Against a normative asymmetry between near- and future-bias

Latham, Andrew James; Miller, Kristie; Norton, James

doi:10.1007/s11229-023-04045-1

Cited by 5 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 68 publications

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“…Unlike Latham et al (2023), however, we did not find an association between futurebias and near-bias (at least, once people who had no preference were removed from the sample). This is puzzling given that Latham et al ( 2023) found a moderately strong association.…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 85%

“…One potential explanation for this is the difference in the relative proportions of people reporting being future-biased and near-biased across the two studies. Latham et al (2023) found a larger proportion of people reporting both futurebiased and near-biased preferences than we did in the current study. The difference in proportions may, in turn, be explicable in terms of the differences between the vignettes that participants saw.…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 68%

“…Our study did not control for the pleasure or displeasure of anticipation or recollection. Indeed, as Latham et al (2023) note, it may not even possible to do so. They note that it may be impossible to form a temporal preference involving future events without anticipating the future event at all.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Recent research by Latham et al (2023) places the independence assumption in jeopardy. Latham et al found a moderately strong association between being futurebiased and being near-biased and a significant correlation between the strength of future-biased preferences and near-biased preferences.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Moving ego versus moving time: investigating the shared source of future-bias and near-bias

Baron,

Everett,

Latham

et al. 2023

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It has been hypothesized that our believing that, or its seeming to us as though, the world is in some way dynamical partially explains (and perhaps rationalizes) future-bias. Recent work has, in turn, found a correlation between future-bias and near-bias, suggesting that there is a common explanation for both. Call the claim that what partially explains our being both future- and near-biased is our believing/it seeming to us as though the world is dynamical, the dynamical explanation. We empirically test two versions of the dynamical explanation. The first is the moving ego explanation—according to which it is our belief that the ego moves, or our phenomenology as of the ego moving, that jointly (partially) explains future- and near-bias. The second is the moving time explanation—according to which it is our belief that time robustly passes, or our phenomenology as of robust passage, which jointly (partially) explain future- and near-bias. We found no evidence in favour of either explanation.

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Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 85%

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 68%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Moving ego versus moving time: investigating the shared source of future-bias and near-bias

Baron,

Everett,

Latham

et al. 2023

Synthese

Self Cite

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“…Greene, Latham, Miller and Norton (2021) found that ~85% of participants were future-biased when it came to negative hedonic states of affairs such as pain. Latham, Miller and Norton (2023) found ~70%, Latham, Miller, Tarsney and Tierney (2021) found ~70%, Latham, Oh, Miller, Shpall and Yu (forthcoming) found ~63% while found 62%. Our results in this study are a little lower than most of these, though they were within the range reported by Latham, Miller, Norton and Tarsney. This suggests that the complexity of the setup may in fact have reduced future-biased preferences a little.…”

Section: 6mentioning

confidence: 90%

Can We Turn People into Pain Pumps? On the Rationality of Future Bias and Strong Risk Aversion

2023

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Future-bias is the preference, all else being equal, for negatively valenced events to be located in the past rather than the future, and positively valenced ones to be located in the future rather than the past. Strong risk aversion is the preference to pay some cost to mitigate the badness of the worst outcome. People who are both strongly risk averse and future-biased can face a series of choices that will guarantee them more pain, for no compensating benefit: they will be pain pumped. Thus, combining these preferences is rationally impermissible. Dougherty (2011) argues that this gives us reason to think that future-bias is rationally impermissible. This argument, and a similar one presented by Greene and Sullivan (2015), relies on the idea that if several preferences are not rationally combinable, then in the absence of some explanation of why they are not combinable, we should conclude that (at least) one of them is rationally impermissible. We take up this question by, inter alia, reflecting on the empirical results of a study we ran that probes people’s risk averse and future-biased preferences. We argue that the data, in conjunction with other considerations, suggests that we should not infer from the irrationality of the combination of these preferences to the irrationality of one of the preferences singly. We also argue that given the descriptive data about these preferences, there is no reason to think that, if one of them is rationally impermissible, then it is future-bias. Finally, we reflect on the general issue of whether individual preferences are rationally evaluable.

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The role of causal manipulability in the manifestation of time biases

Hodroj,

Latham,

Miller

et al. 2024

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We investigate the causal manipulability hypothesis, according to which what partly explains (a) why people tend to prefer negative events to be in their further future rather than their nearer future and positive events to be in their nearer future rather than their further future and (b) why people tend to prefer that negative events be located in their past not their future and that positive events be located in their future not their past, is that people tend to discount the value of events they are less able causally to manipulate. If people discount the value of events they are less able to causally manipulate, then since often temporally nearer future events are more causally manipulable than further ones, and since future events are manipulable whereas past ones aren’t, this could explain both (a) and (b). In turn, if the causal manipulability hypothesis is correct, this might suggest that insofar as people’s preferences are explained in this manner, those preferences are rationally permissible, since relative causal manipulability is normatively relevant. Thus, ascertaining whether the causal manipulability hypothesis is true may shed light on the normative status of such preferences. We investigate the cognitively mediated version of the causal manipulability hypothesis, according to which people’s consciously held beliefs about the relative causal manipulability of events explains (a) and (b). Contrary to expectations, we found no evidence in favour of this view. We suggest that either relative causal manipulability plays an explanatory role, but one that is not cognitively mediated, or that it does not play any role, even if it is sometimes associated with other factors, such as probability, that may play a role in explaining some time biased preferences.

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Against a normative asymmetry between near- and future-bias

Cited by 5 publications

References 68 publications

Moving ego versus moving time: investigating the shared source of future-bias and near-bias

Moving ego versus moving time: investigating the shared source of future-bias and near-bias

Can We Turn People into Pain Pumps? On the Rationality of Future Bias and Strong Risk Aversion

The role of causal manipulability in the manifestation of time biases

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