Re:In defense of flat earthers (2020)
by whakim on Monday January 17, 2022 @11:40PM
(#29975192)
I'm not sure this holds because humans in general are pretty bad at reasoning about low-probability, high-magnitude events. People will deal with a ~1% chance of $10M very differently to a guaranteed $100k. (To be clear, I also don't believe that "lack of skin in the game" totally accounts for faith in conspiracy theories.)
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People will deal with a ~1% chance of $10M very differently to a guaranteed $100k.
Money is a very bad medium to talk about probability and human reasoning because doing so supposes that all dollars are worth the same when in reality they are anything but. Your last dollar is more valuable than your hundredth dollar which is more valuable than your thousandth dollar which is far more valuable than your millionth dollar. Giving someone ten million dollars does not make a hundred times as much difference to their lives as giving them one hundred thousand.
I was actually typing something like this in addition to what I already wrote, but I didn't think it was totally applicable in the context of the GP's statement. For the vast majority of folks an unexpected bill of $100k and an unexpected bill of $10M are likely to be equally ruinous.
People trade health at low and high probabilities for money all the time. That's the model that produced the $10M number in the first place.
The $10M number came from people already not taking into account low probability events.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life
VSL