Future bias in action: does the past matter more when you can affect it?

Philosophers have long noted, and empirical psychology has lately confirmed, that most people are “biased toward the future”: we prefer to have positive experiences in the future, and negative experiences in the past. At least two explanations have been offered for this bias: (1) belief in temporal passage (or related theses in temporal metaphysics) and (2) the practical irrelevance of the past resulting from our inability to influence past...