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Lumifer comments on Open thread, Jul. 18 - Jul. 24, 2016 - Less Wrong Discussion
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That assumption is to make time the only difference between the situations, because the point is that the total amount of utility over my life stays constant. If I lose utility during the time of the agreement, then I would accept a rate that earns me back an amount equal to the value I lost. But if I only "want" to use it today and I could use it to get an equal amount of utility in 3 months, then I don't have a preference.
I don't think this is a useful approach. A major component of time preference is the fact that future is uncertain.
If you set up the situation such that there is basically no difference between the future and the present (both are certain, known, you yourself don't change, etc.) then yes, reshuffling utility between two otherwise identical points on a timeline is something you could well be indifferent to. However that's very far away from the real life and I thought we were talking about something with practical applications rather than idealized abstractions.
It actually does have practical applications for me, because it will be part of my calculations. I don't know whether I should have any preference for the distribution of utility over my lifetime at all, before I consider things like uncertainty and opportunity cost. Does this mean you would say the answer is no?
I would say that before your current needs, uncertainty, opportunity cost, and changes in yourself the answer is debatable, that is, I can see it coming down to individual preferences.
But I still don't see practical applications. For actual calculations you need some reasonable numbers and I don't see how you are going to come up with them.