I just realized you can model low time preference as a high degree of cooperation between instances of yourself across time, so that earlier instances of you sacrifice themselves to give later instances a higher payoff. By contrast, a high time preference consists of instances of you each trying to do whatever benefits them most at the time, later instances be damned.
That makes sense.
Even cooperating across short time frames might be problematic—“I’ll stay in bed for 10 more minutes, even if it means that me-in-10-minutes will be stressed out and might be late for work”
I prefer to see long-term thinking as increased integration among different time-selves rather than a sacrifice, though—it’s not a sacrifice to take actions with a delayed payoff if your utility function puts a high weight on your future-selves’ wellbeing.
I just realized you can model low time preference as a high degree of cooperation between instances of yourself across time, so that earlier instances of you sacrifice themselves to give later instances a higher payoff. By contrast, a high time preference consists of instances of you each trying to do whatever benefits them most at the time, later instances be damned.
That makes sense. Even cooperating across short time frames might be problematic—“I’ll stay in bed for 10 more minutes, even if it means that me-in-10-minutes will be stressed out and might be late for work”
I prefer to see long-term thinking as increased integration among different time-selves rather than a sacrifice, though—it’s not a sacrifice to take actions with a delayed payoff if your utility function puts a high weight on your future-selves’ wellbeing.
Your definition of sacrifice seems to exclude some instances of literal self-sacrifice.
See https://www.google.com/search?q=picoeconomics