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Hm. I never saw this as a bad attribute nor can I accept it as the reason for procrastination. Yes, sure. People work more for goals that are closer in time the
by erikb 15y ago
Hm. I never saw this as a bad attribute nor can I accept it as the reason for procrastination. Yes, sure. People work more for goals that are closer in time then for goals that are further away. But that is not irrational, nor is it the reason for procastination. First let me explain how I see the procastination thing and then let me say a word or two about why I think that temporal discounting is something rational and useful.
Procrastination often has no reward at all. If it has a reward, why call it procrastionation? You actually do something useful, if it has a reward. The thing is, that "not procrastinating" is considered work, thus related with stress, concentration and energydepletion. So "not procrastinating" has a cost, which humans overestimate. There is some research (that I can't quote right now, but psychological material here on HN often cites some good sources about that) that people value a cost of an objective value X around 2 or 3 times higher then a reward of the same objective value (so losing $100 might feel as bad, as winning $200 might feel good). So most humans prefer instinctively to avoid or minimize costs before they maximize the (stochastic) expected value of an action. Doesn't avoiding cost (stress, "work") seem much more reasonable then missevaluating the reward for procastination? Well, what the truth is can nobody know, because the science also doesn't know yet. But for me it sounds way more reasonable, especially because I know how much I like to not work and to have no stress compared to getting anything done.
So, now why do I think that temporal discounting even is a good thing? Time can change the reward we gain from an object. An object might increase or decrease in value over time. With money we can even be sure that it decreases over time. Also our preferences might change according to our changing situation. Whatever we do now, we can be sure that our situation will be very different one year in the future. And last but not least, the risk increases drastically, that we don't get any reward at all. Dying in a car accident is a very unlikely thing if you sit at home in front of your comuter now. But if you think about that risk again for this point in time + one year it is not that unlikely anymore. All risks increase with a bigger time frame. All this leads to a situation in which gaining something now makes it much more rewarding then gaining it somewhere far in the future.
I think the big problem about that article is that it mixes truth with false assumptions. For example saying humans act irrational is true. It is also true that humans discount rewards over time. But both doesn't mean time discounting is something irrational. This article shows clearly that having some right arguments doesn't make your assumption correct. (this might also be correct to say about my arguments)
- sheeps 15y agoExactly. Distance in time means greater uncertainty of reward, and greater uncertainty means lower motivation to go after it in the first place.
- wycats 15y agoExcept that this factor isn't consistent with the known uncertainty discount, even if we and the person in question understand the discount rationally. In fact, it is often wildly different from the known rational answer. In other words, we have some hardcoded responses to scenarios that are probably built on evolutionarily rational behavior, but which don't apply well to specific scenarios in which the "correct" rational behavior is easily determined.
- GHFigs 15y agoI think the issue here is the language used. The research usually describes things in such a way that "rational = maximizing" and and the phenomena cataloged are "errors" or "biases" that make human behavior fall short of maximizing. So, you could easily come away with the impression that "irrational = always wrong" or "irrational = bad", but what is really meant is that "irrational = not maximizing". Temporal discounting is just something we do. It's a heuristic[1] sometimes gives good results, sometimes doesn't. When it doesn't, the redditor suggests, that's what we call procrastination. When it works well, we generally don't even notice, because it seems so natural. Procrastination often has no reward at all. If it has a reward, why call it procrastionation? You actually do something useful, if it has a reward. That's setting a higher bar for "reward" than what is meant. Pleasurable activities like watching television or playing video games are "rewarding". That's why people do them. That's why people continue doing them even when they "have more important things to do". Yes, in the end, you might not get anything material out of them, but if it truly had "no reward at all", nobody would do them. losing $100 might feel as bad, as winning $200 might feel good That's known as "loss aversion", another cut from Kahneman & Tversky's Greatest Hits. But if you think about that risk again for this point in time + one year it is not that unlikely anymore. Notice that you say if you think about.... When people procrastinate, are they really thinking of those sorts of things. Suppose you're a student that has a paper due soon and opt to play video games instead. You'd probably be thinking something like "I'll play games now and do the paper later." rather than something like "I might die before the end of term, so why bother with the paper?" That's not to say you're wrong: only to bring it back to the original context. [1]: A heuristic, in other words, being a way of "avoiding cost" of doing the rational (maximizing) computation. So it's not really different from what you're saying.