This paper is kind of hilarious: https://www.nber.org/papers/w31047

Apparently "hyperbolic discounting" - the phenomenon where humans incorrectly weight future rewards ("incorrectly" in that if you use any curve which isn't exponential you will regret it at some point) - isn't necessarily some kind of issue of "self-control", or due to uncertain future gains. It results from humans being really bad at calculating exponentials.