Shallow Eternity vs. Deep Time

Moynihan's central distinction. Eternity is boundless and therefore unmeasurable and flat: every possibility recurs, nothing is irreversibly lost or gained, legacies are orbits, and no "now" can be located (Aristotle: we also come before our ancestors). Deep time is enormous but bounded — "depth is, by definition, measurable and bounded" — and is the only kind of time in which decisions are consequential, because not every possible outcome will come to pass regardless. The historical pattern he tracks is eternity's recurrence (Aristotle → Hutton/Lyell → Hoyle's steady state) whenever a newly enlarged magnitude is mistaken for infinity, and its successive defeat by fossils, thermodynamics, radium and the CMB. Not the same as long-termism's legible future (Konior's critique).