A lot of what looks like time discounting is really uncertainty discounting.
Cowen is explicitly discussing time discounting. As he writes, “Should we—because of positive discounting—not give them enough fuel to make a safe landing?” (emphasis added) There may of course be other reasons for treating these people differently, including uncertainty about the long-term future, but Cowen is not focusing on these reasons here.
It feels like a terrible example for examining the effects of relativity on utility functions regarding time-discounting; the typical human utility function is going to result in something that approximates Utility(fuel)=stepfunction(fuelpurchased-“100% fuel”) at around 99-100% fuel, regardless of time-discounting. It’s a case of [lands succesffully] versus [runs out of fuel 10 seconds too soon and crashes, killing everyone in the rocket.]
If you’re time discounting heavily enough to not notice that spike, and fuel is somehow the most expensive part of the whole operation, then you’re probably discounting heavily that you’re better off launching two rockets on one-way trips with about 25-50% fuel each, depending on specifics of the rocket.
-In other words, the example fails to probe to the real heart of the mater because it doesn’t matter if i use an Einsteinian reference frame or a Newtonian one, my answer is the same: either 100% fuel or very little fuel.
Cowen is explicitly discussing time discounting. As he writes, “Should we—because of positive discounting—not give them enough fuel to make a safe landing?” (emphasis added) There may of course be other reasons for treating these people differently, including uncertainty about the long-term future, but Cowen is not focusing on these reasons here.
It feels like a terrible example for examining the effects of relativity on utility functions regarding time-discounting; the typical human utility function is going to result in something that approximates Utility(fuel)=stepfunction(fuelpurchased-“100% fuel”) at around 99-100% fuel, regardless of time-discounting. It’s a case of [lands succesffully] versus [runs out of fuel 10 seconds too soon and crashes, killing everyone in the rocket.]
If you’re time discounting heavily enough to not notice that spike, and fuel is somehow the most expensive part of the whole operation, then you’re probably discounting heavily that you’re better off launching two rockets on one-way trips with about 25-50% fuel each, depending on specifics of the rocket.
-In other words, the example fails to probe to the real heart of the mater because it doesn’t matter if i use an Einsteinian reference frame or a Newtonian one, my answer is the same: either 100% fuel or very little fuel.