Mark Broski, a loyal MR reader, asks:

If you woke up one morning and said to yourself, "You know what my problem is? My damn discount rate is too high." What would you do, if anything, to lower it?

Maybe Mark should lower his discount rate later, not now, thus solving the problem right away.

Alternatively, you can view lack of patience and lack of concern for his future self as conceptually distinct problems. To cure lack of patience, develop routines for interrupting episodes of irresponsible present-oriented behavior. Ring up each purchase at a separate store register, or write a journal entry before each cookie you eat.

When it comes to lack of concern for your future self, whoop de doo. If you are going to ignore anyone else's interest, your future self is a good place to start. This is only a problem if you attach special status to your future self, in which case maybe you are not ignoring its interests, at least not relative to your other moral omissions in life.

If you need to be more altruistic more generally, precommit to developing personal ties to those you wish to help. As for your future self, start adopting some old people's habits now, to build the tie between the 2007 you and the 2027 you.

Do you all have any other advice for Mark?

When the verb being conjugated is not ‘is’, the proper conjugation is preferred. ‘Data’ is being treated as a plural noun by the vast majority of users in these two cases.

On Jack Lynch's Grammar and Style Notes webpage, under the heading of “Data”, it reads:

“Though it's nearly a lost cause, purists prefer to keep this a plural noun: "The data are," not "the data is." The (now nearly obsolete) singular is datum”

Subject-verb agreement was heavily impressed on me during grade school. I remember working with sentence diagrams and memorizing long lists of irregular verb conjugations. I even remember covering the case for this particular word. Still, I can never get myself to say “the data are” naturally. Here is one instance where what is right always sounds wrong, despite knowing the different intellectually and having it pointed out to me by my purist friends. While I may be part of the reason why Dr. Lynch relegates this subject to a lost cause, I disagree. A search through the Internet reveals that the phrases “the data are” and “the data is” coexist in the language space.

"As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last loose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."

-- Commissioner Pravin Lal, "Librarian's Preface"