36. Approaching life in the spirit of
the proverb: Òafter us the delugeÓ
Madame
de Pompadour, a French aristocrat who was the courtesan of Louis XV, wrote
ÒAfter us, the deluge. I care not what happens when I am dead and gone.Ó
Cognitive psychology experiments on time discounting have shown that people
strongly discount risks that apply only after their expected lifespan, or even
earlier than that10. A "devil take all" attitude in the contexts
of catastrophic risks could be rather dangerous, but some of it is inevitable.
There is also the thought, "if I'm going to die, other people ought to die
too," which actually enhances global risks rather than having a neutral
effect.