I think the issue runs deeper, I call it the “Is the future you always right?” problem.
Consider a classic willpower problem, you want to lose weight but you also want to eat that cake. It is a debate between current you, who wants to enjoy the cake, and future you, who wants to be not fat. Time preference / time discounting and all that. The issue is, if you always choose current self, you will be an unhealthy addicted trainwreck, and if you alway choose future self, you per definition never enjoy anything now. Usually people say the virtuous thing to do is to choose your future self. But is it?
I don’t think it’s quite right to frame this as a debate between current-you and future-you. Future-you doesn’t exist yet and as such is in no position to debate anything with anyone. It’s a debate within current-you between the interests of current-you and future-you. If you want to model it as a debate between sub-agents, they’re “short-term current-you” and “long-term current-you”.
I think everyone agrees that you shouldn’t always give priority to future-you. (Consider e.g. an extreme miser who lives as if in poverty while hoarding huge sums for later use. Though one could instead object on the grounds that they probably aren’t really acting in the best interests of future-them.) But our natural inclination is to overprioritize current-us by so large a margin that “weigh the future more heavily!” is almost always good advice for most of us.
(Just as, on most accounts of ethics that people are prepared to endorse explicitly, “weigh other people’s interests more heavily!” is almost always good advice for leading a morally better life even though it’s possible in theory to go too far and destroy one’s life in the name of helping others. Here, again, in uncontroversial cases of going too far it’s probably possible to argue that the person who went too far didn’t actually optimize for other people’s lives because they’d have been able to help more by not wrecking their own.)
I think the issue runs deeper, I call it the “Is the future you always right?” problem.
Consider a classic willpower problem, you want to lose weight but you also want to eat that cake. It is a debate between current you, who wants to enjoy the cake, and future you, who wants to be not fat. Time preference / time discounting and all that. The issue is, if you always choose current self, you will be an unhealthy addicted trainwreck, and if you alway choose future self, you per definition never enjoy anything now. Usually people say the virtuous thing to do is to choose your future self. But is it?
I don’t think it’s quite right to frame this as a debate between current-you and future-you. Future-you doesn’t exist yet and as such is in no position to debate anything with anyone. It’s a debate within current-you between the interests of current-you and future-you. If you want to model it as a debate between sub-agents, they’re “short-term current-you” and “long-term current-you”.
I think everyone agrees that you shouldn’t always give priority to future-you. (Consider e.g. an extreme miser who lives as if in poverty while hoarding huge sums for later use. Though one could instead object on the grounds that they probably aren’t really acting in the best interests of future-them.) But our natural inclination is to overprioritize current-us by so large a margin that “weigh the future more heavily!” is almost always good advice for most of us.
(Just as, on most accounts of ethics that people are prepared to endorse explicitly, “weigh other people’s interests more heavily!” is almost always good advice for leading a morally better life even though it’s possible in theory to go too far and destroy one’s life in the name of helping others. Here, again, in uncontroversial cases of going too far it’s probably possible to argue that the person who went too far didn’t actually optimize for other people’s lives because they’d have been able to help more by not wrecking their own.)