The idea is not really that you care equally about future events—but rather that you don’t care about them to the extent that you are uncertain about them; that you are likely to be unable to influence them; that you will be older when they happen—and so on.
It is like in chess: future moves are given less consideration—but only because they are currently indistinct low probability events—and not because of some kind of other intrinsic temporal discounting of value.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/n2/against_discount_rates/
The idea is not really that you care equally about future events—but rather that you don’t care about them to the extent that you are uncertain about them; that you are likely to be unable to influence them; that you will be older when they happen—and so on.
It is like in chess: future moves are given less consideration—but only because they are currently indistinct low probability events—and not because of some kind of other intrinsic temporal discounting of value.