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Will_Sawin comments on Working hurts less than procrastinating, we fear the twinge of starting - Less Wrong
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If they don't know that they are irrational in this manner:
"I'll give you tools when you need them / money when you work if you pay me now"
"OK, I'll work tomorrow, so that's a good deal"
"You never worked, so I got free money.
If they know they are irrational:
"I'll act as a commitment mechanism. Sign this contract saying you'll pay me if you don't work."
"This benefits me. OK."
<next day>
"I'll relax your commitment for you so you don't have to work. You still have to pay me some, though."
"This benefits me, I really don't want to work right now."
There is ALWAYS a way.
That exploit works against a hyperbolic discounter who today wants to work tomorrow, but tomorrow doesn't want to work today.
It doesn't work against Clippy's example of an exponential discounter who doesn't want to work today and knows that tomorrow he still won't want to work today, but still claims to want to work someday, even though he can't say when.
Our agent cannot reason from "I want to work someday" to "There exists a day in the finitely distant future when I will want to work". He is missing some kind of reverse induction axiom. We agree that there is something wrong with this agent's thinking.
But, I don't see how to exploit that flaw.
Correct, I'm wrong.
It seems like "I want to work someday" is almost not the kind of statement we should use in describing people's desires at all. It doesn't actually say anything about how you'd respond to any choices. If it did you could find a way to dutchbook.
I think you are partially correct in that the problem is ambiguous with respect to some deciding factors -- specfically, the agent's inferential capabilities -- and that there are disambiguations that make your method work. See my reply to User:Perplexed.
100% agreement.