Thank you for the feedback. I am also confused about what exactly counts as a “bad habit” and why bad habits are bad (see footnote 1). I think one way of avoiding this confusion and still being able to reason about this argument is to just say that doing the bad habit less is less bad (or maybe “good in moderation”?), and doing the bad habit more is more bad. The point still stands: when your future actions are correlated with your present action, the singular action feels more weighty.
In my model, Future Me is NOT identical to me
I agree that future me is not identical to myself either. I think the correlation is high enough that it matters for me, but might not for everyone.
Disagreements about what discount rate should have been used are the primary driver of hatred of Past Me, though I’m pretty sure Future Me will be equally wrong in the other direction..
Agreed. A similar point that I wish I had included in the OP is that this situation can be seen through the lens of acausal trade between your past and future selves: running something like UDT with respect to choices that will affect your future self, you’ll find your present self in better situations because your past self also ran UDT, so you continue with running UDT because of <insert favorite motivation of UDT here>. Importantly, this should work even if you have a high (or higher than you would like) discount rate.
Thank you for the feedback. I am also confused about what exactly counts as a “bad habit” and why bad habits are bad (see footnote 1). I think one way of avoiding this confusion and still being able to reason about this argument is to just say that doing the bad habit less is less bad (or maybe “good in moderation”?), and doing the bad habit more is more bad. The point still stands: when your future actions are correlated with your present action, the singular action feels more weighty.
I agree that future me is not identical to myself either. I think the correlation is high enough that it matters for me, but might not for everyone.
Agreed. A similar point that I wish I had included in the OP is that this situation can be seen through the lens of acausal trade between your past and future selves: running something like UDT with respect to choices that will affect your future self, you’ll find your present self in better situations because your past self also ran UDT, so you continue with running UDT because of <insert favorite motivation of UDT here>. Importantly, this should work even if you have a high (or higher than you would like) discount rate.