I’m not sure I complete followed #1 but maybe this will answer what you are getting at.
I agree that the following argument is valid:
Either the time discounting rate is 0 or it is morally preferable to use your money/resources to produce utility now than to freeze yourself and produce utility later.
However, I still don’t think you can make the argument that I can’t think that time discounting is irrelevant to what I selfishly prefer while believing that you shouldn’t apply discounting when evaluating what is morally preferable. And I think this substantially reduces just how compelling the point is. I mean I do lots of things I’m aware are morally non-optimal. I probably should donate more of my earnings to EA causes etc.. etc.. but sometimes I choose to be selfish and when I consider cryonics it’s entirely as a selfish choice (I agree that even without discounting it’s a waste in utilitarian terms).
(Note that I’d make a distinction between saying something is morally favorable and that it is bad or blameworthy to do it but that’s getting a bit into the weeds).
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Regarding the theoretical problems I agree that they aren’t enough of a reason to accept a true discounting rate. Indeed, I’d go further and say that one is making a mistake to infer things about what’s morally good because we’d like our notion of morality to have certain nice properties. We don’t get to assume that morality is going to behave like we would like it to …we’ve just got to do our best with the means of inference we have.
I’m not sure I complete followed #1 but maybe this will answer what you are getting at.
I agree that the following argument is valid:
Either the time discounting rate is 0 or it is morally preferable to use your money/resources to produce utility now than to freeze yourself and produce utility later.
However, I still don’t think you can make the argument that I can’t think that time discounting is irrelevant to what I selfishly prefer while believing that you shouldn’t apply discounting when evaluating what is morally preferable. And I think this substantially reduces just how compelling the point is. I mean I do lots of things I’m aware are morally non-optimal. I probably should donate more of my earnings to EA causes etc.. etc.. but sometimes I choose to be selfish and when I consider cryonics it’s entirely as a selfish choice (I agree that even without discounting it’s a waste in utilitarian terms).
(Note that I’d make a distinction between saying something is morally favorable and that it is bad or blameworthy to do it but that’s getting a bit into the weeds).
—-
Regarding the theoretical problems I agree that they aren’t enough of a reason to accept a true discounting rate. Indeed, I’d go further and say that one is making a mistake to infer things about what’s morally good because we’d like our notion of morality to have certain nice properties. We don’t get to assume that morality is going to behave like we would like it to …we’ve just got to do our best with the means of inference we have.