Comments on: The Perils of Low Time-Preference

By: John Q. Galt

John Q. Galt — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 14:29:33 +0000

Oh snap.

By: JOR

JOR — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 10:09:31 +0000

Yeah, exactly. The low time preference is not her having this idea that she’ll have this great pleasure in the future if she gives up her favorite toys for a while; the low time preference is her deciding that that future pleasure outweighs having her favorite toys around right now, and acting on it.

By: Neil Parille

Neil Parille — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 21:59:47 +0000

I wonder what bothered Alisa the most: the dishonesty or the giving to the orphanage?

By: John Q. Galt

John Q. Galt — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 08:42:30 +0000

The interest was the future pleasure.

By: JOR

JOR — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 22:15:08 +0000

Excuse me, by positing HIGH time preference as a cause of criminal behavior.

*hangs head in shame*

By: JOR

JOR — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 21:55:58 +0000

To clarify, I think that Rand was indeed engaging in low time preference behavior, and that the reason someone might see her time preference in this situation as negative is that they might mistake the psychological things going on in her head for her time preference.

By: JOR

JOR — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 21:43:07 +0000

I think the problem is there’s a temptation to think that time preference is something psychological in itself. Some Austrians have tried to get a lot of mileage out of doing just that, by positing low time preference as a cause of criminal behavior, arguing that certain (ahem) racial and sexual groups have naturally higher time preference, etc. When Austrians really go bad, you will almost always find that it’s because they’ve stopped doing praxeology and started doing armchair psychoanalysis. But properly speaking, it’s a praxeological concept, I’d think, not a psychological one. Someone who, say, saves up money to send their kids to college is is engaging in low time preference behavior. But he’s not thinking to himself, “Man, it’ll be so cool to spend that money later instead of sooner!” He’s thinking, “I want to put my kids through college.”

By: sadielou

sadielou — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 15:42:02 +0000

Oh, no. You clearly don’t remember how badly you panic when you lose things.

Bit of a psychic broken window fallacy, I think.

By: sadielou

sadielou — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 15:33:56 +0000

I think I’d like that book.

That first chapter made me remember what a “strange” child I’d been in very much the same way. Reading a biography of Simone Weil gave me the same shock of recognition. The solitariness, the idealized, abstract, somewhat pompous inner life, the search for other people “like me” — Rand & Weil & me were basically identical little girls when we were about seven. And it’s odd that one turned out a capitalist radical, one turned out a socialist radical, and I turned out an absolutely ordinary; I wonder what does that to people.

By: Roderick

Roderick — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 18:13:48 +0000

I don’t think it was negative. The preference was not simply for later as opposed to now. It was for a situation that gets better over a situation that gets worse.