Question of the Day

The reader writes:

Tyler Cowen manages to scare the hell out of me today. Considering the central implication of the Fermi paradox and the news that earth-like planets may exist more frequently than originally thought, it may be that intelligent civilizations simply don't last that long.

Which got me thinking - how long after I die could the world end before I cease caring? We all hear the sun has a shelf life in the billions of years but no one is losing sleep over that. On the other hand, I'd be pretty distressed to know the world would blink out an hour after my death. I've got a lot of friends here, after all. But what about 50 years? Well, maybe I'll have kids around. That would suck for them - and I'm supposing I'd be emotionally invested. So maybe the answer is - I'll stop caring when the world ends when I can no longer conceive of being emotionally invested. In other words, when everybody I know or could know has died. A kind of common law construct.

Literally speaking, I assume that you would stop caring the moment you died. I think the more interesting question in response to your question is - why would you want the world to continue after you were gone? Speaking personally, I have always had a hard time going to bed at night. This is not because I have a hard time falling asleep, I don't. It's just that I don't like giving up consciousness. I think the reason for this is that I am a afraid that I am going to miss something.

If I had knowledge that you all were evaporated right after my death (actually I would prefer you all to expire the instant before I did), I could die knowing that I didn't miss anything cool. Think I'm crazy? The Pharaohs apparently didn't think so. Don't worry if I had the power to bury the world alive I wouldn't. I'm more progressive than that.