[Foundation-l] GFDL and relicensing

[Anthony]

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