In some sense, this should be surprising: Surely people have always wanted to avoid dying? But it turns out the evidence that this preference has increased over time is quite robust.
Maybe for almost everything there’s “some” sense in which it should be surprising. But an increase in ‘not wanting to die’, and in particular in the willingness to pay for not wanting to die in modern society, should, I think rather be the baseline expectation. If anything, an absence of it would require explanation: (i) basic needs are met, let’s spend the rest on reducing risk to die; (ii) life has gotten comfy, let’s remain alive → these two factors that you also mention in the link would seem to be pretty natural explanations/expectations (and I could easily imagine a large quantitative effect, and recently also the internet contributing to it; now that LW or so is the coolest thing to spend my time with and it’s free, why trade off my live for expensive holidays or sth.. maybe TV already used to have a similar type of effect generations ago though I personally cannot so readily empathize with that one).
(Fwiw, this is the same reason why I think we’re wrong when complaining about the fact that an increasing percentage of GDP is being spent on (old age) health care (idk whether that phenomenon of complaint is prevalent in other countries, in mine it is a constant topic): Keeping our body alive unfortunately is the one thing we don’t quite master yet in the universe, so until we do, spending more and more on it is just a really salient proof that we’ve gotten truly richer in which case this starts to make sense. Of course nothing in this says we’re doing it right and having the right balance in all this.)
Yeah maybe I didn’t frame the question well. I think there are a lot of good arguments for why it should be superlinear but a) the degree of superlinearity might be surprising and b) even if people at some level intellectually know this is true, it’s largely not accounted for in our discourse (which is why for any specific thing that can be explained by an increasing premium-of-life people often go to thing-specific explanations, like greedy pharma companies or regulatory bloat or AMA for healthcare, or elite preference cascades for covid, or overzealous tiger parents for not letting their kids play in forests, etc).
I agree re: healthcare costs, Hall and Jones presents a formal model for why substantially increased healthcare spending might be rational; I briefly cover the model in the substack post.
Somewhat related: Topic reminds me of a study I’ve once read about where Buddhist Monks, somewhat surprisingly, supposedly had high fear of death (although I didn’t follow more deeply; when googling the study pops up immediately).
Maybe for almost everything there’s “some” sense in which it should be surprising. But an increase in ‘not wanting to die’, and in particular in the willingness to pay for not wanting to die in modern society, should, I think rather be the baseline expectation. If anything, an absence of it would require explanation: (i) basic needs are met, let’s spend the rest on reducing risk to die; (ii) life has gotten comfy, let’s remain alive → these two factors that you also mention in the link would seem to be pretty natural explanations/expectations (and I could easily imagine a large quantitative effect, and recently also the internet contributing to it; now that LW or so is the coolest thing to spend my time with and it’s free, why trade off my live for expensive holidays or sth.. maybe TV already used to have a similar type of effect generations ago though I personally cannot so readily empathize with that one).
(Fwiw, this is the same reason why I think we’re wrong when complaining about the fact that an increasing percentage of GDP is being spent on (old age) health care (idk whether that phenomenon of complaint is prevalent in other countries, in mine it is a constant topic): Keeping our body alive unfortunately is the one thing we don’t quite master yet in the universe, so until we do, spending more and more on it is just a really salient proof that we’ve gotten truly richer in which case this starts to make sense. Of course nothing in this says we’re doing it right and having the right balance in all this.)
Yeah maybe I didn’t frame the question well. I think there are a lot of good arguments for why it should be superlinear but a) the degree of superlinearity might be surprising and b) even if people at some level intellectually know this is true, it’s largely not accounted for in our discourse (which is why for any specific thing that can be explained by an increasing premium-of-life people often go to thing-specific explanations, like greedy pharma companies or regulatory bloat or AMA for healthcare, or elite preference cascades for covid, or overzealous tiger parents for not letting their kids play in forests, etc).
I agree re: healthcare costs, Hall and Jones presents a formal model for why substantially increased healthcare spending might be rational; I briefly cover the model in the substack post.
Somewhat related: Topic reminds me of a study I’ve once read about where Buddhist Monks, somewhat surprisingly, supposedly had high fear of death (although I didn’t follow more deeply; when googling the study pops up immediately).