Give Sports a Chance var siteUrl = 'https://www.cold-takes.com'; var localTheme = localStorage.getItem('dawn\_theme'); switch (localTheme) { case 'dark': document.documentElement.classList.add('theme-dark'); break; case 'light': document.documentElement.classList.add('theme-light'); break; default: break; } { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "Article", "publisher": { "@type": "Organization", "name": "Cold Takes", "url": "https://www.cold-takes.com/", "logo": { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://www.cold-takes.com/favicon.ico", "width": 48, "height": 48 } }, "author": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Holden Karnofsky", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://www.cold-takes.com/content/images/2021/07/HK-headshot-current---compressed-1.jpg", "width": 1600, "height": 1067 }, "url": "https://www.cold-takes.com/author/holden/", "sameAs": [ "https://www.cold-takes.com/about/" ] }, "headline": "Give Sports a Chance", "url": "https://www.cold-takes.com/give-sports-a-chance/", "datePublished": "2021-08-11T17:45:07.000Z", "dateModified": "2021-10-01T22:04:59.000Z", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://www.cold-takes.com/content/images/2021/08/dear-basketball.jpg", "width": 840, "height": 472 }, "keywords": "sports", "description": " [https://www.cold-takes.com/roadmap-for-the-most-important-century-series/]

Around now, the Most Important Century
[https://www.cold-takes.com/roadmap-for-the-most-important-century-series/]
series is going to be getting a bit dryer, so I'm going to try making some of
the other posts a bit lighter. Specifically, I'm going to try something I call
"Cold Links": links that I like a lot, that are so old you can't believe I'm
posting them now. 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} } //Implement light/dark theme if(existingTheme == "dark") { ctdark(); } else if(existingTheme == 'light') { ctlight(); } window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; function gtag(){dataLayer.push(arguments);} gtag('js', new Date()); gtag('config', 'G-TZK0WDB1DH'); var clicky\_site\_ids = clicky\_site\_ids || []; clicky\_site\_ids.push(101323562); ![Clicky](//in.getclicky.com/101323562ns.gif) :root {--ghost-accent-color: #888888;} [Cold Takes](https://www.cold-takes.com) [About (+highlights)](https://www.cold-takes.com/about/) [Most Important Century](https://www.cold-takes.com/most-important-century/) [About (+highlights)](https://www.cold-takes.com/about/) [Most Important Century](https://www.cold-takes.com/most-important-century/) [Subscribe (free)](#subscribe) [Subscribe (free)](#subscribe) [Subscribe (free)](#subscribe) [Cold Takes](https://www.cold-takes.com) - Give Sports a Chance By [Holden Karnofsky](https://www.cold-takes.com/about/ "Holden Karnofsky") Aug 11, 2021 4 min read [sports](/tag/sports/) Give Sports a Chance ==================== ![Give Sports a Chance](/content/images/size/w960/2021/08/dear-basketball.jpg) [![](https://www.cold-takes.com/content/images/2021/08/mic-diagram---sports-2.png)](https://www.cold-takes.com/roadmap-for-the-most-important-century-series/) Around now, the [Most Important Century](https://www.cold-takes.com/roadmap-for-the-most-important-century-series/) series is going to be getting a bit dryer, so I'm going to try making some of the other posts a bit lighter. Specifically, I'm going to try something I call **"Cold Links":** links that I like a lot, that are so old you can't believe I'm posting them now. I think this is a more useful/enjoyable service than it might sound like: it's fun to get collections of links on a theme that are more memorable than "best of the week," and even if you've seen some before, you might enjoy seeing them again. If you end up hating this, [let me know](https://www.guidedtrack.com/programs/4kal2ue/run?posttitle=Give%20Sports%20a%20Chance). Now: a lot of the links I post here will be about sports. "Boooo I hate sportsball!" you're probably thinking, if you're the kind of person I imagine reading this blog. But try to keep an open mind. I'm here to filter out all the "My team won, be excited for me!" and "Isn't this player incredible, check out [stats that are basically the same stats all top players have]" and "Player X isn't just an athlete, they're a LEADER [this roughly just means their team is good]" and "Player Y might be talented, but they never come through when it counts [this roughly just means their team isn't good]," and get you the links that are truly interesting, inspiring or just amazing. For someone who doesn't care about who wins, what do sports have to offer? High on my list is **getting to closely observe people being incredibly (like world-outlier-level) intense about something.** I am generally somewhat obsessed with obsession (I think it is a key ingredient in almost every case of someone accomplishing something remarkable). And with sports, you can easily identify which players are in the top-5 in the world at the incredibly competitive things they do; you can safely assume that their level of obsession and competitiveness is beyond what you'll ever be able to wrap your head around; and you can see them in action. A few basketball links that illustrate this:* Kobe Bryant's ["Dear Basketball" poem](https://www.theplayerstribune.com/articles/dear-basketball) that he put out when he retired in 2015. Very short and seriously moving. I wish I felt about any activity the way he feels about basketball. This was turned into an [animated short that won an Oscar](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUcdx4W8Xes&ab;_channel=NikosElite) (but I'd recommend just reading the poem). * LeBron James in a [rare informative interview](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgJE-YKP2Vo&t;=145s&ab;_channel=ESPN), claiming that he watches "all the games ... at the same time," rattling off 5-6 straight plays from one of them from memory, and glaring beautifully as he says "I don't watch basketball for entertainment." * The memory thing is real: here's [Stephen Curry succeeding at a game](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7y0zejRZXXk&ab;_channel=DavidTedla) where they show him clips from basketball games he played in (sometimes years ago) and ask him what happened next. * There are a lot of stories about how competitive Michael Jordan was; my favorite one is just his [Hall of Fame acceptance speech](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLzBMGXfK4c&ab;_channel=OfficialHoophall). (For those of you who don't follow sports, just think of Michael Jordan as "if Jesus were also The Beatles.") At a time when anyone else would be happy, peaceful and grateful, MJ is still settling old scores and smarting under every imagined insult from decades ago. Highlights include 6:20 (where he reveals that he's invited the person who was picked over him to make the team in high school, to reinforce that this was a mistake); 12:00 (where he criticizes his general manager for saying "organizations win championships," as opposed to players); 14:40 (where he thanks a group of other players for "freezing him out" during his rookie season and getting him angry and motivated, then admits that the "freeze-out" may have been a rumor); and 15:35 (an extended "Thank you" to Pat Riley for ... basically being a jerk?). That's the most competitive person in the world right there, and maybe the one person on earth who's above not being petty. What else is good about sports: * I think it's fun when people care so deeply about something so intrinsically meaningless. It means we can enjoy their emotional journeys without all the baggage of whether we're endorsing something "good" or "bad." (My wife also loves this about sports - her thing is watching [Last Chance U](https://www.netflix.com/title/80091742) while crying her eyes out.) My next sports post will be a [collection of "heartwarming" links and stories](https://www.cold-takes.com/cold-links-heartwarming-sports-stuff/). \- There's a lot of sports analysis, and I kind of think sports is to social science what the laboratory is to natural sciences. Sports statistics have high sample sizes, stable environments and are exhaustively captured on video, so it's often possible to actually figure out what's going on. It's therefore unusually easy to form your own judgment about whether someone's analysis is good or bad, and that can have lessons for what patterns to look for on other topics. (My view: academic analysis of sports is often almost unbelievably bad, as you can see from some of the [Phil Birnbaum eviscerations](https://www.cold-takes.com/phil-birnbaums-regression-analysis/), whereas average sportswriting and TV commentating is worse than language can convey. Nerdy but non-academic sports analysis websites like [Cleaning the Glass](https://cleaningtheglass.com/), [Football Outsiders](https://www.footballoutsiders.com/) and [FiveThirtyEight](https://fivethirtyeight.com/) are good.) I'll leave you with this [absurd touchdown run](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnTzBTrGlpw&ab;_channel=GurinderBual) by Marshawn Lynch (if you haven't watched much football, keep in mind that usually when someone gets tackled, they fall down), and [Marshawn Lynch's life philosophy](https://kottke.org/16/06/a-deeper-metaphor). If you didn't enjoy that pair of links, go ahead and tune out future sports posts from this blog. [![Twitter](https://www.cold-takes.com/content/images/2021/06/ct-twitter-square.png)](https://api.addthis.com/oexchange/0.8/forward/twitter/offer?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cold-takes.com%2Fgive-sports-a-chance%2F&pubid;=ra-60a178324cffc42e&title;=Cold%20Takes%20-%20Give%20Sports%20a%20Chance&ct;=1) [![Facebook](https://www.cold-takes.com/content/images/2021/06/ct-facebook-square.png)](https://api.addthis.com/oexchange/0.8/forward/facebook/offer?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cold-takes.com%2Fgive-sports-a-chance%2F&pubid;=ra-60a178324cffc42e&title;=Cold%20Takes%20-%20Give%20Sports%20a%20Chance&ct;=1) [![Reddit](https://www.cold-takes.com/content/images/2021/06/ct-reddit-square.png)](https://api.addthis.com/oexchange/0.8/forward/reddit/offer?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cold-takes.com%2Fgive-sports-a-chance%2F&pubid;=ra-60a178324cffc42e&title;=Cold%20Takes%20-%20Give%20Sports%20a%20Chance&ct;=1) [![More](https://www.cold-takes.com/content/images/2021/06/ct-addthis-square.png)](https://api.addthis.com/oexchange/0.8/forward/menu/offer?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cold-takes.com%2Fgive-sports-a-chance%2F&pubid;=ra-60a178324cffc42e&title;=Cold%20Takes%20-%20Give%20Sports%20a%20Chance&ct;=1) [Subscribe](https://www.cold-takes.com/give-sports-a-chance/#/portal/signup/free) [Feedback](https://www.guidedtrack.com/programs/4kal2ue/run?posttitle=Give%20Sports%20a%20Chance) ###

Give Sports a Chance var siteUrl = 'https://www.cold-takes.com'; var localTheme = localStorage.getItem('dawn\\_theme'); switch (localTheme) { case 'dark': document.documentElement.classList.add('theme-dark'); break; case 'light': document.documentElement.classList.add('theme-light'); break; default: break; } { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "Article", "publisher": { "@type": "Organization", "name": "Cold Takes", "url": "https://www.cold-takes.com/", "logo": { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://www.cold-takes.com/favicon.ico", "width": 48, "height": 48 } }, "author": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Holden Karnofsky", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://www.cold-takes.com/content/images/2021/07/HK-headshot-current---compressed-1.jpg", "width": 1600, "height": 1067 }, "url": "https://www.cold-takes.com/author/holden/", "sameAs": [ "https://www.cold-takes.com/about/" ] }, "headline": "Give Sports a Chance", "url": "https://www.cold-takes.com/give-sports-a-chance/", "datePublished": "2021-08-11T17:45:07.000Z", "dateModified": "2021-10-01T22:04:59.000Z", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://www.cold-takes.com/content/images/2021/08/dear-basketball.jpg", "width": 840, "height": 472 }, "keywords": "sports", "description": " [https://www.cold-takes.com/roadmap-for-the-most-important-century-series/]\n\nAround now, the Most Important Century\n[https://www.cold-takes.com/roadmap-for-the-most-important-century-series/] \nseries is going to be getting a bit dryer, so I'm going to try making some of\nthe other posts a bit lighter. Specifically, I'm going to try something I call \n"Cold Links": links that I like a lot, that are so old you can't believe I'm\nposting them now. 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} } //Implement light/dark theme if(existingTheme == "dark") { ctdark(); } else if(existingTheme == 'light') { ctlight(); } window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; function gtag(){dataLayer.push(arguments);} gtag('js', new Date()); gtag('config', 'G-TZK0WDB1DH'); var clicky\\_site\\_ids = clicky\\_site\\_ids || []; clicky\\_site\\_ids.push(101323562); ![Clicky](//in.getclicky.com/101323562ns.gif) :root {--ghost-accent-color: #888888;} [Cold Takes](https://www.cold-takes.com) [About (+highlights)](https://www.cold-takes.com/about/) [Most Important Century](https://www.cold-takes.com/most-important-century/) [About (+highlights)](https://www.cold-takes.com/about/) [Most Important Century](https://www.cold-takes.com/most-important-century/) [Subscribe (free)](#subscribe) [Subscribe (free)](#subscribe) [Subscribe (free)](#subscribe) [Cold Takes](https://www.cold-takes.com) - Give Sports a Chance By [Holden Karnofsky](https://www.cold-takes.com/about/ "Holden Karnofsky") Aug 11, 2021 4 min read [sports](/tag/sports/) Give Sports a Chance ==================== ![Give Sports a Chance](/content/images/size/w960/2021/08/dear-basketball.jpg) [![](https://www.cold-takes.com/content/images/2021/08/mic-diagram---sports-2.png)](https://www.cold-takes.com/roadmap-for-the-most-important-century-series/) Around now, the [Most Important Century](https://www.cold-takes.com/roadmap-for-the-most-important-century-series/) series is going to be getting a bit dryer, so I'm going to try making some of the other posts a bit lighter. Specifically, I'm going to try something I call **"Cold Links":** links that I like a lot, that are so old you can't believe I'm posting them now. I think this is a more useful/enjoyable service than it might sound like: it's fun to get collections of links on a theme that are more memorable than "best of the week," and even if you've seen some before, you might enjoy seeing them again. If you end up hating this, [let me know](https://www.guidedtrack.com/programs/4kal2ue/run?posttitle=Give%20Sports%20a%20Chance). Now: a lot of the links I post here will be about sports. "Boooo I hate sportsball!" you're probably thinking, if you're the kind of person I imagine reading this blog. But try to keep an open mind. I'm here to filter out all the "My team won, be excited for me!" and "Isn't this player incredible, check out [stats that are basically the same stats all top players have]" and "Player X isn't just an athlete, they're a LEADER [this roughly just means their team is good]" and "Player Y might be talented, but they never come through when it counts [this roughly just means their team isn't good]," and get you the links that are truly interesting, inspiring or just amazing. For someone who doesn't care about who wins, what do sports have to offer? High on my list is **getting to closely observe people being incredibly (like world-outlier-level) intense about something.** I am generally somewhat obsessed with obsession (I think it is a key ingredient in almost every case of someone accomplishing something remarkable). And with sports, you can easily identify which players are in the top-5 in the world at the incredibly competitive things they do; you can safely assume that their level of obsession and competitiveness is beyond what you'll ever be able to wrap your head around; and you can see them in action. A few basketball links that illustrate this:* Kobe Bryant's ["Dear Basketball" poem](https://www.theplayerstribune.com/articles/dear-basketball) that he put out when he retired in 2015. Very short and seriously moving. I wish I felt about any activity the way he feels about basketball. This was turned into an [animated short that won an Oscar](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUcdx4W8Xes&ab;_channel=NikosElite) (but I'd recommend just reading the poem). * LeBron James in a [rare informative interview](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgJE-YKP2Vo&t;=145s&ab;_channel=ESPN), claiming that he watches "all the games ... at the same time," rattling off 5-6 straight plays from one of them from memory, and glaring beautifully as he says "I don't watch basketball for entertainment." * The memory thing is real: here's [Stephen Curry succeeding at a game](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7y0zejRZXXk&ab;_channel=DavidTedla) where they show him clips from basketball games he played in (sometimes years ago) and ask him what happened next. * There are a lot of stories about how competitive Michael Jordan was; my favorite one is just his [Hall of Fame acceptance speech](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLzBMGXfK4c&ab;_channel=OfficialHoophall). (For those of you who don't follow sports, just think of Michael Jordan as "if Jesus were also The Beatles.") At a time when anyone else would be happy, peaceful and grateful, MJ is still settling old scores and smarting under every imagined insult from decades ago. Highlights include 6:20 (where he reveals that he's invited the person who was picked over him to make the team in high school, to reinforce that this was a mistake); 12:00 (where he criticizes his general manager for saying "organizations win championships," as opposed to players); 14:40 (where he thanks a group of other players for "freezing him out" during his rookie season and getting him angry and motivated, then admits that the "freeze-out" may have been a rumor); and 15:35 (an extended "Thank you" to Pat Riley for ... basically being a jerk?). That's the most competitive person in the world right there, and maybe the one person on earth who's above not being petty. What else is good about sports: * I think it's fun when people care so deeply about something so intrinsically meaningless. It means we can enjoy their emotional journeys without all the baggage of whether we're endorsing something "good" or "bad." (My wife also loves this about sports - her thing is watching [Last Chance U](https://www.netflix.com/title/80091742) while crying her eyes out.) My next sports post will be a [collection of "heartwarming" links and stories](https://www.cold-takes.com/cold-links-heartwarming-sports-stuff/). \- There's a lot of sports analysis, and I kind of think sports is to social science what the laboratory is to natural sciences. Sports statistics have high sample sizes, stable environments and are exhaustively captured on video, so it's often possible to actually figure out what's going on. It's therefore unusually easy to form your own judgment about whether someone's analysis is good or bad, and that can have lessons for what patterns to look for on other topics. (My view: academic analysis of sports is often almost unbelievably bad, as you can see from some of the [Phil Birnbaum eviscerations](https://www.cold-takes.com/phil-birnbaums-regression-analysis/), whereas average sportswriting and TV commentating is worse than language can convey. Nerdy but non-academic sports analysis websites like [Cleaning the Glass](https://cleaningtheglass.com/), [Football Outsiders](https://www.footballoutsiders.com/) and [FiveThirtyEight](https://fivethirtyeight.com/) are good.) I'll leave you with this [absurd touchdown run](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnTzBTrGlpw&ab;_channel=GurinderBual) by Marshawn Lynch (if you haven't watched much football, keep in mind that usually when someone gets tackled, they fall down), and [Marshawn Lynch's life philosophy](https://kottke.org/16/06/a-deeper-metaphor). If you didn't enjoy that pair of links, go ahead and tune out future sports posts from this blog. 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Why talk about 10,000 years from now? var siteUrl = 'https://www.cold-takes.com'; var localTheme = localStorage.getItem('dawn\_theme'); switch (localTheme) { case 'dark': document.documentElement.classList.add('theme-dark'); break; case 'light': document.documentElement.classList.add('theme-light'); break; default: break; } { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "Article", "publisher": { "@type": "Organization", "name": "Cold Takes", "url": "https://www.cold-takes.com/", "logo": { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://www.cold-takes.com/favicon.ico", "width": 48, "height": 48 } }, "author": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Holden Karnofsky", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://www.cold-takes.com/content/images/2021/07/HK-headshot-current---compressed-1.jpg", "width": 1600, "height": 1067 }, "url": "https://www.cold-takes.com/author/holden/", "sameAs": [ "https://www.cold-takes.com/about/" ] }, "headline": "Why talk about 10,000 years from now?", "url": "https://www.cold-takes.com/why-talk-about-10-000-years-from-now/", "datePublished": "2021-08-05T17:15:32.000Z", "dateModified": "2021-10-01T22:28:02.000Z", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://www.cold-takes.com/content/images/2021/10/10k-years-twitter.png", "width": 2000, "height": 1000 }, "description": "It seems a common reaction to This Can't Go On
[https://www.cold-takes.com/this-cant-go-on] is something like: "OK, so ...
you're saying the current level of economic growth can't go on for another
10,000 years. So?? Call me in a few thousand years I guess?"

In general, this blog will often talk about "long" time frames (decades,
centuries, millennia) as if they're "short" (compared to the billions of years
our universe has existed, millions of years our species has existed, and
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By [Holden Karnofsky](https://www.cold-takes.com/about/ "Holden Karnofsky") Aug 5, 2021 4 min read Why talk about 10,000 years from now? ===================================== It seems a common reaction to [This Can't Go On](https://www.cold-takes.com/this-cant-go-on) is something like: "OK, so ... you're saying the current level of economic growth can't go on for another 10,000 years. So?? Call me in a few thousand years I guess?" In general, this blog will often talk about "long" time frames (decades, centuries, millennia) as if they're "short" (compared to the billions of years our universe has existed, millions of years our species has existed, and billions of years that could be in our civilization's future). I sort of try to **imagine myself as a billions-of-years-old observer,** looking at charts like [this](https://www.cold-takes.com/content/images/size/w1000/2021/08/long-vs-short-view.png) and thinking things like "The current economic growth level just got started!" even though it got started several lifetimes ago. Why think this way? One reason is that it's just a way of thinking about the world that feels (to me) refreshing/different. But here are a couple more important reasons. Effective altruism \------------------ My main obsession is with [effective altruism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_altruism), or doing as much good as possible. I generally try to pay more attention to things when they "matter more," and I think things "matter more" when they affect larger numbers of persons.[1](#fn1) I think there will be a LOT more persons[2](#fn2) over the coming billions of years than over the coming generation or few. So I think the long-run future, in some sense, "matters more" than whatever happens over the next generation or few. Maybe it doesn't matter more for me and my loved ones, but it matters more from an "all persons matter equally" perspective.[3](#fn3) An obvious retort is "But there's nothing we can do that will affect ALL of the people who live over the coming billions of years. We should focus on what we can actually change - that's the next generation or few." But I'm not convinced of that. I think we could be in the [most important century of all time](https://www.cold-takes.com/roadmap-for-the-most-important-century-series/), and I think things we do today could end up mattering for billions of years (an obvious example is [reducing risk of existential catastrophes](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07V9GHKYP/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr;=1)). And more broadly, if I *couldn't* think of specific ways our actions might matter for billions of years, I'd still be very interested in *looking for them.* I'd still find it useful to try to step back and ask: "Is what I'm reading about in the news important [in the grand scheme of things](https://www.cold-takes.com/all-possible-views-about-humanitys-future-are-wild/)? Could these events matter for whether we end up with [explosion, stagnation or collapse](https://www.cold-takes.com/this-cant-go-on/)? For [what kind of digital civilization we create for the long run](https://www.cold-takes.com/how-digital-people-could-change-the-world/#would-these-impacts-be-a-good-or-bad-thing)? And if not ... what could?" Appreciating the weirdness of the time we live in \------------------------------------------------- I think we live in a very weird period of time. It looks really weird on various charts (like [this one](https://www.cold-takes.com/all-possible-views-about-humanitys-future-are-wild/#fnref4), [this one](https://www.cold-takes.com/this-cant-go-on/#fnref4), and [this one](https://www.cold-takes.com/content/images/size/w1000/2021/08/Timeline-10KBCE-10KCE-Aug-3.png)). The vast bulk of scientific and technological advancement, and growth in the economy, has happened in a tiny sliver of time that we are sitting in. And billions of years from now, it will probably *still* be the case that this tiny sliver of time looks like an [outlier in terms of growth and change](https://www.cold-takes.com/this-cant-go-on/#why-cant-this-go-on). Again, it doesn't *feel* like a tiny sliver, it feels like lifetimes. It's hundreds of years. But that's out of millions (for our species) or billions (for life on Earth). Sometimes, when I walk down the street, I just look around and think: "This is all SO WEIRD. Whooshing by me are a bunch of people calmly operating steel cars at 40 mph, and over there I see a bunch of people calmly operating a massive crane building a skyscraper, and up in the sky is a plane flying by ... and out of billions of years of life on Earth, it's only us - the humans of the last hundred-or-so years - who have ever been able to do any of this kind of stuff. Practically everything I look at is some crazy futurist technology we just came up with and haven't really had time to adapt to, and we won't have adapted before the next crazy thing comes along. "And everyone is being very humdrum about their cars and skyscrapers and planes, but this is *not* normal, this is *not* 'how it usually is,' this is not part of a plan or a well-established pattern, this is crazy and weird and short-lived, and it's anyone's guess where it's going next." I think many of us are instinctively, intuitively dismissive of [wild claims about the future](https://www.cold-takes.com/roadmap-for-the-most-important-century-series/). I think we naturally imagine that there's more stability, solidness and hidden wisdom in "how things have been for generations" than there is. By trying to **imagine the perspective of someone who's been alive for the whole story** - billions of years, not tens - maybe we can be more open to strange future possibilities. And then, maybe we can be better at noticing the ones that actually might happen, and that our actions today might affect. So that's why I often try on the lens of saying things like "X has been going on for 200 years and could maybe last another few thousand - bah, that's the blink of an eye!" 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I generally use the term "persons" instead of "people" to indicate that I am trying to refer to every person, animal or thing (AI?) that we should care about the welfare of. [↩](#fnref1)- Even more than you'd intuitively guess, as outlined [here](https://www.cold-takes.com/how-digital-people-could-change-the-world/#space-expansion). [↩](#fnref2)- I wrote a bit about this perspective several years ago, [here](https://www.openphilanthropy.org/blog/radical-empathy). [↩](#fnref3) Powered by [Ghost](https://ghost.org/) #### Popular tags [sports](/tag/sports/) [innovationstagnation](/tag/innovationstagnation/) [2star](/tag/2star/) [utopia](/tag/utopia/) Subscribe to Cold Takes ======================= For audio version, search for "Cold Takes Audio" in your podcast app Subscribe **Great!** Check your inbox and click the link to confirm your subscription. **If you don't see it, check your spam!** Please enter a valid email address! $("#lower-right-subscribe").click(function(f) { clicky.goal('1458'); /\*LO.events.track('Subscribe-LR');\*/ setTimeout(function(){$("#subscribe-input").focus();},500); }); $("#upper-right-subscribe-1").click(function(f) { clicky.goal('1471'); /\*LO.events.track('Subscribe-LR');\*/ setTimeout(function(){$("#subscribe-input").focus();},500); }); $("#upper-right-subscribe-2").click(function(f) { clicky.goal('1471'); /\*LO.events.track('Subscribe-LR');\*/ setTimeout(function(){$("#subscribe-input").focus();},500); }); $("#cover-subscribe").click(function(f) { clicky.goal('1472'); /\*LO.events.track('Subscribe-LR');\*/ setTimeout(function(){$("#subscribe-input").focus();},500); }); $("#footer-subscribe").click(function(f) { clicky.goal('1473'); /\*LO.events.track('Subscribe-LR');\*/ setTimeout(function(){$("#subscribe-input").focus();},500); }); $("#final-subscribe").click(function(f) { clicky.goal('1474'); }); //When someone clicks an anchor link, I want the sticky nav to go away. $("a").click(function(f) { body.removeClass('sticky-visible'); lastSt = 9999999999999}); function ctlight() { html.removeClass('theme-dark').addClass('theme-light'); localStorage.setItem('dawn\_theme', 'light'); //$(".gh-portal-triggerbtn-container").css("background","#0000dd"); /\* document.documentElement.style.setProperty('--brand-color', '#0000dd'); document.documentElement.style.setProperty('--white-color', '#ffffff'); document.documentElement.style.setProperty('--primary-text-color', '#1a1a1a'); document.documentElement.style.setProperty('--secondary-text-color', '#1a1a1a');\*/ // $("#CT-thumbID").css("transform","translate(0px,0)"); // $(".single-content").css("font-weight","400"); existingTheme = "light"; } function ctdark() { html.removeClass('theme-light').addClass('theme-dark'); localStorage.setItem('dawn\_theme', 'dark'); /\*document.documentElement.style.setProperty('--brand-color', '#5ceaff'); document.documentElement.style.setProperty('--white-color', '#18141f'); document.documentElement.style.setProperty('--primary-text-color', '#fff'); document.documentElement.style.setProperty('--secondary-text-color', '#fff');\*/ //document.documentElement.style.setProperty('--white-color', '#14101b'); //document.documentElement.style.setProperty('--white-color', '#121212'); //document.documentElement.style.setProperty('--white-color', '#282c35'); //$(".single-content").css("font-weight","300"); // $("#CT-thumbID").css("transform","translate(19px,0)"); existingTheme = "dark"; } //For light/dark toggle $(".CT-toggle").click(function(g) { g.preventDefault(); if(existingTheme == "dark") { ctlight(); } else if(existingTheme == 'light') { ctdark(); } } ); // Parse the URL parameter, then log goal if it is a completed subscription. 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Why talk about 10,000 years from now? var siteUrl = 'https://www.cold-takes.com'; var localTheme = localStorage.getItem('dawn\\_theme'); switch (localTheme) { case 'dark': document.documentElement.classList.add('theme-dark'); break; case 'light': document.documentElement.classList.add('theme-light'); break; default: break; } { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "Article", "publisher": { "@type": "Organization", "name": "Cold Takes", "url": "https://www.cold-takes.com/", "logo": { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://www.cold-takes.com/favicon.ico", "width": 48, "height": 48 } }, "author": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Holden Karnofsky", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://www.cold-takes.com/content/images/2021/07/HK-headshot-current---compressed-1.jpg", "width": 1600, "height": 1067 }, "url": "https://www.cold-takes.com/author/holden/", "sameAs": [ "https://www.cold-takes.com/about/" ] }, "headline": "Why talk about 10,000 years from now?", "url": "https://www.cold-takes.com/why-talk-about-10-000-years-from-now/", "datePublished": "2021-08-05T17:15:32.000Z", "dateModified": "2021-10-01T22:28:02.000Z", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://www.cold-takes.com/content/images/2021/10/10k-years-twitter.png", "width": 2000, "height": 1000 }, "description": "It seems a common reaction to This Can't Go On\n[https://www.cold-takes.com/this-cant-go-on] is something like: "OK, so ...\nyou're saying the current level of economic growth can't go on for another\n10,000 years. 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By [Holden Karnofsky](https://www.cold-takes.com/about/ "Holden Karnofsky") Aug 5, 2021 4 min read Why talk about 10,000 years from now? ===================================== It seems a common reaction to [This Can't Go On](https://www.cold-takes.com/this-cant-go-on) is something like: "OK, so ... you're saying the current level of economic growth can't go on for another 10,000 years. So?? Call me in a few thousand years I guess?" In general, this blog will often talk about "long" time frames (decades, centuries, millennia) as if they're "short" (compared to the billions of years our universe has existed, millions of years our species has existed, and billions of years that could be in our civilization's future). I sort of try to **imagine myself as a billions-of-years-old observer,** looking at charts like [this](https://www.cold-takes.com/content/images/size/w1000/2021/08/long-vs-short-view.png) and thinking things like "The current economic growth level just got started!" even though it got started several lifetimes ago. Why think this way? One reason is that it's just a way of thinking about the world that feels (to me) refreshing/different. But here are a couple more important reasons. Effective altruism \------------------ My main obsession is with [effective altruism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_altruism), or doing as much good as possible. I generally try to pay more attention to things when they "matter more," and I think things "matter more" when they affect larger numbers of persons.[1](#fn1) I think there will be a LOT more persons[2](#fn2) over the coming billions of years than over the coming generation or few. So I think the long-run future, in some sense, "matters more" than whatever happens over the next generation or few. Maybe it doesn't matter more for me and my loved ones, but it matters more from an "all persons matter equally" perspective.[3](#fn3) An obvious retort is "But there's nothing we can do that will affect ALL of the people who live over the coming billions of years. We should focus on what we can actually change - that's the next generation or few." But I'm not convinced of that. I think we could be in the [most important century of all time](https://www.cold-takes.com/roadmap-for-the-most-important-century-series/), and I think things we do today could end up mattering for billions of years (an obvious example is [reducing risk of existential catastrophes](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07V9GHKYP/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr;=1)). And more broadly, if I *couldn't* think of specific ways our actions might matter for billions of years, I'd still be very interested in *looking for them.* I'd still find it useful to try to step back and ask: "Is what I'm reading about in the news important [in the grand scheme of things](https://www.cold-takes.com/all-possible-views-about-humanitys-future-are-wild/)? Could these events matter for whether we end up with [explosion, stagnation or collapse](https://www.cold-takes.com/this-cant-go-on/)? For [what kind of digital civilization we create for the long run](https://www.cold-takes.com/how-digital-people-could-change-the-world/#would-these-impacts-be-a-good-or-bad-thing)? And if not ... what could?" Appreciating the weirdness of the time we live in \------------------------------------------------- I think we live in a very weird period of time. It looks really weird on various charts (like [this one](https://www.cold-takes.com/all-possible-views-about-humanitys-future-are-wild/#fnref4), [this one](https://www.cold-takes.com/this-cant-go-on/#fnref4), and [this one](https://www.cold-takes.com/content/images/size/w1000/2021/08/Timeline-10KBCE-10KCE-Aug-3.png)). The vast bulk of scientific and technological advancement, and growth in the economy, has happened in a tiny sliver of time that we are sitting in. And billions of years from now, it will probably *still* be the case that this tiny sliver of time looks like an [outlier in terms of growth and change](https://www.cold-takes.com/this-cant-go-on/#why-cant-this-go-on). Again, it doesn't *feel* like a tiny sliver, it feels like lifetimes. It's hundreds of years. But that's out of millions (for our species) or billions (for life on Earth). Sometimes, when I walk down the street, I just look around and think: "This is all SO WEIRD. Whooshing by me are a bunch of people calmly operating steel cars at 40 mph, and over there I see a bunch of people calmly operating a massive crane building a skyscraper, and up in the sky is a plane flying by ... and out of billions of years of life on Earth, it's only us - the humans of the last hundred-or-so years - who have ever been able to do any of this kind of stuff. Practically everything I look at is some crazy futurist technology we just came up with and haven't really had time to adapt to, and we won't have adapted before the next crazy thing comes along. "And everyone is being very humdrum about their cars and skyscrapers and planes, but this is *not* normal, this is *not* 'how it usually is,' this is not part of a plan or a well-established pattern, this is crazy and weird and short-lived, and it's anyone's guess where it's going next." I think many of us are instinctively, intuitively dismissive of [wild claims about the future](https://www.cold-takes.com/roadmap-for-the-most-important-century-series/). I think we naturally imagine that there's more stability, solidness and hidden wisdom in "how things have been for generations" than there is. By trying to **imagine the perspective of someone who's been alive for the whole story** - billions of years, not tens - maybe we can be more open to strange future possibilities. And then, maybe we can be better at noticing the ones that actually might happen, and that our actions today might affect. So that's why I often try on the lens of saying things like "X has been going on for 200 years and could maybe last another few thousand - bah, that's the blink of an eye!" 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I generally use the term "persons" instead of "people" to indicate that I am trying to refer to every person, animal or thing (AI?) that we should care about the welfare of. [↩](#fnref1)- Even more than you'd intuitively guess, as outlined [here](https://www.cold-takes.com/how-digital-people-could-change-the-world/#space-expansion). [↩](#fnref2)- I wrote a bit about this perspective several years ago, [here](https://www.openphilanthropy.org/blog/radical-empathy). [↩](#fnref3) Powered by [Ghost](https://ghost.org/) #### Popular tags [sports](/tag/sports/) [innovationstagnation](/tag/innovationstagnation/) [2star](/tag/2star/) [utopia](/tag/utopia/) Subscribe to Cold Takes ======================= For audio version, search for "Cold Takes Audio" in your podcast app Subscribe **Great!** Check your inbox and click the link to confirm your subscription. **If you don't see it, check your spam!** Please enter a valid email address! $("#lower-right-subscribe").click(function(f) { clicky.goal('1458'); /\\*LO.events.track('Subscribe-LR');\\*/ setTimeout(function(){$("#subscribe-input").focus();},500); }); $("#upper-right-subscribe-1").click(function(f) { clicky.goal('1471'); /\\*LO.events.track('Subscribe-LR');\\*/ setTimeout(function(){$("#subscribe-input").focus();},500); }); $("#upper-right-subscribe-2").click(function(f) { clicky.goal('1471'); /\\*LO.events.track('Subscribe-LR');\\*/ setTimeout(function(){$("#subscribe-input").focus();},500); }); $("#cover-subscribe").click(function(f) { clicky.goal('1472'); /\\*LO.events.track('Subscribe-LR');\\*/ setTimeout(function(){$("#subscribe-input").focus();},500); }); $("#footer-subscribe").click(function(f) { clicky.goal('1473'); /\\*LO.events.track('Subscribe-LR');\\*/ setTimeout(function(){$("#subscribe-input").focus();},500); }); $("#final-subscribe").click(function(f) { clicky.goal('1474'); }); //When someone clicks an anchor link, I want the sticky nav to go away. $("a").click(function(f) { body.removeClass('sticky-visible'); lastSt = 9999999999999}); function ctlight() { html.removeClass('theme-dark').addClass('theme-light'); localStorage.setItem('dawn\\_theme', 'light'); //$(".gh-portal-triggerbtn-container").css("background","#0000dd"); /\\* document.documentElement.style.setProperty('--brand-color', '#0000dd'); document.documentElement.style.setProperty('--white-color', '#ffffff'); document.documentElement.style.setProperty('--primary-text-color', '#1a1a1a'); document.documentElement.style.setProperty('--secondary-text-color', '#1a1a1a');\\*/ // $("#CT-thumbID").css("transform","translate(0px,0)"); // $(".single-content").css("font-weight","400"); existingTheme = "light"; } function ctdark() { html.removeClass('theme-light').addClass('theme-dark'); localStorage.setItem('dawn\\_theme', 'dark'); /\\*document.documentElement.style.setProperty('--brand-color', '#5ceaff'); document.documentElement.style.setProperty('--white-color', '#18141f'); document.documentElement.style.setProperty('--primary-text-color', '#fff'); document.documentElement.style.setProperty('--secondary-text-color', '#fff');\\*/ //document.documentElement.style.setProperty('--white-color', '#14101b'); //document.documentElement.style.setProperty('--white-color', '#121212'); //document.documentElement.style.setProperty('--white-color', '#282c35'); //$(".single-content").css("font-weight","300"); // $("#CT-thumbID").css("transform","translate(19px,0)"); existingTheme = "dark"; } //For light/dark toggle $(".CT-toggle").click(function(g) { g.preventDefault(); if(existingTheme == "dark") { ctlight(); } else if(existingTheme == 'light') { ctdark(); } } ); // Parse the URL parameter, then log goal if it is a completed subscription. 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