Any time there may be nonconvexity or jumps in outcomes, there may be opportunity. Many investments or expenditures have minimum requirements, where a lot or none is better than some.
If 999,999 of you die in a tornado, but 1 of you happened to win a lottery and had enough resources to build a storm cellar, than that 1-out-of-a-million of you may be the only significant fraction of you left to continue into the future. Concentration of resources can be very useful, and if the cost of concentrating such resources amongst some of you is low enough, it may be worth that cost.
What about the yous that weren’t hit by a tornado? How could you possibly be so doomed that winning the lottery is your best hope of survival? Without knowing it, no less?
Well, to take a theme that’s popular with this website, a portion of a sufficiently large lottery prize could be donated to MIRI and allow for the development of FAI before UFAI...
More practically—in most timelines where I don’t win the lottery, my general physical location falls within astonishingly predictable bounds, and any disaster that happens to hit within those bounds will trim those timelines from the group of timelines in which I continue to live. A lottery win is one way in which I would gain enough resources to get kicked out of my current parameters, and do things such as traveling places I otherwise would never go.
You can move as it is. If you randomly move, that will work better than randomly winning the lottery, at a lower cost. Or are you thinking just a very small lottery to counter the costs of moving?
How many disasters are there that are that large and consistent? All I can think of is meteors and Earthquakes.
I thought my answer answered even your rephrased question; I’ll try again.
Random events happen in all lives. Some cannot be survived with X resources, but can be survived with Y resources. If you’re already above Y, and the cost of a lottery ticket is low enough that it won’t bring you below Y, then you’ll survive anyway, and buying a lottery ticket won’t significantly harm you. However, if you’re already below X, and a lottery win will bring some of you above Y, then buying a lottery ticket still won’t significantly harm you (as you’re going to die anyway), but that fraction of you who are boosted above Y will survive when they otherwise wouldn’t have.
Put another way: having some of me alive is better than having all of me dead.
I guess I was looking at this with the wrong frame of mind. I don’t think quantum immortality is possible, hence my question. I wasn’t even taking it into consideration. But if you believe in quantum immortality, I can see how playing the lottery might be beneficial.
Why would you ever want to transfer wealth from many of ‘you’ to one of ‘you’?
Any time there may be nonconvexity or jumps in outcomes, there may be opportunity. Many investments or expenditures have minimum requirements, where a lot or none is better than some.
If 999,999 of you die in a tornado, but 1 of you happened to win a lottery and had enough resources to build a storm cellar, than that 1-out-of-a-million of you may be the only significant fraction of you left to continue into the future. Concentration of resources can be very useful, and if the cost of concentrating such resources amongst some of you is low enough, it may be worth that cost.
What about the yous that weren’t hit by a tornado? How could you possibly be so doomed that winning the lottery is your best hope of survival? Without knowing it, no less?
Well, to take a theme that’s popular with this website, a portion of a sufficiently large lottery prize could be donated to MIRI and allow for the development of FAI before UFAI...
More practically—in most timelines where I don’t win the lottery, my general physical location falls within astonishingly predictable bounds, and any disaster that happens to hit within those bounds will trim those timelines from the group of timelines in which I continue to live. A lottery win is one way in which I would gain enough resources to get kicked out of my current parameters, and do things such as traveling places I otherwise would never go.
I recall this was the theme of a post from 2010. It appears to have been deleted …
You can move as it is. If you randomly move, that will work better than randomly winning the lottery, at a lower cost. Or are you thinking just a very small lottery to counter the costs of moving?
How many disasters are there that are that large and consistent? All I can think of is meteors and Earthquakes.
I’ll rephrase my question. Why do you want to make things better for one of ‘you’ at the expense of making them worse for many of ‘you’?
I thought my answer answered even your rephrased question; I’ll try again.
Random events happen in all lives. Some cannot be survived with X resources, but can be survived with Y resources. If you’re already above Y, and the cost of a lottery ticket is low enough that it won’t bring you below Y, then you’ll survive anyway, and buying a lottery ticket won’t significantly harm you. However, if you’re already below X, and a lottery win will bring some of you above Y, then buying a lottery ticket still won’t significantly harm you (as you’re going to die anyway), but that fraction of you who are boosted above Y will survive when they otherwise wouldn’t have.
Put another way: having some of me alive is better than having all of me dead.
I guess I was looking at this with the wrong frame of mind. I don’t think quantum immortality is possible, hence my question. I wasn’t even taking it into consideration. But if you believe in quantum immortality, I can see how playing the lottery might be beneficial.