AstraSequi comments on Open thread, Jul. 18 - Jul. 24, 2016 - Less Wrong Discussion
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If you separate utility discount into uncertainty (which isn't actually a discount of a world state, it's weighting across world-states and should be separately calculated by any rational agent anyway) and time preference, it's pretty reasonable to have no utility discount rate.
It's also reasonable to discount a bit based on diffusion of identity. The thing that calls itself me next year is slightly less me than the thing that calls itself me next week. I do, in fact, care more about near-future me than about far-future me ,in the same way that I care a bit more about my brother than I do about a stranger in a faraway land. Somewhat counteracting this is that I expect further-future me to be smarter and more self aware, so his desires are probably better, in some sense. Depending on your theory of ego value, you can justify a relatively steep discount rate or a negative one.
Hyperbolic discounting is still irrational, as it's self-inconsistent.
Thanks for that – the point that I’m separating out uncertainty helped clarify some things about how I’m thinking of this.
So is time inconsistency the only way that a discount function can be self-inconsistent? Is there any reason other than self-inconsistency that we could call a discount function irrational?