Thanks for the suggestion, Ryan. As I side note, I would be curious to know how my comment could be improved, as I see it was downvoted. I guess it is too adversarial.
Greg can presumably also just take out a loan? I think this will likely dominate the bet you proposed given that your implied interest rates are very high.
I feel like there is a nice point there, but I am not sure I got it. By taking a loan, Greg would loose purchasing power in expectation (meanwhile, I have replaced “$” by “2023-$” in my comment), but he would gain it by taking the bet. People still take loans because they could value additional purchasing power now more than in the future, but this is why I said the bet would only make sense if my and Greg’s marginal earnings would continue to go towards donations if we lost the bet. To ensure this, I would consider the bet a risky investment, and move some of my investments from stocks to bonds to offset at least part of the increase in risk. Even then, I would want to set up an agreement with signatures from both of us, and a 3rd party before going ahead with the bet.
The bet might be nice symbolism though.
Yes, I think symbolism would plausibly dominate the benefits for Greg.
I feel like there is a nice point there, but I am not sure I got it.
The key thing is that you don’t have to pay off loans if we’re all dead. So all loans are implicitly bets about whether society will collapse by some point.
Re risk, as per my offer on X, I’m happy to put my house up as collateral if you can be bothered to get the paperwork done. Otherwise happy to just trade on reputation (you can trash mine publicly if I don’t pay up).
Thanks for the suggestion, Ryan. As I side note, I would be curious to know how my comment could be improved, as I see it was downvoted. I guess it is too adversarial.
I feel like there is a nice point there, but I am not sure I got it. By taking a loan, Greg would loose purchasing power in expectation (meanwhile, I have replaced “$” by “2023-$” in my comment), but he would gain it by taking the bet. People still take loans because they could value additional purchasing power now more than in the future, but this is why I said the bet would only make sense if my and Greg’s marginal earnings would continue to go towards donations if we lost the bet. To ensure this, I would consider the bet a risky investment, and move some of my investments from stocks to bonds to offset at least part of the increase in risk. Even then, I would want to set up an agreement with signatures from both of us, and a 3rd party before going ahead with the bet.
Yes, I think symbolism would plausibly dominate the benefits for Greg.
The key thing is that you don’t have to pay off loans if we’re all dead. So all loans are implicitly bets about whether society will collapse by some point.
Re risk, as per my offer on X, I’m happy to put my house up as collateral if you can be bothered to get the paperwork done. Otherwise happy to just trade on reputation (you can trash mine publicly if I don’t pay up).
(I didn’t downvote it.)