Also, present-day society is the result of millennia of previous societies which all included, at least implicitly, a supernatural afterlife-belief; likely going all the way back to Neanderthals burying their dead with red ochre. This leads to a somewhat different environment in which people develop their preferences than the environment in which an afterlife-belief originally formed, or developed its complications.
I do not think that there are a lot of people who do not care about the state of the world after they die. I think there are people who think they don’t care because they believe that they are more selfish than they are.
A lot, yes; but a lot don’t, either.
Also, present-day society is the result of millennia of previous societies which all included, at least implicitly, a supernatural afterlife-belief; likely going all the way back to Neanderthals burying their dead with red ochre. This leads to a somewhat different environment in which people develop their preferences than the environment in which an afterlife-belief originally formed, or developed its complications.
I do not think that there are a lot of people who do not care about the state of the world after they die. I think there are people who think they don’t care because they believe that they are more selfish than they are.
I think the average Neanderthals did care about the fate of their children even after the point in which they themselves died.