Re: poly: Why interest rates may stay low

Curt Adams writes:
>>I was assuming we have hard-wired [discount] 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.

You've completely lost me here. What is a "rational discount rate"?
How can we "play with temporal perceptions" of uploads, other than
by running them faster or slower?

Robin Hanson
hanson@econ.berkeley.edu http://hanson.berkeley.edu/
RWJF Health Policy Scholar, Sch. of Public Health 510-643-1884
140 Warren Hall, UC Berkeley, CA 94720-7360 FAX: 510-643-8614
Received on Tue Mar 3 17:33:09 1998