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?<p>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.<p>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.
> The only real scarcity would be of a long attention span.<p>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 <i>some</i> 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.<p>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.<p>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".
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.<p>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.<p>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.
Seeing a lot of comments about human lifespan, projects shouldn't take more than 5 years etc<p>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.<p>Even better, they didn't have a final design when they started:<p>> 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]<p>This also reminds me of a personal story when visiting Florence:<p>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?"<p>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"<p>Tour Guide: "Yes! Exactly! So few people realize that is what happened."<p>0 - <a href="https://editions.covecollective.org/chronologies/construction-florence-cathedral" rel="nofollow">https://editions.covecollective.org/chronologies/constructio...</a>
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.<p>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.
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.<p>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.<p>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.
"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."<p>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.
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.
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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.
I worked for a Japanese corporation that had a ten-year planning window.<p>The farther out, the more abstract and fuzzy, but they had a long-term view.<p>Also, they kept employees <i>forever</i>.<p>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.
<i>Remembrance Of Earth's Past</i> trilogy [1] is a good meditation on the problem of keeping humans aligned/focused across generations. (Trying not to spoil anything.)<p>[1] <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remembrance_of_Earth%27s_Past" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remembrance_of_Earth%27s_Pas...</a>
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.
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.<p>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.
> 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?<p>„It‘s emitting lethal doses of radiation for the next 100k years.“
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".<p>I have to wonder if there's something about the current material conditions that orients us towards short term thinking?
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.
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.
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.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_Super_Collider" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_Super_Collider</a>
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.<p>[0]: <a href="https://longnow.org/store/clock-long-now-time-and-responsibility-stewart-brand/" rel="nofollow">https://longnow.org/store/clock-long-now-time-and-responsibi...</a><p>[1]: <a href="https://longnow.org/" rel="nofollow">https://longnow.org/</a>
World's oldest company, a Japanese temple builder, founded in 578 AD, acquired in 2006:<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kong%C5%8D_Gumi" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kong%C5%8D_Gumi</a><p>Those VCs were waiting a long time.
> The chief hurdle in constructing a Death Star is not the energy, materials, or even knowledge needed.<p>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.<p>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!
This reminds me of the Danish Navy oak: <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visings%C3%B6#History" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visings%C3%B6#History</a>
"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
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.<p>What is desirable now are things like a fidget spinner, that makes some quick cash, and gets forgotten soon after.
> 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?<p>For me a language, culture, sexual arousal.