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Comment by az09mugen | Hacker News Reader

I just cross the fingers to not witness a Kessler syndrome : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome

Kessler cascades as depicted in Gravity aren’t really possible [1]. Instead, a Kessler cascade would proceed linearly, within a tight orbit, and over the course of decades if not centuries. In LEO, the timeline for a Kessler cascade is on the order of natural decay times.

[1] https://aerospaceamerica.aiaa.org/features/understanding-the...

You'll be long dead before it matters.

It's comments like these that sadden me. It's this mindset that make me pessimistic about the long-term viability of humanity as I think it is shared among many people. When we (individuals/groups/society) don't plan far ahead (even for the loosest sense/meaning of the word "plan"), that will tend to lead to short-term benefits with long-term detriments. That even applies even for things that can occur past our lifespan. In my opinion, we should strive to benefit/help our decedents. Climate change is the most obvious case of this, but it applies to other cases like solar flares on the scale of the Carrington event or greater or like Kessler syndrome here (both perhaps on the order of hundreds of years). If Kessler syndrome is a legitimate concern to be a problem in the not crazy distant future, we shouldn't dismiss it outright just because the issue is unlikely to be a problem within our lifetime.

There's no incentive to do this, it's politically untenable to plan that far ahead. The beauty of humanity is we're always changing and evolving because we only do things within the scope of our lifetime.

The curse of humanity is having a brain that lets us think too hard about what we want to be rather than acknowledging what we are which is a bunch of mortal animals with finite time spans that like to fuck, make babies, raise families and occasionally we come together and do shit together in the form of work so we can further those three other priorities.

What do you make of the million buildings, devices, ideas and techniques left to us by those that came before?

We better make double-sure than any leftover value past your life is purely meted out through hereditary lines and couldn't possibly benefit any but a tiny minority of people. Like, if you had three houses and two kids at death, there ain't no way some poor fool is getting that leftover house for free!

> The beauty of humanity is we're always changing and evolving because we only do things within the scope of our lifetime.

This is just simply not true. For thousands of years, humans have done things that are meant to endure beyond our lifetimes - from building monuments like the the pyramids to conducting scientific research to creating art. Our ability to look beyond the here and now is actually one of the defining characteristics of humanity.

Legislation would certainly require political will, which we don't have now for tackling anything on such a time scale. To tackle the problem through laws and government enforcement, it would have to become politically tenable at some point, but how would we go from where we are now to something that is closer to this? It's difficult to say with any confidence. But I do know politicians are still human, influenced by their biases and beliefs inherited through biology and life experiences. If our future politicians are to grow up in an environment in which a larger (than today) proportion of people care about problems on a longer time scale, they are more likely to care as well. Consequently, a larger proportion of individuals getting into politics will care about these types of problems, increasing the likelihood of them being addressed.

In parallel but as a separate point, fewer people will be willing to use products or services provided by organizations that they believe are doing wrong or harm by contributing to such problems, thus making it less profitable within capitalism. We already see this to some degree today (Harry Potter comes to mind). Even if the reduction in customers and profit is small, it would decrease compounding and ever so slightly disincentivize the company from making such a pursuit.

It's impressive how adaptive humans are, I must admit. We are quite good at tackling problems we see right in front of us if we set our minds to it. But that doesn't mean we should dismiss problems that are not causing an issue right here and now. We shouldn't wait until it becomes an actual problem because there could be irreversible consequences (or rather, we cannot reverse on reasonable timescale).

Move fast and break things.

Try to be dead before you have to pay for it.

The "hacker ethic" has been redefined.

That's what they thought in the 70s when they discovered climate change. Look where we are now. Is basic concern for others a sin in our current world?

We're living out the consequences of a system where the Nash equilibrium is everyone maximizing their individual benefit at the expense of all else. And that extends to being an unapologetic jerk--as long as that face looks like a stepping stone, climb on. And screw future people and animals.

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