The Role of Eternity

On fossils, AI, and the bets we are making about progress

May 28, 2026

Recently, I watched someone crack open a fossil like a coconut. It was so casual-like. I have not been able to stop thinking about it.

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How do we have all the nonchalance required to casually open something that took a million years to make, and all the social anxiety of being the one to open the store-bought bag of Lays at the BBQ?

In some ways, opening the fossil is a gamble. There are a finite number of fossils on this earth. They were made long ago. When we open one, it’s because we believe we can get maximal value from it now. We have good instruments. We have good methods. The argument for cracking it open is the argument for extracting anything now instead of later: we know what we can get from it now, and we don’t know what we could have gotten from it later.

By opening the fossil today, we are betting that future technology will not have learned more from it than we did today. So, we are betting that progress will slow down from here. Or, if not, we acknowledge we are maximizing our own personal experience at the expense of long term human advancement.

To take the same logic backwards, many of us want to slow down progress today. We want to slow down AI deployment for a variety of reasons including climate, employment, trust and safety, regulation, etc.

The continued deployment of AI is, in many ways, a bet on progress doing two contradictory things at once:

AI progress will speed up so fast that we reach a solved future AND
AI progress will slow down enough that the harms can be managed before they cascade

Both bets are held at once, by the same societies and even often the same individuals.

Eternity

Eternity, in our world, is enormous and tiny at the same time.

Eternity is enormous in that entire wars have been waged by religions whose adherents believed the violence would secure them a place in the eternal life. Whole civilizations have built their cathedrals and their pyramids and their legal codes around the question of how to outlast death.

Eternity is the stake big enough to justify almost any present-day action.

And yet, eternity is so tiny that we will trade it for a quick buck. We will burn ancient and finite resources to keep the financial quarter on track. We will hand over the future of our world for the present-day convenience of billionaires.

How much do we actually value eternity?

Eternity for me, eternity for thee.

It seems that the personal kind of eternity is the kind we value. A personal place in heaven, paid for once by indulgences (and, arguably, now by anti-aging rituals and tech bro delusions about living forever.) The pursuit of eternal life. The pursuit of eternal youth. Longevity clinics, supplement stacks, plastic surgery, cryopreservation contracts signed in good faith. Eternity scaled to one body, one face, one consciousness, marked sacred.

The collective kind of eternity seems to be the kind we devalue.

Eternity for me is what I will pay almost any price for. Eternity for thee is what I will trade away for almost nothing.

The “AI of it all”

There have been a variety of attempts to cure humanity of its lack of care for the collective eternity. Many of them center around the same premise: inextricably link the personal eternity with the collective eternity.

Religion is the most notable example of this, with the idea that your behavior in your time on earth, your legacy, earns you your position in the eternal life.

So, in the AI case, what does it look like to inextricably link personal eternity with collective eternity?

In my mind I think of it like a ship on a collision course. When a ship is on a collision course, you have a few options. You can jump off. You can jump in front of it and try to slow it down or stop it. Or, you can stay on, try to get to the wheel and steer.

In this case, jumping off looks like:

refusing to use AI tools personally
declining to work at AI companies or take their money
morally: clean hands.
practically: does not seem to significantly slow or turn the ship.

Jumping in front looks like:

protests, blockades, civil disobedience
legal campaigns
morally: heroic
practically: may slow down the ship

Steering looks like:

working on and with AI
working really hard on and with AI
morally: complicit. you benefit from the ship running, and your hands are directly assisting in running it
practically: small chance of turning the ship, if you succeed.

For me, because I have the privilege of an engineering education, experience, and background, staying on, trying to get to the front and steering is what it means to tie my personal eternity, my legacy, with the collective eternity. It’s a bet, like opening the fossil. The stakes are high, and like most bets, the odds show ‘the house is likely to win,’ and yet, it’s a bet I am willing to make. For now.

FYI: Each week I share stories through For People and Planet, a newsletter focused on climate solutions and hope for the future. You can find it here if you’d like to follow along: forpeopleandpla.net