I think the argument is missing the fact that you don't use temporal discounting to look at the past. Temporal discounting is about uncertainty--you're making a choice and you're uncertain about the future. The further in the future, the more uncertain it is. But if you look backwards, there is no uncertainty (or at least a lot less). To give an example, if you were Hitler's nanny, deciding to smother him would have no apparent value (probably negative value, at least according to his family). It would be very difficult to predict what his effect over the next 60 years would be. If you were a time traveler, and knew about what Hitler was going to do, then the decision to smother him might have far more value than deciding the death of one random person today. There would still be uncertainty, because you don't know what would have happened if you started history forward from that same point. So, you're right: there is no obvious reason to believe killing one person in the year zero is worse than killing one person today, because at their respective times, the decisions were equivalent. But you can still use temporal discounting to look at the future, because the chances of your choices today having the favorable outcome you anticipate are diminished the further in the future they are. Another way to look at it: temporal discounting would not have any value, if you knew the future (because again, there would be no uncertainty).
Hyperbolic discounting (rather than exponential) can avoid this implication. The few contemporary philosophers sympathetic to discounting would support hyperbolic over exponential discounting.
That is only clearly ludicrous relative to your standards.
To someone that discounts in the specified way, there's nothing ludicrous about it. It's just how things are.
What you're saying here strikes me as about as pointless as someone saying that it intrinsically makes no sense to say pineapple on pizza is bad, because if you put pineapple on pizza, it would taste like pizza with pineapple on it, then adding "Which is clearly gross." As though your attitudes about pizza toppings matter at all to someone who likes pineapple on pizza.
Same here. If I discount, I don't care how ludicrous you find it. I'm just going to do it.
Temporal discount rates are, like anything else, potentially reflective of contingent psychological facts about the utility function of an agent. Such facts cannot be true or false any more than it makes sense to say that being a human is "true" or that having 42 chromosomes is "false." Realists about these sorts of things strike me as making category errors or using terms and concepts in very strange ways.
I think the argument is missing the fact that you don't use temporal discounting to look at the past. Temporal discounting is about uncertainty--you're making a choice and you're uncertain about the future. The further in the future, the more uncertain it is. But if you look backwards, there is no uncertainty (or at least a lot less). To give an example, if you were Hitler's nanny, deciding to smother him would have no apparent value (probably negative value, at least according to his family). It would be very difficult to predict what his effect over the next 60 years would be. If you were a time traveler, and knew about what Hitler was going to do, then the decision to smother him might have far more value than deciding the death of one random person today. There would still be uncertainty, because you don't know what would have happened if you started history forward from that same point. So, you're right: there is no obvious reason to believe killing one person in the year zero is worse than killing one person today, because at their respective times, the decisions were equivalent. But you can still use temporal discounting to look at the future, because the chances of your choices today having the favorable outcome you anticipate are diminished the further in the future they are. Another way to look at it: temporal discounting would not have any value, if you knew the future (because again, there would be no uncertainty).
Hyperbolic discounting (rather than exponential) can avoid this implication. The few contemporary philosophers sympathetic to discounting would support hyperbolic over exponential discounting.
We are aware that temporal discounting involves temporal DISCOUNTING. But thanks for the reminder...
That is only clearly ludicrous relative to your standards.
To someone that discounts in the specified way, there's nothing ludicrous about it. It's just how things are.
What you're saying here strikes me as about as pointless as someone saying that it intrinsically makes no sense to say pineapple on pizza is bad, because if you put pineapple on pizza, it would taste like pizza with pineapple on it, then adding "Which is clearly gross." As though your attitudes about pizza toppings matter at all to someone who likes pineapple on pizza.
Same here. If I discount, I don't care how ludicrous you find it. I'm just going to do it.
Temporal discount rates are, like anything else, potentially reflective of contingent psychological facts about the utility function of an agent. Such facts cannot be true or false any more than it makes sense to say that being a human is "true" or that having 42 chromosomes is "false." Realists about these sorts of things strike me as making category errors or using terms and concepts in very strange ways.