gwern comments on Against Discount Rates - Less Wrong

23 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 21 January 2008 10:00AM

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Comment author: Paul_Crowley 21 January 2008 11:33:12AM -1 points [-]

Obviously there's another sort of discounting that does make sense. If you offer me a choice of a dollar now or $1.10 in a year, I am almost certain you will make good on the dollar now if I accept it, whereas there are many reasons why you might fail to make good on the $1.10. This sort of discounting is rationally hyperbolic, and so doesn't lead to the paradoxes of magnitude over time that you highlight here.

Comment author: gwern 21 January 2011 10:42:14PM 5 points [-]

Yes, that discounting makes sense, but it's explicitly not what Eliezer is talking about. His very first sentence:

"I've never been a fan of the notion that we should (normatively) have a discount rate in our pure preferences - as opposed to a pseudo-discount rate arising from monetary inflation, or from opportunity costs of other investments, or from various probabilistic catastrophes that destroy resources or consumers."

(Also, I don't see how that example is 'hyperbolic'.)

Comment author: Perplexed 21 January 2011 11:11:56PM *  0 points [-]

Also, I don't see how that example is 'hyperbolic'.

Agree. Not hyperbolic.

Assuming, in Paul Crowley's example, that there is a constant rate of failure (conditional on not having already failed), this yields well-behaved exponential discounting, which is relatively paradox-free.

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