[Daniel Negreanu]

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I have read "Poker, Gaming & Life" by David Sklanksy (is it socially acceptable to admit this in this forum?) and most of it seems logically correct, and is interesting, but one bit I disagree with

Basically DS says that it is illogical for some one to take a 1 in 1000 chance of dying for $25,000. He reasons no one would accept $2.5 million and take certain death, and this has the same mathematical EV as the 1 in 1000 case, therefore it is illogical to take the 1 in 1000 chance of dying for any amount of money.

I would quote a few paragraphs, but I'm not sure about the legality and morality of that or whatever

anyway, before I get into this, I thought I'd let Sklansky confirm or deny this claim, maybe I have missinterpreted what he was trying to say or whatever, but it looks to me like a big mistake

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It's comments or posts like these that show me how disconnected some people can be to human emotion. By not factoring in human emotion you'll often come to the WRONG conclusion as David did here. Here is an example where taking this chance would be ENTIRELY logical:

A father see's that his son needs a transplant or he will die. He has no medical insurance and no way of paying for the procedure for his son which costs $25,000.

Some goofy scientist tells him that if he can retrieve a rare poisonous bird from the wild he'll give him $25,000. Let's say the odds of him dying in the process are 1000 to 1.

Would it be "illogical" for this father to try and save his son?

Love isn't logical David. I can take that a step further:

Your son is about to get hit by a truck. If you do nothing he will die 100% of the time. If you try to save him you will die 50% of the time and save him 25% of the time. Meaning that 25% of the time you'd both die.

Without love or human emotion the "logical" answer is simple. Save your own butt! Luckily, that's not how this world works.