I think it’s worth distinguishing between what I’ll call ‘intrinsic preference discounting’, and ‘uncertain-value discounting’. In the former case, you inherently care less about what happens in the (far?) future; in the latter case you are impartial but rationally discount future value based on your uncertainty about whether it’ll actually happen—perhaps there’ll be a supernova or something before anyone actually enjoys the utils! Economists often observe the latter, or some mixture, and attribute it to the former.
I think it’s worth distinguishing between what I’ll call ‘intrinsic preference discounting’, and ‘uncertain-value discounting’. In the former case, you inherently care less about what happens in the (far?) future; in the latter case you are impartial but rationally discount future value based on your uncertainty about whether it’ll actually happen—perhaps there’ll be a supernova or something before anyone actually enjoys the utils! Economists often observe the latter, or some mixture, and attribute it to the former.
Agreed, that’s exactly what I was trying to get across in that last paragraph.