Re: Definition of survival

From: Jeff L Jones (jeff@spoonless.net)
Date: Sat Apr 19 2008 - 16:25:48 MDT


On Sat, Apr 19, 2008 at 2:17 PM, Matt Mahoney <matmahoney@yahoo.com> wrote:
> A more realistic example would be: suppose your life expectancy is 10,000
> days. How much would you have to be paid to push a button that will kill you
> with probability 1/10000?

I see that as a somewhat different question. For me, the main cost of
pressing the button and getting killed is the negative effects it
would have on my friends and family. A secondary cost would be that I
wouldn't be able to accompilsh all of the things I'd hoped to. So the
price I'd pay doesn't scale linearly with the number of days I expect
to live. In other words, it doesn't seem nearly twice as bad to me to
press such a button if my previous life expectency was 10,000 days
versus 20,000 days.

Jeff



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