Thinking and Deciding

Chapter 19
Decisions about the future
But you must bind me hard and fast, so that I cannot stir from the spot
where you will stand me, . . . and if I beg you to release me, you must
tighten and add to my bonds.
Homer, The Odyssey
In the last chapter, we examined conflicts between self and others. In this chapter,
we look at a different kind of conflict, that between the present and the future. Many
of our decisions require us to choose between satisfying our goals for the immediate
present and our goals for our futures. Should I do the crossword puzzle or work on
this book? (I will enjoy doing the puzzle now, but if I miss the deadline for this
manuscript, I will be unhappy later.) Should a student go to a movie or get started
on a paper? If she goes to the movie, she may regret it later, when she has to finish
the paper at the last minute. Should Bill take a job he likes now, or should he go to
graduate school and get a job he likes even better later? Should I learn the violin,
putting up with the scratching and sawing in order to play Bach later? We can think
of these kinds of conflicts as analogous to social dilemmas. Instead of a conflict
between self and other, the conflict is between a “present self” and a “future self.”
A basic problem we have in such conflicts is that we are biased in favor of our
present self. Our future self, like “others” in social dilemmas, is distant and has
less claim on our attention. We begin to be aware of this problem in childhood, and
we develop methods of self-control. Like Ulysses, who had himself bound to the
mast of his ship so that he could hear the song of the Sirens without giving in to the
temptation to visit them, we learn to “bind” ourselves by making decisions before
the temptation occurs, so that we will not succumb to it.
We can think of decisions about the future as plans or policies. A plan is a
decision to do something at a future time. When we cook a meal, we usually have
some plan in mind. We do certain things at one time and put off other things for
the future. The crucial step here is that we decide now to do something at a later
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