long-term thinking makes people unhappy because it almost necessarily means they’re thinking about big problems

the only future thing you can be fairly sure about is that the big problems of today won’t go away miraculously and will last as long as you expect, probably longer

almost every problem people were worried about in the 80s when I was first taught to worry professionally like an adult is still there and has gotten worse exactly as predicted

- overpopulation
- water scarcity
- global warming

only exception is ozone hole which may come back

people do “happy” long-term thinking by building positive potential in the form of very general capabilities, like the internet

downside is general potentialities never solve specific big problems, merely reshape them

sometimes the reshaping makes them harder, sometimes easier

nuclear proliferation is still a problem, just a bigger, more chaotic one https://twitter.com/bpettichord/status/1319820994870169601

the leap of faith people make about working in generic capabilities rather than solutions to real problems (notice I *didn’t* scare-quote real) is that on average they’ll reshape more problems to be easier than harder, and so faster than more problems get added to the stack

so if in 1980 there were 10 level 4 problems the hope is a general capability will bump 7 of them down to level 3 and bump 3 of them up to level 5

problem load reduction: 4*10-3*7-3*5=40-21-15=4

but then another level 4 problem might have been added in the meantime

update it’s back

I hadn’t checked lately https://twitter.com/raqwinchester/status/1319826561944739840

roslingism isn’t wrong, it’s just misconstrued, it shows that problems are in fact being reshaped and mitigated due to new potentialities, so indeterminate optimism is warranted

the problem is rolling the dice may not solve problem in the priority order we think is necessary https://twitter.com/vr00n/status/1319822543944110080

roslingism is popular with free market types because it works well with markets

everything will be fixed once the price is right

the problem is the price and time may not be right at the same time

the market is just 1 mechanism in play, possibly the only one, but that doesn’t mean it’s necessary or sufficient for any given problem to get solved right at the right time, so that’s where i part ways with market fetishists who won’t entertain the possibility of alt mechanisms

other mechanisms, including state action and nonprofit action also reshape problems in unexpected ways, but it’s harder to make the leap of faith that on balance they’ll have a net positive effect

that doesn’t mean they’re off the table, just more subject to hostile scrutiny

the big problem with state and nonprofit mechanisms is that their fans won’t admit that they have as much or worse indeterminacy and externalities built into their operation

there is an illusion of determinate agency around them

the stronger the illusion, the worse the effects

the older I get, the less of a stake I feel in big problems because the likelier it is they’ll stay stable/slowly degrading in my lifetime, and the easier it is to focus on my own narrower interests, and at most concern myself with general potentialities over specific mechanisms

one way I like to reduce this to individual mediocre human scale is to ask what’s at the intersection of effectiveness and non-misery at every life-stage?

unlike Chosen Ones™ mediocre humans can’t be effective while miserable (though they needn’t be actually happy)

more to the point why bother?

non-misery gives mediocre people something to fight to protect, giving them a reason to be part of the solution rather than the problem, and without coercion

Chosen Ones™ are different for whatever reason

maybe they are geniuses, or were bullied as kids, it doesn’t matter...

you can model them as psychohistorical mules, random anomalous events that seed positive or negative potentialities that reshape the Big Problems Stack™

mediocre people I think should simply try to keep personal misery at bay, but in a broad-minded way, and differently at every life stage, reflecting the stakes of every stage, because if you’re miserable and not a Chosen One™ you’re almost certainly part of the problem

0-18 your best bet is probably skills development

19-35 probably long-term thinking because you have the positivity of youth to overcome the the negativity burden

36-50 probably support/catalyze positive potentials that are developing in your lifetime

50+... ask me after 2024.

turning 46 in a few weeks, definitely on the leeward slope of life in my head, almost certainly more life behind me than in front of me

neither a part of the problem nor part of the solution to anything, but hopefully a net non-negative presence in the world

to bring it back around, I can’t really think in time horizons any more, short or long, but I do think in terms of temporal textures like lucky/unlucky timelines, and in terms of transforming bad textures into good ones, or poisonous moods into non-poisonous ones

maybe mood alchemy is the capability that interests me

Gen X appears 10 years younger than it is because our prime decade fell through the cracks between the death of old media and the rise of social media. 1995-2005, the missing life decade. https://twitter.com/skyler__adams/status/1319845329550725120?s=21

We are the undocumented digital migrants

Though I totally coasted through that decade doing absolutely nothing worthwhile so it’s fair to edit it out