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The scarcity of the long term

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Re: The scarcity of the long term

#81

Post by denton-scratch »

samatman wrote: post #69
denton-scratch wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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 sharp…

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.

Re: The scarcity of the long term

#82

Post by lainga »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #73
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…

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.

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 (Ῥωμαῖοι Rhomaioi)"

Re: The scarcity of the long term

#83

Post by wonderwonder »

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.

Re: The scarcity of the long term

#84

Post by 082349872349872 »

denton-scratch wrote: post #49
lloeki wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

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!

Re: The scarcity of the long term

#86

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

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.

Re: The scarcity of the long term

#88

Post by r14c »

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?

Re: The scarcity of the long term

#89

Post by patrickmay »

"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.

Re: The scarcity of the long term

#90

Post by yawboakye »

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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