I don’t think the right response is to directly respond to this claim. I think the right response is to ask a question aimed to identify what the crux of our disagreement is, and then to respond directly to that. In my experience of talking to many people who make this sort of claim, especially those matching the description given in the post, it is a minority who literally hold the view ‘we should have no pure rate of time preference’, instead most have some other type of reason for the intuition, which I may or may not disagree with in practice.
Would you accept answers of the form:
Question which establishes whether the claim is ‘we should have a rate of pure time preference [1]’ or ‘we have practical reasons to weight effects which are near in time more highly in our decision making, even if we are impartial consequentialists with no pure rate of time preference, for example due to uncertainty about the reliability of long-term forecasts, belief that it is impossible to reduce the probability of existential catastrophe per unit time to 0 etc. [2]’
Suggested response 1, if the person holds position [1]
Suggested response 2, or, more productively, suggested avenues for further discussion, if the person holds one of several versions of position [2]
?
I’m not promising to write such an answer in either case, and accepting answers of the above form doesn’t hugely change the probability that I’ll do so, but because I think that the approach above is the best response in this sort of situation, I think it would be great if others were encouraged to consider responses of this form.
I don’t think the right response is to directly respond to this claim. I think the right response is to ask a question aimed to identify what the crux of our disagreement is, and then to respond directly to that. In my experience of talking to many people who make this sort of claim, especially those matching the description given in the post, it is a minority who literally hold the view ‘we should have no pure rate of time preference’, instead most have some other type of reason for the intuition, which I may or may not disagree with in practice.
Would you accept answers of the form:
Question which establishes whether the claim is ‘we should have a rate of pure time preference [1]’ or ‘we have practical reasons to weight effects which are near in time more highly in our decision making, even if we are impartial consequentialists with no pure rate of time preference, for example due to uncertainty about the reliability of long-term forecasts, belief that it is impossible to reduce the probability of existential catastrophe per unit time to 0 etc. [2]’
Suggested response 1, if the person holds position [1]
Suggested response 2, or, more productively, suggested avenues for further discussion, if the person holds one of several versions of position [2]
?
I’m not promising to write such an answer in either case, and accepting answers of the above form doesn’t hugely change the probability that I’ll do so, but because I think that the approach above is the best response in this sort of situation, I think it would be great if others were encouraged to consider responses of this form.
Genuine question when you say:
Did you mean to say:
Yes, thanks!
Good question! Yes these sorts of replies are allowed and I would be excited to see them!