I always envied Faust; the temptation of being able to instantly realize knowledge in all disciplines is something that I would find very difficult to resist, regardless of the consequences. (As Bender says to the Robot Devil, "Hmm. I forgot you could tempt me with things I want.") I think that this is because I've worked so hard to gain what little knowledge I have that the promise of knowing so much more with little additional effort has just become more alluring over time.
More to the point of what you were talking about: I'm not sure why hyperbolic discounting is emphasized over exponential here. A quick look at Wikipedia confirms that exponential decays faster. (In fact, unless I'm misunderstanding hyperbolic discounting, the integral doesn't converge, you need to use exponential discounting.) I wouldn't discount exponentially, so I personally would not take the offer if thinking clearly. But if Omega caught me in an excitable moment, maybe after reading an Iain Banks novel, I would be sorely tempted.
Didn't check my math assumptions, yes. In fact hyperbolic discounting agrees with my intuition, while exponential doesn't. I'm not sure if this demonstrates that exponential discounting is irrational (at least in sufficiently contrived scenarios!) or that I'm just a hyperbolic discounter at heart.
I was reading TV Tropes on Hell, and it occurred to me: If your discounting was sufficiently hyperbolic, or indeed plain exponential with a low enough time preference, it would in some sense be rational to take a literal Faustian bargain. The integral to infinite time of some constant amount of torture per unit time, discounted exponentially or hyperbolically, is finite; enough worldly power and pleasure would outweight it.
But this clashes rather strongly with my intuition. Notice that the argument doesn't depend on hyperbolic discounting; no preference pumping is involved. It works just fine with exponentials and a high decay constant. Or, if the worldly pleasures were strong enough, a low decay constant, that is, a high time preference, such as (I assume) most LWers have. For example, would you take eternal torture for a guarantee of living until the heat-death of the universe, 10^130 years from now, with all the refinements of Fun Theory along the way? Intuition says no, infinity being infinity, but then again intuition is notoriously bad at dealing with very large and very small numbers. If I calculate the thing in time-discounted utilons, it seems to me that my decay constant has to be very tiny indeed for me to care about what happens at the end of *10^130* years.
So should I discard my intuition, and take such a bargain if Mephistopheles should suddenly turn up? (Noting that in 10^130 years, I might learn a thing or two about getting out of such difficulties...) Or alternatively, should I stop discounting future utilons?