Would you roll the dice on your life? At what cost if any?

[krimson]

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$50 million would be enough for most people. Maybe $100 million. After that, it gets a bit extravagant.

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$50m doesn't put helicopters on the landing pad...

[chiachu]

I intially thought 1000, then began to consider 100...

I asked my little bro, and he told me a regular 6-sided dice would be fine. When i asked why, he said that even if he rolls a 1, hed be "leaving his family in good condition" with the billion dollars.

[ThreeMartini]

Look at all the obese that 'roll the dice' with bariatric surgery, where you have a one in 200 chance of dying from complications. Even with those lousy odds the surgery is only successfull 25% of time anyway. They'll take those odds instead of eating right and exercising.

[felson]

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Every day? This is just once, right? If it was everyday, the power of exponential growth really catches up to us, and makes this bet very, very hard to take.

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Sorry for the misunderstanding, yes this is just once, what I meant is that because i'm taking risks already many of which are around 10,000-1 of dying I would be willing to take this one in addition to them.

Thanks Mack

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Yeah, exactly. If you selected much worse than > 1,000,000, I guess that also means that you don't drive to work, since your chances of dying en route are probably on the order of 1 in 100 million, and you have to do that every day for much less money.

[CallMeIshmael]

I think my number changes drastically depending on how you die.

Is it instant? Painful?

[A_C_Slater]

100 to 1.

Jeez, these nits that say a billion or more probably think that they'll never have to die.

[David Sklansky]

You're still here? You better get over to those other threads. Your cohorts need some reinforcements.

[felson]

No, thanks. I've put in more than enough time on those threads already.

[kpux]

I picked 1000:1 but for no good reason really.

I think that if I died on a die roll, my life would have been worth living just for the absurdity that I died on a die roll.

[BruceZ]

Note that the choices "a number larger than a billion", and > 1,000,000,000 are the same, unless we are British, in which case a billion is 1,000,000,000,000, or what we call a "trillion" in the US. Hence the amount of the prize is also ambiguous.

Also note that if I had a billion dollars waiting for you, and that you would only need to drive to where I am to pick it up, then the persons who would not even roll a billion- sided die also better not come for their cash, since they would be taking a bigger risk than that just by driving.

Similarly, I wouldn't expect those people to be found riding a roller coaster and taking approximately a 100 million to 1 chance of dying, just for the fun of it.