On Nov 23, 2007 10:53 AM, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
On Nov 23, 2007 10:16 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
We're talking about possible but unlikely risks, not possible but unlikely gains. They are completely different.
From a game theory perspective, aren't they exactly the same?
No. If you own £100, losing £100 is infinitely bad. There is no amount of gain that is infinitely good.
Losing all your money is not infinitely bad. Losing £101 would be worse. And even if that weren't true, I don't think you're using "infinitely" in any standard sense of the term.
To put it another way, if losing £100 is infinitely bad, then you'd never engage in any risk, no matter how small, which had any chance of leading to such a result. This means, in essence, you'd never do anything at all.
Actually, this in itself would be self-contradictory, because since every action you could possibly make (including doing nothing) would have a risk you'd lose £100, every action would therefore have an infinitely negative payout and therefore be equivalent in value. 50% of infinity is equal to 0.0001% of infinity, after all.