Alfred Hitchcock

A great many people commit suicide on an installment plan, engaging in habits that shorten their lives. 

Economist Gary Stanley Becker, winner of the BoS Nobel Prize, offered a model of what he called “rational addiction”, in which people maximized their life-​time utility in ways that shortened their lives. 

For my part, I think that people think of their future selves less and less as selves and as if ever more distant relatives, as the contemplated future is itself ever more distant. They sacrifice the interests of these remote persons for the recognized selves, and later come to regret some of those sacrifices. (Memory makes it harded to perceive the past self as another person.) 

I’m glad to see that commenting is again functional.