Comment by TheCondor
7 days ago
I'm not disagreeing with you, but you should invert the question and think about it.
In the case of a cathedral, I think it is relatively easy to commit to the project you won't see through, it has a significance to those people making the commitment. What becomes much more challenging is when future generations don't have the same level of commitment, it's a much bigger ask to stop. Maybe there is a better use of the resources that could impact people immediately; if it's a church, I'm thinking feeding the hungry and clothing the naked sorts of things. It's hard to stop something that "we've just been doing." It's also hard to ask "why are we doing this?"
In 200 years, suppose there is some crisis we cannot predict and the recital is to be interrupted or stopped. There will be an incredible amount of pressure on somebody to make a good choice. Pressure that was created by a distant ancestor, of sorts. That might be part of the beauty of it, that might be part of the bond that ties different people together throughout time and it might be wonderful. What if there is a caretaker that is ready to retire and cannot find the next caretaker? That seems like a horrible position to be in.
Japan is or was doing multi-generational mortgages a while back (I assume they might still be.) as it was the only way a family could afford to buy a property. I can see that being a tremendously loving act for your children or grandchildren in providing a property that they will own, but I could just as well see it being a gigantic burden to them, what if they want to live somewhere else? Them following their bliss effectively changes the living and working future of the parents.
There's always an opportunity cost to making art. Taking your argument to it's extreme people should never paint or make music but instead spend all their time growing food and building homes (and distributing those goods because that's a big crux, we could feed everyone on the planet if we got food to the right people).
The cool thing about freedom is that we don't have to be rational monks that are slave to economic utilitarism.
This conundrum comes up sometimes in the context of generational starships, about intermediate generations being born into bondage board, committed by their ancestors to a shitty life in a metal tube, with their only purpose being a preordained duty to keep a few systems operational and produce the next generation of slaves just so that eventually someone can birth the arrival generation.
Alastair Reynolds' book Chasm City touches on a bunch of this, in particular the class warfare angle of some wealthy travelers getting to enjoy the journey in peaceful cryosleep while the poor ones pay for their passage in servitude.
> being born into bondage board, committed by their ancestors to a shitty life in a metal tube, with their only purpose being a preordained duty to keep a few systems operational and produce the next generation of slaves just so that eventually someone can birth the arrival generation.
This isn't really so different from being born on Earth, except that we take being born on Earth for granted, and the population is really really big.
We're all living in the world created by our ancestors. All their short sighted fuckups (lead poisoning, climate change) or triumphs (tech, art) is ours to bear.
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Ehhh I see where you're coming from but I don't think it's quite the same. Here on Earth is the default, and while each individual's opportunities are greatly affected by the circumstances of their birth and parentage, with effort and luck there's a fair chance to change one's stars.
Opting into an interstellar voyage is a significant reduction in opportunity for almost anyone.
And yes, the same could be said for a European colonist crossing the Atlantic to the Americas in the 16th century, and many of them did face starvation, exposure, etc, but it's different when you're largely committing yourself and your immediate family to those hardships, under the belief that the timeframe for "a better life" is the next generation. Committing intermediate generations is a different beast.
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I spend too much time thinking about all the stuff that can go wrong on generation ships.
You take off for your destination, but when you get there you find out that humans back on earth made a faster ship 100 years after you left and beat you to the destination.
You spent generations expecting to be bold explorers pushing the frontier and getting to claim nice territory, and you show up to find you’re in second place.
I won't spoil it here, but you might really enjoy Chasm City; I recommend giving it a read. :)
And that the highly-refined citizens of that future era think that your BO and deodorant are incredibly overpowering.
(as described in Vogt's "Far_Centaurus" short story.
incessant obsolescence
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12354195
> You take off for your destination, but when you get there you find out that humans back on earth made a faster ship 100 years after you left and beat you to the destination.
A theme that turns up in Starfield as well...
Heinlein also tackled some of these problems with generation ships in Orphans of the Sky[1].
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphans_of_the_Sky
That's the beauty of a long-term commitment. You are stating so much confidence about the future that you say "yes, we can have a functioning society and set aside these resources".
Sure, you can create scenarios were that fails. You can do that for anything. The power lies in saying "we are willing to remove these paths from consideration because we as a people are committed to not letting them occur".
It's a model that fails if you apply first-order utilitarian calculus. But the intangible value of the hope and commitment in it likely overshadows any immediate gain. This isn't about how to maximize utilization or optionality. It's a bold statement about who we are, and a lodestar to aspire to. (Which is, ultimately, the job art does)
> In 200 years, suppose there is some crisis we cannot predict and the recital is to be interrupted or stopped. There will be an incredible amount of pressure on somebody to make a good choice. Pressure that was created by a distant ancestor, of sorts. That might be part of the beauty of it, that might be part of the bond that ties different people together throughout time and it might be wonderful. What if there is a caretaker that is ready to retire and cannot find the next caretaker? That seems like a horrible position to be in.
We have plenty of examples where this has already happened. Traditions that were maintained at significant cost in the face of difficulties or opposition. Caretakers of something ancient who struggle to find an heir. We tend to view them positively.
> Japan is or was doing multi-generational mortgages a while back (I assume they might still be.) as it was the only way a family could afford to buy a property.
I suspect this has been misreported. Japanese mortgage terms are pretty normal and property prices are much lower than in the west (even the bubble only really affected central Tokyo). There's a practice of an elderly parent being able to get a mortgage that's then "inherited" by a child, in cases where the parent is retired or close to retirement, but it's pretty much a face-saving (and tax-avoidance) measure.
They couldn’t even quarry the Washington Monument out of a single color of stone. It’s not that visible in pictures but if you go see it on a sunny day it’s hard to ignore that stupid line in the middle.
If you take too long building a cathedral the quarry might exhaust itself in the meantime. So even if you keep to the design it might not look right.
> The outside facing consists, due to the interrupted building process, of three different kinds of white marble.
For some cathedrals that visible mismatch in the materials might be a feature, not a bug.
At least that's the case for the co-cathedral in Zamora, Michoacán which had its construction interrupted for almost a century due to the Mexican Revolution, the Cristero War and its subsequent expropriation by the government. In this context, the mismatching facade remains as a testament of the building's history.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diocesan_Sanctuary_of_Our_Lady...
Maybe a crisis will occur and maybe our descendants will have to make a tough choice, but that could enrich the story of the performance. If they choose to end the performance for whatever reason, that’s their business. The hopes and desires of one generation can only hold sway over the next for so long.
> If they choose to end the performance for whatever reason, that’s their business.
Well, in this case, "you can already buy a ticket to the finale, so your distant descendants can go see it." Selling tickets for an event that far in the future makes it the business of the ticket purchaser and whoever they leave the tickets for.
Is the money collected from the tickets being held in such a way that it can be refunded if/when this project fails before another 600 years have gone by? If not, it seems like a potential scam in that sense.
No need to speculate wildly or cast unsupported aspersions. The funds from the “Final Ticket” sales are explicitly a financial contribution to supporting the project. Nobody buying one is unaware of that fact, there’s no potential for scam.
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