I kind of try to just take things one day at a time.
Sure, things like Planet X smashing into the South Pacific or the eventual evaporation of the Universe into X-Rays is disconcerting and all. But that’s all a bit too abstract for me to actually care about. Not that I can do anything about it anyway.
They could have addressed two fundamental questions: is banning slavery from the territories an illegal denial of right of property in slaves; and is secession rebellion or does the federal government have to respect a state’s withdrawal from the union? Answering the first question would have either satisfied the slavery faction or at least forced them to shut up; and answering the second would either have prevented a civil war altogether or made it clear that secession wouldn’t happen without a fight. It might have forced a constitutional solution to the dispute rather than extra-constitutional action by both factions.
As for how far into the future I care, I theoretically care about a lot of things but practically I’m limited to what I can do anything about. So pretty much by the end of the 21st century, posterity will be on its own.
Yes, absolutely. On first draft I was going to mention that.
If there’s anything that would make me hesitate, it would be truly convincing myself that that future event will happen. As a human, “seeing is believing”.
The ideal example in this context, is that I can see the impending doom, like a Majora’s Mask moon, even though I know it won’t affect me.
In this situation, hells yeah I’d give my life to save the world, let alone donate a portion of my wealth.
While I’m aware that not everyone thinks like this, I’m surprised that you would be incredulous that some people do.
The entire notion of the “selfish gene” and the gene-centric approach is that while selective pressures act on the organism, the gene and the phenotypes it develops “act” to propagate itself regardless of benefit to the host organism. Hence altruistic or even self-destructive behavior on the host which may limit its reproductive opportunities can still benefit the gene, even in competition with other genes within a species.
But there are certain things we can do with reasonable effort to avert some catastrophes, and in the long term, to survive major cataclysms. But those are beyond the ability of a single individual or even a focused group; they require a coordinated effort by a major industrial power or even humanity as a whole, and we are not at all good in thinking in those terms, which is unfortunate because we are nowhere as resilient on a species level as bacteria or archaea, even though they haven’t even figured out how to make smartphones that can transmit ‘selfies’ to one another.
Stranger
In all seriousness - around 10 000 years.
I’m a geologist by training - anything sooner than that is the same as “right now” as far as me worrying about the effects.
You have a future in the nuclear waste disposal industry. 
In contrast, I’m a biologist who studies predator/prey interactions. If it’s not hiding behind the next rock, it’s not on my radar. 
Thanks for the clarification on the selfish gene. So would giving up cheap energy today for the sake of a better tomorrow for the race in general and my descendants in particular be a valid example of the selfish gene concept?
I think the notion of being a good steward of nature has been around for a while hasn’t it?
Isn’t conservation one of those things where every little bit helps? or are you saying that my efforts are so small and the effects so diffused that I cannot reasonably trace my efforts to any benefit that affect my progeny?
I think it would depend on the extent to which we can determine what the consequences of our actions will be as a function of time. The obvious candidate for long term concern is global warming. But even in this case I am depressingly pessimistic in terms of how much our actions today will influence to final outcome (not that we shouldn’t try). Sure we can work hard and cut down emissions by say 1/3, that just means that i takes us 150 years to destroy the environment instead of 100 years. Even if we massively expand alternative energy and drop emissions down to zero, fossil fuels are still going to be waiting for use under the surface and at some point in the next couple of centuries someone is going to change their mind and think its a good idea to dig it up and burn it. Here in the US we can’t keep on the same program for even 8 years before a new administration comes along and reverses everything. How are we going to keep it up for hundreds/thousands of years.
This is also why I am skeptical about the so called “long now” movement. Sure it sounds great to build a clock that will tell the time for 10,000 years, but chances are, at year 553, Kanubi Yang, will decide that this location is the perfect place to build a highly profitable pleasure drome and will dismantle the whole thing auctioning off bits to wealthy collectors, or if it survives that, at year 1572 the Zolfanist cult who views artifacts of the “before time” as abominations sublimates the entire area and everything in it for the glory of Zoft.
Worrying about things that far in the future makes as much sense as the Mayans worrying about how we would deal with the effects of the Y5126 bug in their calendar.
No. “Selfish” genes don’t actually have any volition or elect to make altruistic or selfish decisions for future benefit, and in fact the metaphor of “selfishness” is really an expression of statistical benefit of selective pressures working in preference to genes which are able to result in their own propagation in a fashion seemingly contradictory to the organism that carries them. It has nothing to do with cognitive decisions to be selfish or altruistic; it’s just an post hoc explanation for competition at an unconscious, stochastically determined level by units of inheritance even though evolution acts at the level of the whole organism (or its extended phenotypes, if you believe in that sort of thing).
And it should be noted that the gene-centric hypothesis for selection is far from universally accepted. There are plenty of competing hypotheses for other mechanisms at the kin, group, and even species level for why individual carriers will act against their own best interests, and of course the now appreciated lateral genetic transfer of material and endosymbiotic theory which, while not contravening Darwin’s basic principle of “descent with modification” by external selective pressures, certainly makes the understanding of evolutionary pressures far more complicated than simple predator-prey and growth vs. resource limit analyses would suggest.
“…giving up cheap energy today for the sake of a better tomorrow for the race in general and my descendants…” isn’t really any kind of evolutionary principle; making deliberate and informed choices based upon a projection of future impact is an aspect of cognition or the limitations thereof. Natural selection (and any associated mechanisms, including lateral genetic transfer) aren’t based on any foresight or expectation of the future; they’re just largely random changes in which the best adapted to any future environment happen to proliferate with widest.
Stranger
Okay, first of all, someone else has mentioned it but I’ll reaffirm as an Historian, that the folks who set up our Constitution DID purposely think into the future. They DID try to deal with the impending Civil War, which was clear WOULD happen, in a number of ways in the Constitution. All of them failed. Also, they purposely made the Constitution malleable, so as to allow future generations to make their own minds up on solutions, without having to flush the whole thing.
That said, and looking at just the bolded sentence question (which seems to be the crux of this thread)…
“could” and “should” are entirely unrelated things, so they ought not to be used together like this. “Could” refers to what is actually possible, while “should” is a religious or moral question unrelated to what is or isn’t possible.
Answering each anyway:
people CAN concern themselves as far into the future as they like. There’s no limit. But there are far too many variables in the way of human outlooks on life, to bother trying to decide how far anyone should look ahead. Some people are so now-oriented, they will (and have) killed themselves inadvertently while focused on an immediate thrill that they actively understood was potentially lethal. Some become so transfixed by the more dire predictions of the distant future, that they lose the will or desire to live at all right now. And then there are the people who simultaneously look into the future, and purposely decide NOT to do anything themselves to make things better then, on the grounds that preventing the suffering of their offspring, will result in said offspring losing the toughness they think they perceive in themselves.
The “should” part of the question is mostly religious. Again, some people will look ahead and work for a better tomorrow because they believe some higher authority will reward them for doing so; at the same time, people who believe in the exact same higher authority, will REFUSE to act to prevent futures they are certain will result, because THEY are of the opinion that life is all about proving their metal to said authority, and therefore the worse the challenges of the future are, the more opportunities to struggle and prove themselves will be offered to their progeny.
I suppose if you limited the exact subject under your study, you could probably work out a fairly specific time frame, depending on how well you actually understand the concerns and risks. That’s what insurance companies do, what gamblers do, and what a lot of entrepreneurs in business do most of the time. But unless you DO narrow your focus to a specific area of concern, I would say there is no rational answer to the question.
JMO, obviously.
This question is like the question typically asked in job interview, “What do you plan to be doing in 5 years”. Are you going to answer that you hope to be in a lower middle management position shuffling paperwork between departments managing similar drone like people? Even if you say CEO of Acme corp, we know it is infinitely more likely that you’ll be doing the former rather than the latter.
Better you’ll approach your job with enthusiasm, attempting to learn not only your job but also how it fits within the organization and affects others and how you can aid them and then do it. You will evaluate as you work within the company if it recognizes your effort and rewards you appropriately, or if not, then you will move on. Take the approach that you do the best you can today, within reason, and the future will take care of itself.
This applies to anything. You know that CO2 causes global warming, so take the bus to work rather than drive your SUV with no passengers, etc.
The reasonable approach is to assume that someone will eventually create a soy version of bacon that might actually taste like bacon (unfortunately given the results so far on vegetarian ‘meat’ products, I can assume two things. One, this will take hundreds of years to accomplish and two, vegetarians don’t have taste buds.)
I’m 30 and I would more than 20 years from now does not matter to me right now.
If humans “conquer” death and physical/mental decline, that could be such a fundamental change for society and the human psyche, that my concepts of empathy would be probably be obsolete.
Disregarding that, like others, I find the heat death of the universe a troubling concept. And based on my reading choices, I seem to have some interest in humans traveling to other solar systems – which might be centuries away.
Since the thread has kind of tilted towards time travel
I would try to refrain from making any change.
The seemingly small change i might be tempted to make might have an entirely horrific outcome.
Even preventing a single death may unforeseeably alter the path of events, possibly even causing an earlier self made doomsday event.
To borrow from the wisdom Gandalf