alt Hacker NewsIt's comments like these that sadden me. It's this mindset that make me pessimistic about the long-term viability of humanity as I think it is shared among many people. When we (individuals/groups/society) don't plan far ahead (even for the loosest sense/meaning of the word "plan"), that will tend to lead to short-term benefits with long-term detriments. That even applies even for things that can occur past our lifespan. In my opinion, we should strive to benefit/help our decedents. Climate change is the most obvious case of this, but it applies to other cases like solar flares on the scale of the Carrington event or greater or like Kessler syndrome here (both perhaps on the order of hundreds of years). If Kessler syndrome is a legitimate concern to be a problem in the not crazy distant future, we shouldn't dismiss it outright just because the issue is unlikely to be a problem within our lifetime.
There's no incentive to do this, it's politically untenable to plan that far ahead. The beauty of humanity is we're always changing and evolving because we only do things within the scope of our lifetime.
The curse of humanity is having a brain that lets us think too hard about what we want to be rather than acknowledging what we are which is a bunch of mortal animals with finite time spans that like to fuck, make babies, raise families and occasionally we come together and do shit together in the form of work so we can further those three other priorities.