I didn’t put it in the original, but it feels the reverse to me. Younger people have more taste buds, more tactile pleasure, more reason to signal to others, more uncertainty, more mobility. All of those seem to increase the amount of utilons one gets in a youth age as opposed to an old one.
So for example. Say I give, out of the blue, no strings attached, 500 Euros to a 70 year old man, and 500 to a 22 year old man.
Who do you think will make the most out of the money given?
The guy may go to a paintball, a theme park, begin a startup, buy a star wars clothing article, buy some narcotics and give a party, travel to the beach, pay 6 months of a course he always wanted to do.
The older man has fewer good uses for it, and probably would just save it to keep it safe. He may give a party, but he can’t stand in the party for long, or drink as much, probably he wouldn’t begin a startup, or fulfill a childhood dream.
He could, it is true, buy painkillers if he has chronic pain. A better TV-set, maybe.
But it still seems to me that the marginal utility of money is higher by a large factor when one is younger.
And this is in addition to all the other reasons I mentioned. Even if this is false, the other reasons stand on solid ground.
With the 500E, an old person could indeed get better pain meds that would allow them to basically function instead of living in hell.
A 70-year old is fully capable of doing the last four of the seven items you named (though he would be more likely to do the last three than the middle one). My grandfather finally gave up body-surfing when he was 85. It seems like you’ve imported ‘be boring’ into your definition of ‘old person’. Plus, drug-fuelled party? Now THAT’s a really high efficiency use of money. Really utilitarian.
I’m not posting about efficiency, I’m posting about what people would, actually, on average, do, and how good that would be for them. You know, random people in the park, not utilitarians.
I remember seeing one of Aubrey the Grey presentations, and he said something like:
It is very simple, look.
Shows a picture similar of young women playing volleyball.
Fun
Shows another picture of old women sitting on a bench next to them
Not Fun, see, it is simple.
I’m really glad your grandpa has all that energy. My grandma used to walk 10 kilometers a day when she was 80, I couldn’t catch up. But let’s face it the way Aubrey faces it.
It is not that 95% of elders are boring and don’t want to go do what our ancestors did. It is just that they can’t. They are not able to. It is painful, or impossible, or really hard, or socially frowned upon. I don’t think older people spend more on food and wine because with experience people realize that the best things in life are food and drinks. I think they do it because there is nothing left for them to use their money on. It is a cruel world, and Woody Allen makes a good case for it: My next Life
“The older man has fewer good uses for it”—that’s an entirely arbitrary assumption. I don’t see any good reasons to believe that (and that’s even before we get into what “good uses” means).
Besides, you can flip the sign and ask who can tolerate lack of money easier. Would you prefer to spend a year being homeless when you’re 22 or when you’re 70?
I disagree that your characterization of this as flipping the coin is a good one. Flipping the coin would be to say, if I stole 500 moneys from a 70 year old account, or a 22 year old, which one would suffer most. I believe the 22 year old would suffer more.
There is a completely different question which is: Is it better to be financially miserable when old, or when young. I think Puneet Sahani has settled this issue by awesomely being homeless at 26-28 and indian while travelling many countries. It is better to be financially miserable when young.
So the marginal return per unit of money, I’d claim, is higher near misery values when you are old, and higher otherwise when you are young. Do you think we may be going towards an agreement here?
Edit: Apparently, as a non-native I did’t know the connotations of “flipping a coing” I though it meant something like “reverse your argument” or “do the opposite to see how inconsistent your position is”. Now I have no idea what it means.
It’s not flipping the coin, it’s flipping the sign of the transaction. Anyway, you’re just reasserting your beliefs but don’t provide arguments as why do you think that’s true. Not to mention that you’re contradicting yourself by saying both “It is better to be financially miserable when young” and “I believe the 22 year old would suffer more”.
With regard to the marginal value of a dollar, I think you’re claiming that the slope of the utility function is different for the young and for the old. That I don’t know. It doesn’t seem to me to be self-evident and I would like to see some data and/or good justifications before accepting that.
No I’m not, you didn’t understand. I’ll try to rephrase it, and you can try to help by steelmanning what you read.
My point is that comparing the last 500 dollars of an old man, with the last 500 dollars, the old man needs his more. So I agree with you, being old and homeless sucks more than being young and homeless.
Now if you take actual people, they are not near the misery line (if they are friends with whomever is reading this comment, they probably will sleep under a roof in a place with electricity). Then, if you go to a park, say, in Oslo, or Chicago, or ciudad del mejico, and steal 500 bucks of someone, one old, one young, the young one will miss it more.
and of course, this is a factual question that could be solved by going there and asking lots of people. but neither of us will, and I see no reason for the burden of proof to be on me. I gave my reasons for the slopes I believe correct. That is all I will ever be able to offer.
I didn’t put it in the original, but it feels the reverse to me. Younger people have more taste buds, more tactile pleasure, more reason to signal to others, more uncertainty, more mobility. All of those seem to increase the amount of utilons one gets in a youth age as opposed to an old one.
So for example. Say I give, out of the blue, no strings attached, 500 Euros to a 70 year old man, and 500 to a 22 year old man.
Who do you think will make the most out of the money given?
The guy may go to a paintball, a theme park, begin a startup, buy a star wars clothing article, buy some narcotics and give a party, travel to the beach, pay 6 months of a course he always wanted to do. The older man has fewer good uses for it, and probably would just save it to keep it safe. He may give a party, but he can’t stand in the party for long, or drink as much, probably he wouldn’t begin a startup, or fulfill a childhood dream. He could, it is true, buy painkillers if he has chronic pain. A better TV-set, maybe.
But it still seems to me that the marginal utility of money is higher by a large factor when one is younger.
And this is in addition to all the other reasons I mentioned. Even if this is false, the other reasons stand on solid ground.
With the 500E, an old person could indeed get better pain meds that would allow them to basically function instead of living in hell.
A 70-year old is fully capable of doing the last four of the seven items you named (though he would be more likely to do the last three than the middle one). My grandfather finally gave up body-surfing when he was 85. It seems like you’ve imported ‘be boring’ into your definition of ‘old person’. Plus, drug-fuelled party? Now THAT’s a really high efficiency use of money. Really utilitarian.
I’m not posting about efficiency, I’m posting about what people would, actually, on average, do, and how good that would be for them. You know, random people in the park, not utilitarians.
I remember seeing one of Aubrey the Grey presentations, and he said something like:
It is very simple, look.
Shows a picture similar of young women playing volleyball.
Fun
Shows another picture of old women sitting on a bench next to them
Not Fun, see, it is simple.
I’m really glad your grandpa has all that energy. My grandma used to walk 10 kilometers a day when she was 80, I couldn’t catch up. But let’s face it the way Aubrey faces it. It is not that 95% of elders are boring and don’t want to go do what our ancestors did. It is just that they can’t. They are not able to. It is painful, or impossible, or really hard, or socially frowned upon. I don’t think older people spend more on food and wine because with experience people realize that the best things in life are food and drinks. I think they do it because there is nothing left for them to use their money on. It is a cruel world, and Woody Allen makes a good case for it: My next Life
Random people in the park are affected by utility theory whether or not they use it.
“The older man has fewer good uses for it”—that’s an entirely arbitrary assumption. I don’t see any good reasons to believe that (and that’s even before we get into what “good uses” means).
Besides, you can flip the sign and ask who can tolerate lack of money easier. Would you prefer to spend a year being homeless when you’re 22 or when you’re 70?
I disagree that your characterization of this as flipping the coin is a good one. Flipping the coin would be to say, if I stole 500 moneys from a 70 year old account, or a 22 year old, which one would suffer most. I believe the 22 year old would suffer more.
There is a completely different question which is: Is it better to be financially miserable when old, or when young. I think Puneet Sahani has settled this issue by awesomely being homeless at 26-28 and indian while travelling many countries. It is better to be financially miserable when young.
So the marginal return per unit of money, I’d claim, is higher near misery values when you are old, and higher otherwise when you are young. Do you think we may be going towards an agreement here?
Edit: Apparently, as a non-native I did’t know the connotations of “flipping a coing” I though it meant something like “reverse your argument” or “do the opposite to see how inconsistent your position is”. Now I have no idea what it means.
It’s not flipping the coin, it’s flipping the sign of the transaction. Anyway, you’re just reasserting your beliefs but don’t provide arguments as why do you think that’s true. Not to mention that you’re contradicting yourself by saying both “It is better to be financially miserable when young” and “I believe the 22 year old would suffer more”.
With regard to the marginal value of a dollar, I think you’re claiming that the slope of the utility function is different for the young and for the old. That I don’t know. It doesn’t seem to me to be self-evident and I would like to see some data and/or good justifications before accepting that.
No I’m not, you didn’t understand. I’ll try to rephrase it, and you can try to help by steelmanning what you read.
My point is that comparing the last 500 dollars of an old man, with the last 500 dollars, the old man needs his more. So I agree with you, being old and homeless sucks more than being young and homeless.
Now if you take actual people, they are not near the misery line (if they are friends with whomever is reading this comment, they probably will sleep under a roof in a place with electricity). Then, if you go to a park, say, in Oslo, or Chicago, or ciudad del mejico, and steal 500 bucks of someone, one old, one young, the young one will miss it more. and of course, this is a factual question that could be solved by going there and asking lots of people. but neither of us will, and I see no reason for the burden of proof to be on me. I gave my reasons for the slopes I believe correct. That is all I will ever be able to offer.
To ‘Flip a coin’ is to choose randomly between two options.