Yes, that discounting makes sense, but it’s explicitly not what Eliezer is talking about. His very first sentence:
“I’ve never been a fan of the notion that we should (normatively) have a discount rate in our pure preferences—as opposed to a pseudo-discount rate arising from monetary inflation, or from opportunity costs of other investments, or from various probabilistic catastrophes that destroy resources or consumers.”
(Also, I don’t see how that example is ‘hyperbolic’.)
Assuming, in Paul Crowley’s example, that there is a constant rate of failure (conditional on not having already failed), this yields well-behaved exponential discounting, which is relatively paradox-free.
Yes, that discounting makes sense, but it’s explicitly not what Eliezer is talking about. His very first sentence:
(Also, I don’t see how that example is ‘hyperbolic’.)
Agree. Not hyperbolic.
Assuming, in Paul Crowley’s example, that there is a constant rate of failure (conditional on not having already failed), this yields well-behaved exponential discounting, which is relatively paradox-free.