Future solidarity is a preference. Different strengths of that preference lead to different time preferences.
Having said that, I think it’s true that people generally have a strong future solidarity preference with themselves, at least in theory, so that this is not a valid argument against the long view as the best strategy for winning, given the preferences that people have.
A better argument comes from uncertainty about events and preferences in the future.
In the marshmallow case, how is the child supposed to know that he can trust the Marshmallow Man? As the seconds tick by, is he sure he heard Marshmallow Man right? Maybe he misunderstood. Is he sure he remembers what the Marshmallow Man said?
Have they factored trust out of the marshmallow experiment? Analyzed correlations between trust and holding off on eating the marshmallow?
For grown up problems, we don’t know know what the future holds. Remember when a college education was supposed be your key to a secure future? Ha! The world is changing faster than ever. And how good it will be is largely out of your hands. It’s unlikely that you, personally, will be the one to defeat Death. You don’t know what the world will be like, and you don’t even know what you will be like. How have your preferences for money, experience, leisure, people, and places changed in the past? How much do you think they’ll change in the future? How will this interact with changes in the state of the world?
In the face of such uncertainty, “do what you love” is likely the most self negating you should be, while “Live Now” is looking more and more reasonable.
A final thought. It occurs to me that backward solidarity is likely as important as future solidarity for long term thinking. Maybe more so. If you feel free to create yourself anew each day, is it likely you’ll have the commitment to follow through on a project?
The Rochester researchers once again got a bunch of kids into a room. But they did something a bit different. Right before giving the kid a marshmallow, they would have an encounter with an adult. One would be unreliable; he would promise a bunch of fun art supplies that would never appear. Another would be reliable, delivering the art supplies as promised. That earlier encounter had a huge influence on kids’ willingness to wait for a second marshmallow. Only one of the 14 children in the unreliable condition held out for the full 15-minute wait. They may have assumed that the second marshmallow, just like the art supplies, was a big lie. More than half of the kids who had just had a reliable encounter, however, made it through the 15-minute wait.
I’m thinking further, and considering the general priors for trust that the kids walk into the room with. I can somewhat see the problem with my own behavior. Lacking trust, you take the marshmallow in the hand, instead of the two in a contingent trustworthy future.
It reminds me of some “children of alcoholics” book I read once. It said that alcoholics often make promises to their children that they later do not fulfill. And then those children have long-term problem with trust and self-discipline, even decades later.
If that is true, I would expect such children to do worse in the Marshmallow test and to have worse outcomes later in life.
The flip side of the unreliable parent is the French Parent—I bought some book about French parenting as compared to US parenting to give to a friend. The basic thrust was that the parent, when it came to discipline, should be something like a force of nature. Sure, swift, serene, no bargaining, no upset. Caring, but imperturbable. This is the way it is. You do this, this happens. Gravity, with a hug.
Which leads me to a very disturbing thought. At first, I thought a test to differentiate trust in people versus self discipline was possible. Factor the person out of the marshmallow scenario, and see how the kids do.
But that doesn’t really prove anything. What if trust is learned as a whole, when young? Your parents are a force of nature. They are the universe, when you’re a baby. If they’re capricious, unpredictable, and worse, malevolent, then that’s your emotional estimate of the universe. It’s not that you don’t have self discipline, it’s that you live in a malevolent, unpredictable universe that you rightly don’t trust. Or so it seems to you.
It would be interesting to correlate parental behavior and one’s picture of God. Maybe that feeling of God some people have is the psychic after image of how the universe, mainly through mom and dad, appeared to them when young.
What if trust is learned as a whole, when young? Your parents are a force of nature. [...] If they’re capricious, unpredictable, and worse, malevolent, then that’s your emotional estimate of the universe. It’s not that you don’t have self discipline, it’s that you live in a malevolent, unpredictable universe that you rightly don’t trust. Or so it seems to you.
Yes. People bring many aliefs from their childhood; predictability of the universe is probably one of them.
If your model says that one marshmallow is sure, but two marshmallows have probability smaller than 50%, then choosing one is better. If your model says that you cannot trust anything, including yourself, then following short-term pleasures is better than following long-term goals.
How can this model be fixed? It would probably require a long-term exposure to some undeniable regularity. Either living in a strict environment (school? prison?) or maintaining long-term records about something important.
I think an extended period of working with your hands helps. Do some projects where you’re interacting with agentless reality. Garden. Build a fence. Fix your car. The fewer words involved, the better.
Future solidarity is a preference. Different strengths of that preference lead to different time preferences.
Having said that, I think it’s true that people generally have a strong future solidarity preference with themselves, at least in theory, so that this is not a valid argument against the long view as the best strategy for winning, given the preferences that people have.
A better argument comes from uncertainty about events and preferences in the future.
In the marshmallow case, how is the child supposed to know that he can trust the Marshmallow Man? As the seconds tick by, is he sure he heard Marshmallow Man right? Maybe he misunderstood. Is he sure he remembers what the Marshmallow Man said?
Have they factored trust out of the marshmallow experiment? Analyzed correlations between trust and holding off on eating the marshmallow?
For grown up problems, we don’t know know what the future holds. Remember when a college education was supposed be your key to a secure future? Ha! The world is changing faster than ever. And how good it will be is largely out of your hands. It’s unlikely that you, personally, will be the one to defeat Death. You don’t know what the world will be like, and you don’t even know what you will be like. How have your preferences for money, experience, leisure, people, and places changed in the past? How much do you think they’ll change in the future? How will this interact with changes in the state of the world?
In the face of such uncertainty, “do what you love” is likely the most self negating you should be, while “Live Now” is looking more and more reasonable.
A final thought. It occurs to me that backward solidarity is likely as important as future solidarity for long term thinking. Maybe more so. If you feel free to create yourself anew each day, is it likely you’ll have the commitment to follow through on a project?
Yes, recently.
Nice, thanks. It’s what I’d expect.
I’m thinking further, and considering the general priors for trust that the kids walk into the room with. I can somewhat see the problem with my own behavior. Lacking trust, you take the marshmallow in the hand, instead of the two in a contingent trustworthy future.
It reminds me of some “children of alcoholics” book I read once. It said that alcoholics often make promises to their children that they later do not fulfill. And then those children have long-term problem with trust and self-discipline, even decades later.
If that is true, I would expect such children to do worse in the Marshmallow test and to have worse outcomes later in life.
That was the kind of thing I was getting at.
The flip side of the unreliable parent is the French Parent—I bought some book about French parenting as compared to US parenting to give to a friend. The basic thrust was that the parent, when it came to discipline, should be something like a force of nature. Sure, swift, serene, no bargaining, no upset. Caring, but imperturbable. This is the way it is. You do this, this happens. Gravity, with a hug.
Which leads me to a very disturbing thought. At first, I thought a test to differentiate trust in people versus self discipline was possible. Factor the person out of the marshmallow scenario, and see how the kids do.
But that doesn’t really prove anything. What if trust is learned as a whole, when young? Your parents are a force of nature. They are the universe, when you’re a baby. If they’re capricious, unpredictable, and worse, malevolent, then that’s your emotional estimate of the universe. It’s not that you don’t have self discipline, it’s that you live in a malevolent, unpredictable universe that you rightly don’t trust. Or so it seems to you.
It would be interesting to correlate parental behavior and one’s picture of God. Maybe that feeling of God some people have is the psychic after image of how the universe, mainly through mom and dad, appeared to them when young.
Yes. People bring many aliefs from their childhood; predictability of the universe is probably one of them.
If your model says that one marshmallow is sure, but two marshmallows have probability smaller than 50%, then choosing one is better. If your model says that you cannot trust anything, including yourself, then following short-term pleasures is better than following long-term goals.
How can this model be fixed? It would probably require a long-term exposure to some undeniable regularity. Either living in a strict environment (school? prison?) or maintaining long-term records about something important.
I think an extended period of working with your hands helps. Do some projects where you’re interacting with agentless reality. Garden. Build a fence. Fix your car. The fewer words involved, the better.