons. He was a
| pacifist, an atheist, and a hero: he was head of education in
| Hong Kong, when the Japanese took over. The story is that he
| stole a truck, and drove around the rich neighbourhoods
| collecting mattresses, medicines and - whisky. He liked a wee
| dram. He drove the truck to the concentration camp, blagged
| his way past the guards, and delivered the truck to the camp
| medical centre (minus the whisky, I imagine).
|
| I'm also an atheist, and spent most of my life as a pacifist.
| I'm no hero, though.
| samatman wrote:
| You might consider having a professional take a crack at
| sharpening that razor, the result may surprise you. I
| sharpen my own knives, with enough practice I can put a
| keen edge on a kitchen knife or pocketknife, but putting a
| razor's edge on a straight razor is about as difficult as
| sharpening gets, I'm fairly sure I wouldn't do as good a
| job at that as a professional would. You'll want someone
| who specifically sharpens straight razors.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| I specifically sharpen straight razors! (Or I used to -
| I'm a beardie-weirdie now). I'm not up to grinding out a
| nick, but I have a coticule and I can use it. I used to
| know a barber who could do a good job of razor-repair.
|
| You're right, sharpening kitchen knives is much easier.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > the Roman Empire lasted about 200 years. Chinese imperial
| rule lasted much longer, maybe 1,500 years?
|
| The Roman empire lasted considerably longer than 200 years -
| perhaps 500 years in its best understood form going from
| Octavian becoming emperor in ~30BCE to the fall of the Western
| Roman Empire in approx 470CE. The eastern end of the empire
| lasted in various forms for another 1000 years (!) until the
| fall of Constantinople.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| Thanks for the correction.
|
| The upshot, however, is that few empires last as long as 500
| years, and only a couple lasted as long as 1,500 years. And
| those empires change a lot over the course of their
| existence; they weren't effective vehicles for a collective
| effort at, say, colonising Mars.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > And those empires change a lot over the course of their
| existence; they weren't effective vehicles for a collective
| effort at, say, colonising Mars
|
| Completely agree!
| alanbernstein wrote:
| > people's views change from one generation to the next
|
| Or in other words, our society itself currently has a short
| attention span.
| pbw wrote:
| > people's views change from one generation to the next
|
| I think that's what Kevin Kelly means by attention in the
| essay.
|
| He writes:
|
| > It is much easier to build a rocket that will sail 500 years
| to the nearest star, then it is to ensure that the future
| generations of people born on board that 500-year rocket
| maintain the mission
|
| So he doesn't mean we'll flake out and flit our attention to
| something else on a whim. He's saying if we drop a project due
| to changing beliefs, opinions, and goals, that's "not having a
| long attention span".
|
| I don't love his use of the word "attention" to mean that, but
| I think it's pretty clear what he means by the word from the
| essay.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Take a peasant in italy in the year 600 bc, 600 ad, and 1600ad.
| Does life look any different really? Probably not. Multiple
| different rulers in this time but life had been basically
| continuous with respect to how the majority of people lived
| through these ages. I'd wager you could go up to the early
| 1900s in some Italian villages and still see an overwhelming
| amount of similarity in how daily life played out.
| lainga wrote:
| There is an apocryphal story from the Greek War of
| Independence in 1821 - when it was won, messengers were sent
| out to the various Aegean islands to tell them that Greece
| had won its independence from the Ottomans. On one small
| island, the response of the villagers was "well, that's nice,
| but why are you telling us? we aren't Greek, we're Romans
| (Romaioi _Rhomaioi_ )"
| NoraCodes wrote:
| > Chinese imperial rule lasted much longer, maybe 1,500 years?
|
| This is true only if you consider many dynastic orders with
| significant periods of instability in between to constitute a
| single uninterrupted period "Imperial China". No single
| dynastic order lasted more than 500 years, arguably none more
| than 300.
| pfdietz wrote:
| In my head canon, the authoritarianism of the Star Wars
| imperium is there because they got a bee in their bonnet about
| long term megaprojects, and decided the only way to make them
| succeed was suppress freedom of thought and change in the
| society as a whole. After the revolution the engineering
| visionaries responsible are put up against the wall.
| scotty79 wrote:
| What's scary is that at time scales of one generation or longer
| societies seem to forget even very important things. How pandemic
| looks like. That war and militarization is not such a good idea.
| XorNot wrote:
| > That war and militarization is not such a good idea.
|
| These are really not two sides of the same coin.
| lukas099 wrote:
| Conversely I think NATO and being the "world's policeman" was
| more popular in the US after WWII when we realized we could be
| pulled into European conflicts. After decades of relative peace
| a lot of people are wondering why we're spending so much on
| defense.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Another motivation was to inhibit nuclear proliferation.
| Without a global policeman, everyone has a motivation to
| acquire nuclear weapons.
| Anotheroneagain wrote:
| There is scarcity of scarcity, which leads to this madness.
| People didn't use to have a particular problem thinking at least
| a generation ahead, but there us no demand for such things. There
| is no way to make too much money on any established product.
| Anything that has existed for more than several years is
| available in vast amount, and cheap. Anything that isn't
| completely new is good enough to the point where only an
| insignificant improvement can be made at monumenta costs.
|
| What is desirable now are things like a fidget spinner, that
| makes some quick cash, and gets forgotten soon after.
| pfdietz wrote:
| The Death Star illustrates a problem with long term thinking:
| that goals become obsolete too fast. The thing in A New Hope was
| a gigantic waste of resources.
|
| Freeman Dyson famously commented that no project should be
| planned that takes longer than five years. Anything beyond that
| and the ground shifts out from under the foundations of the
| effort. One ends up with efforts that persist not because they
| are useful, but because they are established, because there is an
| entrenched constituency for the consumption of resources the
| project entails.
| gmuslera wrote:
| One problem with long term projects is advancement on technology
| that would had made a faster, sturdier, cleaner or whatever the
| original project if it started from zero using it.
|
| We send a mission to Alpha centauri that would take, lets say,
| 100 years to get there with the current propulsion technologies,
| and in 30 years we discover a new one that would take 20 years to
| get there. Or the same for big buildings (I don't know,
| arcologies) where new materials and techniques would turn
| obsolete how it started if it was long enough in the past.
|
| And not only new ways to improve, but different priorities or
| things that are out of our control that happen during its
| development. What if the land where the The Line in Saudi Arabla
| is being built gets permanently flooded because sea level rise or
| the entire region becomes unlivabable because frequent high
| enough temperatures in the region? Even social trends may turn
| something built for the future obsolete, there are plenty of
| ghost megacities in China.
|
| Both acceleration in technologies, and acceleration in changes
| outside what is the construction by itself (climate, society,
| etc) can turn into (potentially hamrful) waste decades of effort.
| blurrypepe wrote:
| I agree but just wanted to point out that The Line probably
| will never be built!
| alexpotato wrote:
| Seeing a lot of comments about human lifespan, projects shouldn't
| take more than 5 years etc
|
| The Florence Cathedral took over 140 years to build. There is
| clear precedent that humans can design, plan and then execute a
| project that spans multiple lifetimes.
|
| Even better, they didn't have a final design when they started:
|
| > While the main structure of the nave was completed by 1380, a
| solution to constructing a dome to top it was not determined
| until 1418. [0]
|
| This also reminds me of a personal story when visiting Florence:
|
| Florentine Tour Guide: "It took 140 years to build the Cathedral.
| How do you think they were able to do this given that it took so
| long?"
|
| Me: "I would think they needed a committee since that can last
| longer than a lifetime if the current members add in new people
| as the old members die"
|
| Tour Guide: "Yes! Exactly! So few people realize that is what
| happened."
|
| 0 -
| https://editions.covecollective.org/chronologies/constructio...
| badpun wrote:
| > Me: "I would think they needed a committee since that can
| last longer than a lifetime if the current members add in new
| people as the old members die"
|
| > Tour Guide: "Yes! Exactly! So few people realize that is what
| happened."
|
| This also implies that C++ will potentially live forever...
| fritzo wrote:
| That's a good example, but I wonder if people now have more
| options and are more career-mobile. 700 years ago masonry was a
| family profession. Now it would get brain drained by AI.
| TedHerman wrote:
| I once hosted a European researcher in my home (which is in
| flyover country America). He saw the utility poles and wiring
| stretching to houses in the neighborhood and remarked that his
| father had said a hallmark of undeveloped countries is that power
| lines are above ground. This was 20 years ago. Now, I do see that
| new neighborhoods have buried power and fiber. But that quality
| of fiber wasn't affordable decades ago. In retrospect, it might
| have been wise to delay putting infrastructure underground in
| urban settings because of high cost.
|
| Who knows what advances in material science, computing, energy
| and transport will bring in coming generations? Not to mention
| climate changes. Therefore it can be presumptuous to think that
| sticking to a long term plan is the best course. To the extent
| that a long term plan depends on the supporting environment of
| the plan staying the same, a plan might be judged foolish in
| retrospect.
| sotillan wrote:
| I think the problem the author describes is a result of short-
| term factors that are unlikely to affect humanity forever. Right
| now, technology and culture are progressing extremely quickly,
| relatively to any other point in human history. As a result, our
| understanding and our capabilities are radically different from
| generation to generation. Also, many problems remain unsolved and
| present serious, short-term challenges to our survival.
| Understandably therefore, our priorities frequently change,
| reacting both to changes in our capabilities and the most
| immediate threats.
|
| However, this situation will not continue indefinitely. An
| advanced, post-scarcity human civilisation will (hopefully) not
| face constant danger of war, disease and famine, Technology will
| still advance, but at a slower pace, and not in ways that
| significantly transform day-to-day lives. Human lifespan will
| probably also be significantly increased. The result will be a
| more homogenous, stable and static society. There will still be
| differences, bug huge disparities of economic and societal status
| will no longer exist.
|
| In this environment, having no longer to deal with a constant
| background of threats to their survival, it's likely that
| humanity will have the time and space to turn to far longer term
| projects. Indeed, such projects will probably be the only way for
| a person to imbue their life with a greater meaning in such a
| future society.
| Solvency wrote:
| This is heavily reducing the human experience. Even better
| technology and post-scarcity aren't magic solutions to all of
| the insanely weird evolutionary quirks/pitfalls/problems built
| into our monkey brains.
|
| Having a planet of hyper long-lived people who never have to
| work hard, who are constantly fed without concern, fully
| dependent on advanced technology sounds like the context of a
| YA novel. In reality, none of us are hardwired for that kind of
| lifestyle. Hell, we're not even hardwired for this one. We're
| just messily and sloppily trying to hang on as we stumble
| forward. Core human conflicts and oppositions and disputes and
| wars and existential meltdowns and all of the other things our
| emergent survival consciousness deal with aren't going
| anywhere.
| m463 wrote:
| "The wise man plants trees whose shade he will never enjoy"
| Timwi wrote:
| The article assumes, without evidence, that the human lifespan is
| forever constant and unalterable. In my opinion that shows a lack
| of long-term thinking... how ironic.
| kaycebasques wrote:
| _Remembrance Of Earth 's Past_ trilogy [1] is a good meditation
| on the problem of keeping humans aligned/focused across
| generations. (Trying not to spoil anything.)
|
| [1]
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remembrance_of_Earth%27s_Pas...
| webdoodle wrote:
| There are so many real life projects that have been abandoned
| part-way-through. One of the biggest that still irritates me is
| the Superconducting Super Collider they were building in Texas.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_Super_Collider
| syngrog66 wrote:
| "long term oriented thinking" is an emphasis of the education
| software I've been building. If anyone wants to encourage or
| accel its dev contact me and toss cash at me/us
| DennisL123 wrote:
| > I am asking myself, what would I need to hear and get from a
| past generation to convince me to complete a project they began?
|
| ,,It's emitting lethal doses of radiation for the next 100k
| years."
| wonderwonder wrote:
| Imagine being born and dying on a generation ship and when your
| grand children reach the destination they find a thriving society
| established a 100 years before by the children of the people that
| launched your parents. They just created a new much faster means
| of travel in the mean time while your ancestors were condemned to
| a life on a ship with nothing to do but live, breed and die.
| Duologic wrote:
| This reminds me of the Danish Navy oak:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visings%C3%B6#History
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I worked for a Japanese corporation that had a ten-year planning
| window.
|
| The farther out, the more abstract and fuzzy, but they had a
| long-term view.
|
| Also, they kept employees _forever_.
|
| The app I just released (for a small nonprofit -I no longer work
| for that company) was three years in the making. I also was the
| initial author of an infrastructure service that is doing quite
| well, but it took ten years to get there.
| r14c wrote:
| I have trouble squaring "people can't do long term planning" and
| the existence of megalithic structures like the pyramids in Egypt
| and the Americas or even the Great Wall of China. All of which
| took generations to build. Especially calling that lack of long-
| term planning/executing ability "human nature".
|
| I have to wonder if there's something about the current material
| conditions that orients us towards short term thinking?
| zokier wrote:
| Wikipedia says that Great Pyramid of Giza took 27 years to
| build. Long time, but I wouldn't call it generations. Smaller
| pyramids presumably were faster to build.
|
| Cathedrals might be more typical example of centuries long
| projects, although for me its not clear how expansions and
| renowations are delineated from initial construction
| patrickmay wrote:
| "There's an ethical dilemma around transmitting a mission into
| the far future. We don't necessarily want to burden a future
| generation with obligations they had no choice in; we don't want
| to rob them of their free will to choose their own destinations."
|
| This is why government deficits and long term debt are evil
| (regardless of one's political views). Spending money today that
| must be paid back by people not yet born is, at the very least, a
| dick move.
| zokier wrote:
| That only holds if you think that goverment debt will ever be
| paid off in full. With current economics, that seems unlikely.
| yawboakye wrote:
| because they haven't been mentioned: stewart brand's book, the
| clock of the long now[0] and the long now foundation[1] tackle
| the same problem. excellent exposition that doesn't necessarily
| transmit despair amidst the shortening attention span. i think
| the thrust of the message is towards the end of the book where he
| talks about infinite games, and the finite games that can be
| played interim. it appears we need to think like game designers,
| after all.
|
| [0]: https://longnow.org/store/clock-long-now-time-and-
| responsibi...
|
| [1]: https://longnow.org/
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