On Nov 23, 2007 10:53 AM, Anthony <wikimail(a)inbox.org> wrote:
On Nov 23, 2007 10:16 AM, Thomas Dalton
<thomas.dalton(a)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.