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One of the ideas I like to explore when presented with the idea of immortality are the effects of a longer lifespan on our decisions. To me, our lives aren't lo
by dougvk 15y ago
One of the ideas I like to explore when presented with the idea of immortality are the effects of a longer lifespan on our decisions. To me, our lives aren't long enough to really live with the effects of our actions. My optimism makes me think, "If we could extend our lifespan by, say, one hundred years, then people will grub much less for near-term pleasure and focus much longer term" (thus we would start investing more in programs which might guarantee our standard of living instead of leaving it to the next generation).
I just wanted to throw this thought at the HN community -- let us know your thoughts!
- nialo 15y agoThis would eventually get to be true, but it would probably take a stupidly long time: it won't happen until people have actually seen the long term results of things multiple times. Also, short-term thinking is fairly hardwired into humans. That won't go away until it somehow stops people from getting laid, which is amazingly unlikely and would certainly require more than indefinite lifespan.