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. About the only result I could see *arguably* being "infinitely" bad would be losing your life, but even then for most people there are things they value more than their life, and the situations we're currently discussing don't involve loss of life anyway.
Besides, even if that were true, that alone doesn't make possible risks "completely different" from unlikely gains. I agree with you that losing all your money isn't equal to doubling all your money, but this is an effect of the [[marginal utility]] of money, not a fundamental difference between an actual cost and an [[opportunity cost]].