Debate: Should future people be discounted? Longtermism vs temporal discounting on X
NathanpmYoung · x · 2026-09-18
MatthewTanous argues temporal discounting is the antidote to longtermism: at a 5% rate, a person 50 years out is worth 8.7% of someone today, 0.76% at 100 years, and by 470 years the entire planet is worth less than one present person. NathanpmYoung pushes back: money is discounted due to inflation, but "consciousness is consciousness" — discounting should be probability-based, not a yearly rate, which becomes noise beyond 5 years for most things.
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