We have delusional "long-termism" bros who use the far future 1000 years or more away to justify anything and almost no one with power willing to think seriously about the next 50 to 150 years.
The "soon-termism" our children will see.
They think of the next 3 months or nothing at all.
@futurebird I see this sort of science-fictional "long-termism" as just a simple "no u" response to people complaining that hypercapitalist policy is eating our seed corn. "It is YOU who sees only the short-term; I care about humanity in the year 10,000!"
Sometimes they claim that a technological Singularity out of 1990s science fiction is coming soon and will sweep away the world we know, so it's actually not so long-term. Rapture of the Nerds.
I remember Glenn "Instapundit" Reynolds pushing such ideas back in the 2000s. No, we don't need to limit carbon emissions, we need to go full throttle on production to hasten the Singularity that will fix everything with nanotechnology and the wisdom of superintelligent machines. Sure, Jan.
@mattmcirvin @futurebird Which is rich coming from an industry that is now built around juicing the next quarter's results regardless of what it does to the viability of life on Earth.
I think Clarke's dictum that "sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" is a cool hook for science-fiction writers but has caused harm when people actually try to use it as a basis for planning. No, you shouldn't bet on magic saving you from basic physical constraints.
dangerous idiots with a lot of power and money
more nihilistic than the original nihilism
@mattmcirvin @futurebird
looking back on it all, I feel like it was always the case that most of the tech CEOs had a deep-seated ideological hatred of environmentalists, but felt they could use the potential environmental benefits of some technologies to get close enough to more easily ruin environmentalist goals. This is most vividly demonstrated by elon musk, but I think he's unusual only in that the news industry is finally starting to talk about what a horror he's been all along.
They also tend to react badly to anyone who points out that even within their supposed utilitarianism moral calculus; they do the math wrong.
But the claimed ideology was always a pretext for the bigotry and theft.
@futurebird
1000 years!
Ba!
Try Billions, Tech Bros.
And the Judgement of The Final Human Species about this era of unending suffering