Although I found that scene hilarious, I have actually heard several smart people po-facedly lament the fact that the universe will end with a whimper. If this seriously bothers you psychologically, then your psychology is severely divorced from the reality that you inhabit. By all means, be depressed about your chronic indigestion or the Liberal Media or teenagers on your lawn, but not about an event that will happen in 1014 years, involving a dramatis personae of burnt-out star remnants. Puh-lease. There is infinitely more tragedy happening every second in a cup of buttermilk.
So, what’s your argument here? That we shouldn’t care about the far future because it is temporally very removed from us? I personally deeply dislike this implication of modern cosmology, because it imposes an upper limit on sentience. I would much prefer that happiness continues to exist indefinitely than that it ceases to exist simply because the universe can no longer support it.
Your personally being inconvenienced by the heat death of the universe is even less likely than winning the powerball lottery; if you wouldn’t spend $1 on a lottery ticket, why spend $1 worth of time worrying about the limits of entropy? Sure, it’s the most unavoidable of existential risks, but it’s vanishingly unlikely to be the one that gets you.
Why should I only emotionally care about things that will affect me?
I don’t see any good reason to be seriously depressed about any Far fact; but if any degree of sadness is ever an appropriate response to anything Far, the inevitability of death seems like one of the best candidates.
So, what’s your argument here? That we shouldn’t care about the far future because it is temporally very removed from us? I personally deeply dislike this implication of modern cosmology, because it imposes an upper limit on sentience. I would much prefer that happiness continues to exist indefinitely than that it ceases to exist simply because the universe can no longer support it.
Your personally being inconvenienced by the heat death of the universe is even less likely than winning the powerball lottery; if you wouldn’t spend $1 on a lottery ticket, why spend $1 worth of time worrying about the limits of entropy? Sure, it’s the most unavoidable of existential risks, but it’s vanishingly unlikely to be the one that gets you.
Why should I only emotionally care about things that will affect me?
I don’t see any good reason to be seriously depressed about any Far fact; but if any degree of sadness is ever an appropriate response to anything Far, the inevitability of death seems like one of the best candidates.