The whole idea that [if you don’t remember something then for the purposes of decision making it didn’t happen] seems fundamentally ridiculous to me. Actually it’s wierder than “didn’t happen” in this example, it’s “as if it was not about to happen” because you will have forgotten it some time in the future. It seems even more bizzare to me that you suggest leaving this in tact and instead resolving the paradox by changing the way you accumulate utilons. All this suggests to me that when accounting for memory failures you can’t always correctly judge the best decision from anywhere other than an entirely external viewpoint. The fact that this is difficult to actually do is just another one of life’s challenges.
I actually think poor decision making as a result of overly discounting future costs works both ways. People under-value in hindsight the amount of effort they put into getting something once they have it. Imagine for instance asking someone on a tropical holiday whether it was worth working all those extra shifts to save up for it, they’re bound to say yes. If they went on the holiday first and you ask them while they’re working a bunch of extra shifts to pay the bill you might get a different answer. The bias as I see it is to overvalue the present and discount both the future and the past.
So I don’t really see why we should assume our future self knows any better than the present or past versions. They just have a different bias. What we need is a “timeless” version of ourself...
The whole idea that [if you don’t remember something then for the purposes of decision making it didn’t happen] seems fundamentally ridiculous to me. Actually it’s wierder than “didn’t happen” in this example, it’s “as if it was not about to happen” because you will have forgotten it some time in the future. It seems even more bizzare to me that you suggest leaving this in tact and instead resolving the paradox by changing the way you accumulate utilons. All this suggests to me that when accounting for memory failures you can’t always correctly judge the best decision from anywhere other than an entirely external viewpoint. The fact that this is difficult to actually do is just another one of life’s challenges.
I actually think poor decision making as a result of overly discounting future costs works both ways. People under-value in hindsight the amount of effort they put into getting something once they have it. Imagine for instance asking someone on a tropical holiday whether it was worth working all those extra shifts to save up for it, they’re bound to say yes. If they went on the holiday first and you ask them while they’re working a bunch of extra shifts to pay the bill you might get a different answer. The bias as I see it is to overvalue the present and discount both the future and the past.
So I don’t really see why we should assume our future self knows any better than the present or past versions. They just have a different bias. What we need is a “timeless” version of ourself...