That’s interesting. I don’t think you should extend your utility function into the past that way. You have to go back to the application, and ask why you’re doing discounting in the first place. It would be more reasonable to discount for distance from the present, whether forwards or backwards in time.
Elsewhere in this thread, you have criticised hyperbolic discounting for being ‘irrational’, by which I presume you mean the fact that is inconsistent under reflection, while exponentials are not.
It would be more reasonable to discount for distance from the present, whether forwards or backwards in time.
Your new function is also inconsistent under reflection.
Maybe this is an argument for not discounting, since that is the only possible way to have a past-future symmetric, reflexively consistent utility function.
Elsewhere in this thread, you have criticised hyperbolic discounting for being ‘irrational’, by which I presume you mean the fact that is inconsistent under reflection, while exponentials are not.
That’s interesting. I don’t think you should extend your utility function into the past that way. You have to go back to the application, and ask why you’re doing discounting in the first place. It would be more reasonable to discount for distance from the present, whether forwards or backwards in time.
Elsewhere in this thread, you have criticised hyperbolic discounting for being ‘irrational’, by which I presume you mean the fact that is inconsistent under reflection, while exponentials are not.
Your new function is also inconsistent under reflection.
Maybe this is an argument for not discounting, since that is the only possible way to have a past-future symmetric, reflexively consistent utility function.
Just a thought.
Not really—this is the problem.
We are referring to the same fact. Reflective inconsistency is a trivial consequence of dynamic inconsistency.