Re: poly: Why interest rates may stay low

In a message dated 2/27/98 5:55:52 PM, hanson@econ.berkeley.edu wrote:

>Curt A. writes:
>>You've lost me somewhere. Real rates are above 1-2% right now,
>>and have been for a while.
>
>I'm looking at data over decades and centuries, not over the
>last few months.

More like 15-20 years. But I agree this may well be a temporary
phenomena.

>>Uploads won't necessarily discount faster; that depends on
>>their discount rates. I would assume uploads wouldn't be
>>tied to just a multiplier of their human discount rate.
>
>I was assuming we have hard-wired rates tied to our rate of
>subjective experience, so that we again have a factor of two
>per subjective "20 years", which might be only a few seconds
>of real time.

I understand the principle, but I do think that if we know enough
to upload, we'll know enough to play with temporal perceptions.
Any built-in emotional responses to produce appropriate discounting
- such as a certain demand for novelty slightly below production -
ought to have already gone haywire in our society. A lot of
people plan out their life spending fairly explicitly after the
mid-30's or so. I think our discounts, then, may have a
substantial rational component an upload will emulate without
trouble.
Received on Sat Feb 28 01:07:31 1998