{"id":8203,"date":"2026-08-03T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-08-03T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kk.org\/thetechnium\/?p=8203"},"modified":"2026-07-31T17:12:38","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T17:12:38","slug":"88-prompts-for-long-term-thinking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kk.org\/thetechnium\/88-prompts-for-long-term-thinking\/","title":{"rendered":"88 Prompts for Long Term Thinking"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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In January 2019 I wrote out scores of prompts for thinking long term that I felt should inform the foundation I was later co-chair of, The Long Now Foundation. These axioms were only shared internally, but I feel they would be useful to anyone trying to take a long view so I present them here.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

1 Our aim is to improve the present by remembering the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2 Our religion is change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3 We promote tools and systems that manage the resources of change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4 Over time, the process of change itself changes, compounding change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

5 We are making the world safe for continuous compounding change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

6 The system that best manages compounded change is civilization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

7 We favor tools that operate upon civilization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

8 Civilization is long-term thinking; Long-term thinking is civilization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

9 We promote long-term thinking instead of long-term planning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

10 Plans vs perspective: Long-term planning is a type of answer; because answers are fixed they can become irrelevant during compounding change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

11 Long-term perspective is a type of question; because questions are open they can remake their meaning during change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

12 Long-term thinking keeps revisiting decisions so that unexpected solutions can be found later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

13 The best choices today are those that lead to a greater number of choices in the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

14 We seek those possibilities that increase future possibilities for all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

15 Individually we are better off with expanding possibilities for everyone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

16 Civilization is the process of creating the maximum number of opportunities that work for the maximum number of people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

17 To maximize the greatest good means to maximize the longest good, because most of those affected are yet to be born.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

18 Tomorrow will arrive without our help; our job is to make tomorrow as big as possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

19 To fill our tomorrow with so many possibilities that they must be carried over to the day after tomorrow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

20 Finite games focus on how they end; infinite games focus on how they continue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

21 Where we work there is no winning; there is only improving the game, and keeping it going.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

22 We want to create infinite games, where all who play, win.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

23 We trust the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

24 We are trying to equip the future so it can help itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

25 There is far more future than there is the past; the future is a bigger territory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

26 Since progress is real, our descendants will have more information and better tools, which will make them more capable of fixing problems we can\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

27 The uncertainty of the long-term is a penalty we can pay with technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

28 Our job is to keep the process of progress going.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

29 We can leverage the power of longevity to accomplish things brevity can not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

30 The force of compounding value is one of the most powerful things in the universe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

31 Long-term processes can create leverage that can produce disproportionate returns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

32 Even large setbacks and disasters can be overcome by small compounding over long terms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

33 To maximize compounding value the benefits must shift to the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

34 Patience is rewarded. We seek tools and technologies for patience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

35 We encourage achievements that require big time and big systems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

36 The problems of civilization require solutions at the scale of civilization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

37 Civilization is multi-paced: Fast learns, slow remembers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

38 The pace of management must match the rate of change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

39 We encourage governance to protect slow infrastructure to ensure freedom in the fast things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

40 The only successful ways of directing self-replicating generations are indirect ways, by the transmission of values.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

41 Thinking about the future is a way to think about the systems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

42 Focus not on the outcomes, but on the processes that produce outcomes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

43 In the long-term, success is increased mutualism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

44 We promote new ways to cooperate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

45 Civilization has given us a new power: to choose who and what we are individually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

46 To optimize our humanity we have to optimize the source of our humanity: civilization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

47 We seek to optimize civilization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

48 If we achieve a desirable society, we will have made the individual better, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

49 If we achieve a desirable future, we will have made the present better, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

50 In the long interval, it pays to be altruistic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

51 We want to make long-term thinking automatic and common instead of difficult and rare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

52 Bigger things take bigger time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

53 An expanded sense of our time scale (the long now) is correlated to an expanded sense of place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

54 The long now needs the big here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

55 The most important things will take more than one lifetime to complete.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

56 Let\u2019s design a system so that 90% of the benefits are delivered after we are all dead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

57 Create better ways to reschedule the payout.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

58 We are committed to representing the interests of the future to the present.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

59 The present needs no defenders. The citizens of the future are unborn, so we the living will be their proxy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

60 We aim to be good ancestors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

61 To be a good ancestor means doing the things you wished your ancestors did. What do we wish our great-grandparents did?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

62 We\u2019d like to improve the ways of being accountable to posterity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

63 Every idea about the future is a prediction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

64 Nearly all predictions are wrong. But some are useful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

65 The future doesn\u2019t need to be plausible; it only needs to be possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

66 Our present estimates of the future are clouded by plausibility. We should practice seeing the outrageous, ridiculous, and improbable, because that is what today is compared to the past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

67 This present moment used to be the unimaginable future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

68 The future is purchased by the present.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

69 We have more obligation to the future than the past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

70 The tyranny of the present can only be offset by possible futures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

71 The future is no more free of the past than the present is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

72 Our optimism about the future lies not in how small we think our current problems are but how large we believe our capacities for improvement are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

73 Optimism is easier if you take the long view because most setbacks are offset by even small compounding gains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

74 A key advantage to taking the long view is that you will have few competitors there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

75 The more important the system, the more it has been shaped by history, and the longer its past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

76 To understand the far future, we must understand the deep past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

77 We seek to apply the lessons of the past to steer the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

78 We seek to overcome the asymmetries in time that bias the past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

79 Uncertainty of the future is penalized more than uncertainty of the past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

80 Possible pain in the future gets more of our attention than actual pain in the past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

81 Every life has the inherent ability to affect the future. That is what being alive means.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

82 Every change that ripples out into the far future begins in an instant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

83 Things that have never happened before happen all the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

84 We encourage wisdom: the ability to prospectively look back, to see today from the perspective of a distant tomorrow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

85 The real risk to civilization is not serious errors, but serious forgetting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

86 A longer view allows you to see what things do best with a short fast life; not everything needs to be slow or continuous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

87 More than just long-term responsibility, we encourage long-term imagination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

88 We seek to widen our individual and collective attention spans from the previous few minutes and next few minutes (the short now) to the previous 10,000 years and next 10,000 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In January 2019 I wrote out scores of prompts for thinking long term that I felt should inform the foundation I was later co-chair of, The Long Now Foundation. These axioms were only shared internally, but I feel they would … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/thetechnium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8203"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/thetechnium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/thetechnium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/thetechnium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/thetechnium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8203"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/thetechnium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8203\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8207,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/thetechnium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8203\/revisions\/8207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/thetechnium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/thetechnium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/thetechnium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}