What determines the ratio of long-term vs short-term investment?
What determines the ratio of long-term vs short-term investment in an economy (surely this is known?)
Long-term investment can be thought of as a cooperation of your Current Self with your Future Self. Entities with low-time preference/Long-term investment cooperate more intertemporally.
Following up to the above: smart people have low-time preference and thtis effect is surprisingly large (think about Yudkowsky’s $500 vs 15% chance for 1 million dollars having <p=0.005 significance correlation with ’cognitive reflection) . Smart people also cooperate much more, and this effect is also quite large (don’t remember the exact details). → Might these effects be related?
- Smartness might allow for more approximate Lobian cooperation—intelligence might lower randomness in expected social interaction → in repeated situations/ situations that might be exponentially important. → I forgot the namebut there is this theory that a small increase in fidelity in multi-step production steps is the difference between able to make a functional aeroplane and not being able to do so and that this underlies much of the very large GDP differences we see. This seems sensible and similar
Perhaps the same reasoning could be applied to low-time preference: we could see long-term investment as a many-step current self-future self cooperation. Increasing the fidelity/ cooperation probability at each step by a small amount may exponentially increase long-term investment/low-time preference.
Interesting but doesn’t explain quite explain everything
What determines the ratio of K-selectors vs r-selectors?
There might be a group-selection vs individual selection story going on: our intertemporal Selves are different but highly similar individuals.
Highly similar individuals seem to be able to cooperate better. → (approximate)Lobian cooperation?
Alternatively, we could tell a evolutionary story: self-replicating processes are something like attractors in the space of all processes? [see also Block Universe vs Evolution/ autopoiesis below]
Risk- appetite might be a form of cooperation. Indeed ‘Being able to choose a risky but high EV option over a sure pay-off’ [Like 500vs 15% chance of 1 million] is like you cooperating with your Counterfactual Selves.
How does this interface with Kelly Betting/Ole Peters stuff? Interestingly Risk-appetite and low-time preference seem to both be cooperation, but the first is ‘space-like’ while the other is ‘time-like’.
How does this interface with Armstrong’s Antropic Decision theory https://arxiv.org/abs/1110.6437 ? Armstrong emphasizes that the different answers in Sleeping-Beauty paradoxes arise from different cooperation/utility functions.
Classically we would say utility functions are god-given, but following Ole Peters we would like to pick out canonical utility functions in some way.
Aggregates that are more internally homogenous have higher ‘meta-fitness’: they are more able to compete (Mein Kampf principle). See biological organism with good cancer suppression or indeed etnically and culturally homogenous societies militarily beating far larger empires—Turchin’s Asabiyah [But! this might also be a purely statistical artifact: there probably are many more homogeneous societies than heterogeneous societies]
So for a gene $G$ there might be a tradeoff on different levels: on the first level it may pay-off to act selfishly, on higher levels it will pay off to cooperate. [of course this exactly what Okasha investigates]
How does idiosyncratic risk versus aggregrate risk play into this?
I find the block universe esthetically displeasing. But is there a coherent counterargument I could make?
Suppose we have a population of Frogs. Some of the Frogs have stronger and longer legs and are able to jump further. Now we observe at a later time that that the ratio of Long-legged Frogs to the Short-legged Frogs has (significantly) increased. Naturally we would turn to an natural selection story: the ability to jump further increases the chance of survival for a Frog and meant that they the longer-legged Frogs have outcompeted the short-legged Frogs. However, there is of course also a possibility that this happened purely by chance → Drift hypothesis.
The block-universe seems at odds ABORT
I think this was already observed by Judea Pearl: Causal identification is tightly wrapt up with ‘Flowing Time’.
What determines the ratio of long-term vs short-term investment?
What determines the ratio of long-term vs short-term investment in an economy (surely this is known?)
Long-term investment can be thought of as a cooperation of your Current Self with your Future Self. Entities with low-time preference/Long-term investment cooperate more intertemporally.
Following up to the above: smart people have low-time preference and thtis effect is surprisingly large (think about Yudkowsky’s $500 vs 15% chance for 1 million dollars having <p=0.005 significance correlation with ’cognitive reflection) . Smart people also cooperate much more, and this effect is also quite large (don’t remember the exact details). → Might these effects be related?
- Smartness might allow for more approximate Lobian cooperation—intelligence might lower randomness in expected social interaction → in repeated situations/ situations that might be exponentially important. → I forgot the namebut there is this theory that a small increase in fidelity in multi-step production steps is the difference between able to make a functional aeroplane and not being able to do so and that this underlies much of the very large GDP differences we see. This seems sensible and similar
Perhaps the same reasoning could be applied to low-time preference: we could see long-term investment as a many-step current self-future self cooperation. Increasing the fidelity/ cooperation probability at each step by a small amount may exponentially increase long-term investment/low-time preference.
Interesting but doesn’t explain quite explain everything
What determines the ratio of K-selectors vs r-selectors?
There might be a group-selection vs individual selection story going on: our intertemporal Selves are different but highly similar individuals.
Highly similar individuals seem to be able to cooperate better. → (approximate)Lobian cooperation?
Alternatively, we could tell a evolutionary story: self-replicating processes are something like attractors in the space of all processes? [see also Block Universe vs Evolution/ autopoiesis below]
Risk- appetite might be a form of cooperation. Indeed ‘Being able to choose a risky but high EV option over a sure pay-off’ [Like 500vs 15% chance of 1 million] is like you cooperating with your Counterfactual Selves.
How does this interface with Kelly Betting/Ole Peters stuff? Interestingly Risk-appetite and low-time preference seem to both be cooperation, but the first is ‘space-like’ while the other is ‘time-like’.
How does this interface with Armstrong’s Antropic Decision theory https://arxiv.org/abs/1110.6437 ? Armstrong emphasizes that the different answers in Sleeping-Beauty paradoxes arise from different cooperation/utility functions.
Classically we would say utility functions are god-given, but following Ole Peters we would like to pick out canonical utility functions in some way.
Here we get back again at group-selection vs individual selection. Here I am of course thinking of Okasha’s Evolution and Levels of Selection https://www.amazon.com/Evolution-Levels-Selection-Samir-Okasha/dp/0199556717
Aggregates that are more internally homogenous have higher ‘meta-fitness’: they are more able to compete (Mein Kampf principle). See biological organism with good cancer suppression or indeed etnically and culturally homogenous societies militarily beating far larger empires—Turchin’s Asabiyah [But! this might also be a purely statistical artifact: there probably are many more homogeneous societies than heterogeneous societies]
So for a gene $G$ there might be a tradeoff on different levels: on the first level it may pay-off to act selfishly, on higher levels it will pay off to cooperate. [of course this exactly what Okasha investigates]
How does idiosyncratic risk versus aggregrate risk play into this?
[This argument is not complete]
Block Universe vs Evolution
I find the block universe esthetically displeasing. But is there a coherent counterargument I could make?
Suppose we have a population of Frogs. Some of the Frogs have stronger and longer legs and are able to jump further. Now we observe at a later time that that the ratio of Long-legged Frogs to the Short-legged Frogs has (significantly) increased. Naturally we would turn to an natural selection story: the ability to jump further increases the chance of survival for a Frog and meant that they the longer-legged Frogs have outcompeted the short-legged Frogs. However, there is of course also a possibility that this happened purely by chance → Drift hypothesis.
The block-universe seems at odds ABORT
I think this was already observed by Judea Pearl: Causal identification is tightly wrapt up with ‘Flowing Time’.