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Long-termism is a kind of minimalism. The longer the planning horizon beyond a point, the fewer assumptions you can trust and the simpler things get. There’s a peak of planning complexity about 5 years out and weirdly that’s the horizon a lot of planning targets.
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Avoid 4-6 year horizons. You don’t get the tractability of short term <3y or the simplification of >6y. 1 year is easy, 50 years is easy. 5 years sucks.
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Planning is not prediction. Prediction generally gets monotonically harder with time. But planning gets easier because agency wanes andctgeres fewer meaningful things you can do the farther out you look.
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I’m not a serious long-termist the way long now people are. It mainly interests me as a filtering mechanism for “important”. If you can’t see X making a difference in 50y the only reason to pay attention to it now is pleasure or pain avoidance.
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What feels like good long term thinking to me feels oddly similar to that pleasant exhausted relaxation you feel the day you start recovering from a cold. There’s a kind of simplifying clarity that sets in as the high-energy bullshit drops away.
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I have a cold right now. Looking forward to the recovery day. I usually get a creative breakthrough or two on long-term projects on cold-recovery days. As above so below.
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