This is very very stupid. I mean it: stupid. The act of planning is not about the future, it’s about the present. I haven’t experienced the future yet, so it h

This is very very stupid. I mean it: stupid. The act of planning is not about the future, it’s about the present. I haven’t experienced the future yet, so it has no value to me. But a chained sequence of events that have a certain likelihood of occurring does have value to me now in the form of the expectation (which I experience today) of the outcome. The author also presumes no one can value states of the world except insofar as they are directly, materially experiencing that state of the world, but this is wrong. For example, I’ve never visited Australia, but I would value a state of the world where Australian cryptography laws and email surveillance laws are reformed. I get value just from the concept of that state of the world. I suppose it’s similar to getting value from consuming a fictional work of art - I experience the concept of it, but it doesn’t materially exist in my presence. I don’t benefit from it (say, like an Australian citizen would), but I benefit from the concept of it and associated probabilities of the world changing to a certain state. So if I am on my death bed with a special button laid out in front of me, which if pressed will automatically cause all Australian politicians’ pants to fall down until they vote to reform cryptography laws, and I believe there’s high probability the button would work and the embarrassment would work, then my impending death should not make me indifferent to pressing the button. With those precious few moments of life, I am experiencing something materially of value (a chained sequence of cause & effect with high probability to lead to a state of the world I value). The world I am in contains aspects of value I can experience that are functions of sequences of events leading to worlds I am not in. There’s nothing irrational, non-utilitarian or inconsistent about this.