The dangers of Product Longtermism

There are no guarantees the future will hold the same values as us, so what right do we have to encode ours upon them?

Planning too far ahead sometimes means missing the dangers in front of us. Illustration by author.

In Christopher Nolan’s film Tenet, the future is at war with the past “because the oceans rose and the rivers ran dry.”

Thanks to catastrophic climate change, no path lay ahead for our descendants, and their only hope was to carve out a future by orchestrating a genocide in our past.

As the film’s protagonist, Neil, explains, “Every generation looks out for its own survival.”

“I’ll See You At The Beginning, Friend.” Tenet, Warner Bros. Pictures

It’s hard to watch a film like Tenet and not contemplate the longer-term consequences of our actions — how will the future judge us?

Working in product, we tend to approach most opportunities with good intention. We want to identify and solve valuable problems, lead a comfortable life and leave this spinning rock a better place than when we joined it.

Sometimes, however, when planning for good long-term outcomes, the universe has ways of reminding us how truly short-signed we can be.