I think a lot of people have high time-discounting rates, resulting in a pretty adversarial relationship with their future selves, such that contracts that allow them to commit to arbitrary future actions are bad. For example, imagine a drug addict being offered to commit themselves to slavery a month from now, in exchange for some drugs right now. I would argue that the existence of this offer is overall net negative from a humanitarian perspective.
I think there is a part of human psychology, and human culture, that expects that large commitments should be accompanied by significant-seeming rituals, in order to help people grok the significance of what they are committing to (example: Marriage). As such, I think it would be important that this platform limits the type of thing that people can commit to, to stuff that wouldn’t be extremely costly to their future selves (though this is already mostly covered with modern contract law, which mostly prevents you from signing contracts that are extremely costly for your future self).
But this leads to a moral philosophy question: are time-discounting rates okay, and is your future self actually less important in the moral calculus than your present self ?
I think a lot of people have high time-discounting rates, resulting in a pretty adversarial relationship with their future selves, such that contracts that allow them to commit to arbitrary future actions are bad. For example, imagine a drug addict being offered to commit themselves to slavery a month from now, in exchange for some drugs right now. I would argue that the existence of this offer is overall net negative from a humanitarian perspective.
I think there is a part of human psychology, and human culture, that expects that large commitments should be accompanied by significant-seeming rituals, in order to help people grok the significance of what they are committing to (example: Marriage). As such, I think it would be important that this platform limits the type of thing that people can commit to, to stuff that wouldn’t be extremely costly to their future selves (though this is already mostly covered with modern contract law, which mostly prevents you from signing contracts that are extremely costly for your future self).
But this leads to a moral philosophy question: are time-discounting rates okay, and is your future self actually less important in the moral calculus than your present self ?