The scarcity of the long term
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Re: The scarcity of the long term
#2Scarcity 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.
Re: The scarcity of the long term
#3This 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.
Re: The scarcity of the long term
#4> 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!
Re: The scarcity of the long term
#5This 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.…
Doesn't this really only hold true if you handwave away the emergence of new denominations within those religions over time?
Re: The scarcity of the long term
#6Many 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.
Re: The scarcity of the long term
#7This 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.…
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
Re: The scarcity of the long term
#8This 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.…
Doesn't this really only hold true if you handwave away the emergence of new denominations within those religions over time?
Not really, many old denominations have persisted for a very long time. Catholic and Orthodox churches, for example.
Re: The scarcity of the long term
#9[deleted]
Re: The scarcity of the long term
#10Scarcity 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 i…
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".