Aaand, full-on "Rationalist" cult territory right ahead. This particular one seems like inspired by Longtermism, but I'm not quite sure.

I also don't quite understand the mathematical certainty with which they assert that "everything you know and love will be gone in the next decades". Yes, the world is a scary place right now with some fundamental changes going on - and a lot if the trajectory seems to be distinctly in the wrong direction. But to see a definitive, unavoidable end if all things in a few decades seems more like a classical doomsday cult for me.

(...ah, OK, and of course the certain doom isn't about trivialities like the reemergence of fascism, impending WWIII or unchecked climate change but about the mathematically inevitable rise of godlike super-AIs that will wipe out humanity. Got it.)

But on the chance of catching an actual Longtermist here, I'd like to ask a question that I'd never understood so far:

> One's approach to living, deep down if not at the surface level algorithms, should cash out to trying to accumulate as much value as you can. That doesn't change just because doom is likely.

We can split the value one pursues into the value one is accruing right now (I like to call this "harvesting") and the value one is preparing to harvest in the future (I call this "sowing").

Most of the value, or expected value, would likely be in the future (because there's so much of it!) but for two reasons it makes sense to harvest now and not just sow for the future.

... followed by three relatively circumstantial and mostly psychological reasons that feel like they are more "exceptions to the rule" for practical reasons and shouldnt exist in an ideal world.

But just approaching this from a theoretical perspective: If we ignored our messy, imperfect human desires for a moment and assumed we'd all be perfect AIs or whatever, the logical conclusion would be we should "accumulate" all our value in the future? (As, in the limit, the present vanishes compared to the future, I guess). So 100% sowing, 0% harvesting? But the problem is if course that there will always be a future and it will never be the present. So wouldn't this actually lead to a world full of suffering, because no value at all is ever realized, as all of it would be stashed away for an eternal future that by definition can never arrive?

A slow guide to confronting doom