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#51
10-05-2005, 06:52 AM
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Re: How much do you value your life?
The number of people who say they will do this IF they have the insurance covering their children, etc etc really surprises me.
I would think that your kids and loved-ones would (hopefully) rather you stick around then be set on their college education and what-not. you could offer me 100x of Bill Gates' total worth and I would still not take this bet. I have a few thousand dollars and a crappy car and good friends. I like music, running, soccer, my cat, playing piano, good coffee, etc etc. If I had a zillion dollars I would STILL be the same person and like all the same things. I would get to travel a lot more than I already do and really 'live it up' wherever I go with zero worries...but that's probably about it. I generally am a happy person living a happy life and I don't take my situation for granted (that is, I'm aware that 95% or more of the world's people would be envious of my situation). A little over 2 years ago I was pretty broke and out of a job. No career prospects anymore...and a bit disillusioned. Not much food in the fridge. Also semi-recently divorced. I wouldn't have taken this bet for a zillion dollars even then because I generally enjoy life too much. Obviously some cash would have been nice. But I am content in my ideas that life (and the enjoyment of it) is far more about money. I am truly surprised at the number of people who will take this bet for $2-mil or $5-mil or whatever. It's a real eye-opener for me. I would more strongly consider taking this bet if I was facing more immediate propsects of death....like if I was very old or had cancer pretty badly already or something like that. 
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#52
10-05-2005, 10:11 AM
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Re: How much do you value your life?
[ QUOTE ]
you could offer me 100x of Bill Gates' total worth and I would still not take this bet. [/ QUOTE ] At last someone has a brain. Mack
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#53
10-05-2005, 01:32 PM
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Re: How much do you value your life?
[ QUOTE ]
Depends on whether you are religious or not. If you see death as infinitely negative value (by that I mean going to hell, or similar), then you'd need the other tickets to be of infinite value to you to be neutral EV. If you see death as the cessation of life (if you are atheist, or just believe that when you die you cease to be concious), then any positive amount of money at all would be +ev (as the value of death is 0). [/ QUOTE ] You have a pretty poor understanding of the value of life. I assume you consider yourself to be religious. It doesn't matter if you could objectively prove that there was no god; you would never be neutral to death unless the only thing keeping you from commiting suicide was the effort it took to put a gun to your head. All that we can know for certain is that if a religious man believes that playing this game could possibly result in him going to hell, he will never take the bet. People value their life based on expected utility. If you expect to live 50 more years and you have a family, are well off and feel a connection to your community, the value would have to be absurdly high and the probability of death absurdly low in order to rationally choose to play the game. The marginal utility of a dollar is ever-decreasing as your income increases. If you are well off, the amount that each additional dollar adds to your happiness is drastically reduced; to the point of near indifference when one is extremely well off. It's also true that people are driven by needs other than those that money can provide; and there's a trade off between those factors in how they apply to an individuals overall utility. Placing an exact figure is difficult. The expected value of the wager is not analogous to the expected value of the utility it will provide you. A rational individual would likely prefer a 1/1000 chance of death with each of the 9,999 outcomes paying 1,000,000 than a 1/10 chance of death with each of the 99 outcomes paying 1,000,000. Do you see why? The expected dollar return may be greater in the riskier opportunity. The expected utility is not. Human beings are not profit maximizers, they are utility maximizers. A little side note on rationality for the devoutly religious. If you were certain of the existence of god and the threat of going to hell, you would never be bound to live a perfectly moral life; as even increasing the risk of going to hell to an extremely marginal degree far outweighs any worldly benefit on account of the fact that it's weighted by an eternity (infinite time horizon). Yet - as im sure no one will deny, everyone sins to a degree. That continues to be true if you think there's even the SLIGHT chance of there being hell (which no one can rule out with any certainty) and there being a slight chance that acting a given way will send you there. Are human beings irrational, or does nobody (deep down) _really_ believe in the existence of god and hell? And to those who say that they would never take this bet, you are wrong. You would take it. How do i know this? You do take bets like this for an analogous game every day of your life. Every day you get in a car and drive to work, you're risking your life for a benefit. You know of the risks of automobile fatalities. You _know_ that there's a percentage chance that you can die just by driving to work, or driving to a casino, but you do it anyways. Why do you do it? Because you value the outcome to such a degree that you're willing to undergo the risk associated with driving. The risks that we face every day are simply so remote that we take them willingly. This is analogous to there being an extremely large number of ticket stubs in use for "the game" from the OP.
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#54
10-05-2005, 03:22 PM
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Re: How much do you value your life?
I do it for one of those giant cans of Miller Light. Just think how F'ed up you could get?
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#55
10-05-2005, 03:46 PM
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Re: How much do you value your life?
Oh yeah, i cant edit my post above...
"A rational individual would likely prefer a 1/1000 chance of death with each of the 9,999 outcomes paying 1,000,000 than a 1/10 chance of death with each of the 99 outcomes paying 1,000,000." The second instance (where you are 1/10 to die) is supposed to read one billion.
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#57
10-05-2005, 06:02 PM
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Re: How much do you value your life?
[ QUOTE ]
The number of people who say they will do this IF they have the insurance covering their children, etc etc really surprises me. I would think that your kids and loved-ones would (hopefully) rather you stick around then be set on their college education and what-not. you could offer me 100x of Bill Gates' total worth and I would still not take this bet. I have a few thousand dollars and a crappy car and good friends. I like music, running, soccer, my cat, playing piano, good coffee, etc etc. If I had a zillion dollars I would STILL be the same person and like all the same things. I would get to travel a lot more than I already do and really 'live it up' wherever I go with zero worries...but that's probably about it. I generally am a happy person living a happy life and I don't take my situation for granted (that is, I'm aware that 95% or more of the world's people would be envious of my situation). A little over 2 years ago I was pretty broke and out of a job. No career prospects anymore...and a bit disillusioned. Not much food in the fridge. Also semi-recently divorced. I wouldn't have taken this bet for a zillion dollars even then because I generally enjoy life too much. Obviously some cash would have been nice. But I am content in my ideas that life (and the enjoyment of it) is far more about money. I am truly surprised at the number of people who will take this bet for $2-mil or $5-mil or whatever. It's a real eye-opener for me. I would more strongly consider taking this bet if I was facing more immediate propsects of death....like if I was very old or had cancer pretty badly already or something like that. [/ QUOTE ] prove it
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#58
10-05-2005, 06:07 PM
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Re: How much do you value your life?
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ] you could offer me 100x of Bill Gates' total worth and I would still not take this bet. [/ QUOTE ] At last someone has a brain. Mack [/ QUOTE ] the brain reference you make is weak... becasue if one went with only his brain he would take this bet in a heart beat. Lets be honest and stop being so self righteous. Everyone really. We are poker players. We have no value for money yet its the most important thing to us when we play. You may all be self righteous on the internet and say tons of money wouldnt change you but you are entirely wrong. No man is so stoic. When it comes to the cold truth, man is about self presevation and enrichment. So you have to decide which innate insticnt you are more drawn too. Neither is a noble instinct and both are selfish. If give the option for any amount of vast wealth, in the privacy of your own home, the ideas of having no bounds on your own life would ultimately sway your mind and override all other logics. Most people here would take this bet for 1 billion dollars. Don't kid yourselves.
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#59
10-05-2005, 06:10 PM
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Re: How much do you value your life?
[ QUOTE ]
Oh yeah, i cant edit my post above... "A rational individual would likely prefer a 1/1000 chance of death with each of the 9,999 outcomes paying 1,000,000 than a 1/10 chance of death with each of the 99 outcomes paying 1,000,000." The second instance (where you are 1/10 to die) is supposed to read one billion. [/ QUOTE ] rational does not imply self preservation..
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#60
10-05-2005, 06:10 PM
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Re: How much do you value your life?
Obviousy he wouldn't live an identical life.
The important point is that the difference between how happy he is now and how happy he would be with a billion dollars is smaller than the difference between how happy he is now and death (or complete neutrality to life) - and to a significant degree. He cannot say, however, that it makes no difference to his overall happiness. Because of that, you can be certain that he is willing to take risks (however marginal) with his life for personal, worldly gains. That much can be seen by the risks he takes every day of his life, whether that be driving to work, or taking an airplane on vacation, or eating unhealthy but delicious food on occasion. Those all pose risks to his well being and health, and his life expectancy (or risk of death)is a function of those variables. He could increase his life expectancy by foregoing work, by foregoing vacation and by foregoing fatty foods, but he doesn't. The saying goes - what's the point in living if you can't enjoy life?
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