When you're talking about rewards now versus later, most of us prefer the rewards now.

When we're making a conscious decision, there are all of these different inputs, including our emotions, the social context that we're in, and the temporal scale. Like you were saying, what's happening that would be immediately available or rewarding to me right now versus something that I might care about in the future? How certain is the outcome?... See more

I do think that the way that neuroscientists use the word value is different than the colloquial use. The way that many people who think about big-V values, like the kinds of aspirational or higher-level things that we care about most that are fundamental to us, that's one input to our daily decision making. But fundamentally, as a neuroscientist,... See more