Talk:Hyperbolic discounting

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While it may be "dynamically inconsistent" to choose $50 now instead of $100 a year from now, but when given the choice between $50 in five years or $100 choose $100 in six years, it seems that it could be rational. The reason is simply that if the other party is around 5 years and then pays you, they would likely also be around 6 years and pay you, but that they are around 1 day does not make it very likely that they will be around 365 days.

Assuming rational choice and working backwards it would even be possible to back-calculate how people estimate the probabilities that another party will be around time t from now. I would guess a convex function similar to what you would get if you assumed that disappearance is a Poisson-process.

Filur 21:58, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

So-called "experimenter trust effects" have been examined in the literature on discount functions, and they don't suffice to explain the diverse range of observed evidence. However, you are very correct that in principle they could explain the example quoted above. Jeremy Tobacman 16:46, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
I know you guys know a lot about this stuff, but the intro paragraph needs to be reworked. As a person with casual interest in economics it doesn't even make sense. Maybe a simple editing would be fine.After reading the intro am I supposed to believe that hyperbolic discounting means as a human I prefer smaller payments sooner when I could get larger payments later? --69.140.59.32 16:37, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

agree with above. first paragraph is confusing. it may make sense to you but not to everyone else, which is kind of the point of the first paragraph. so it needs to be re-worked. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.13.249.253 (talk) 03:53, 25 December 2007 (UTC)