OK, Robin Hansen needs the introduction.
So let's begin.
So you've written a few essays on the long view,
how there's no significant players that are optimizing for it.
But isn't the most obvious explanation for that, that optimizing for the long term is ineffectual,
given how unpredictable the future is, or even counterproductive,
given that you might be ignoring present circumstances?
Well, if it's unpredictable, then optimizing should take that into account.
But it does look like people are deviating from what they would do optimally trying to take the long term into account and take into account the actual amount of uncertainty.
So for example, there's something called discount rates in economics and interest rates.
If you have the long view, you would take a very low discount rate.
That is you would think the future was just as important,
although with uncertainty that might make it hard to make some other choices.
But for example, resources are just generally useful.
So if you just invested in collecting resources,
you don't have to know exactly what's going to happen in the future to know that resources are going to be pretty useful,
whatever happens.
And so if you are discounting the future and not being interested in collecting resources,
That's a pretty clear indication that you're not so interested in the long-term future relative to other people who might.
But if it's true that thinking about the long-term future is useful,