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The scarcity of the long term

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Re: The scarcity of the long term

#21

Post by admp »

dobin wrote: post #6

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.

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.”

Re: The scarcity of the long term

#22

Post by AndrewKemendo »

denton-scratch wrote: post #15

> 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 grandchildre…

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.

Re: The scarcity of the long term

#23

Post by lukas099 »

denton-scratch wrote: post #15

> 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 grandchildre…

> the Roman Empire lasted about 200 years

I thought it lasted much longer than that in the East?

Re: The scarcity of the long term

#24

Post by lukas099 »

roenxi wrote: post #3

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.…

Seems like survivorship bias. A lot of projects fizzle out. Vietnam War comes to mind.

Re: The scarcity of the long term

#25

Post by lukas099 »

js8 wrote: post #14
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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” hen…

> 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.

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 (?)

Re: The scarcity of the long term

#26

Post by denton-scratch »

lukas099 wrote: post #23
denton-scratch wrote: post #15

> 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 grandchildre…

> the Roman Empire lasted about 200 years I thought it lasted much longer than that in the East?

I guess about 500 years, if you include Byzantium? But Byzantium was a very different creature from Rome.

Re: The scarcity of the long term

#27

Post by lukas099 »

keep320909 wrote: post #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…

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.

Re: The scarcity of the long term

#28

Post by XorNot »

scotty79 wrote: post #17

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.

> That war and militarization is not such a good idea.

These are really not two sides of the same coin.

Re: The scarcity of the long term

#29

Post by lukas099 »

scotty79 wrote: post #17

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.

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.

Re: The scarcity of the long term

#30

Post by [deleted] »

denton-scratch wrote: post #15

> 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 grandchildre…

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