Very interesting, and I kind-of agree with the conclusion. However, as a few people pointed out, it wasn’t as simple as just buying bitcoin, you had to sell at the right time, etc.. And buying bitcoin was complicated.
But the other problem is that there are thousands of opportunities, things you should do, etc, lying around, with a possibly good payoff in expected value terms. And how many of them do we do? How many of them do we even think about seriously?
Just a few off the top of my head (first two are obvious, then some others):
Cryo, obviously.
AI safety—tons of people in the community agree that’s it’s a serious issue, but how many actively work towards fixing it? (A decent amount, but I’d guess not as much as the “could” do).
CPR training—how many people do it? What is the chance that you’ll one day be in a situation where you need it? I have no idea of the numbers, but considering this is a life-and-death situation, have you looked up the numbers and decided it’s not worth doing?
Similarly, buying an emergency survival pack in case of a natural disaster. Again, not idea of the numbers here, but people do find themselves in situations where they’re without food/water for some period. Do you know the numbers here to decide it’s not worth buying canned goods?
How many people have even bothered to sit down and make sure their health insurance/life insurance/unemployemnt insurance/etc is handled properly?
Even more obvious—sending out resumes every year to find better job opportunities? Or taking a course/reading about finding a better job? This is likely have a massively higher impact than buying bitcoin, not only in monetary terms, but also in life satisfaction impact.
Etc, etc.
Most of the above are pretty obvious and trivial things almost anyone can do. I can probably list a dozen more, some more “standard advice”, some more out there but still probably high in expected value. If I or anyone were to actually sit down and work through these one by one, we’d probably do little else for the next year.
So while bitcoin, in retrospect, may have been the most obvious and immediately high-value payoff, I’m not sure it’s easy to seperate it from all the other things above. Then again, I’m not sure you should—maybe we should have a list of “these are things you need to take care of ASAP” somewhere.
Very interesting, and I kind-of agree with the conclusion. However, as a few people pointed out, it wasn’t as simple as just buying bitcoin, you had to sell at the right time, etc.. And buying bitcoin was complicated.
But the other problem is that there are thousands of opportunities, things you should do, etc, lying around, with a possibly good payoff in expected value terms. And how many of them do we do? How many of them do we even think about seriously?
Just a few off the top of my head (first two are obvious, then some others):
Cryo, obviously.
AI safety—tons of people in the community agree that’s it’s a serious issue, but how many actively work towards fixing it? (A decent amount, but I’d guess not as much as the “could” do).
CPR training—how many people do it? What is the chance that you’ll one day be in a situation where you need it? I have no idea of the numbers, but considering this is a life-and-death situation, have you looked up the numbers and decided it’s not worth doing?
Similarly, buying an emergency survival pack in case of a natural disaster. Again, not idea of the numbers here, but people do find themselves in situations where they’re without food/water for some period. Do you know the numbers here to decide it’s not worth buying canned goods?
How many people have even bothered to sit down and make sure their health insurance/life insurance/unemployemnt insurance/etc is handled properly?
Even more obvious—sending out resumes every year to find better job opportunities? Or taking a course/reading about finding a better job? This is likely have a massively higher impact than buying bitcoin, not only in monetary terms, but also in life satisfaction impact.
Etc, etc.
Most of the above are pretty obvious and trivial things almost anyone can do. I can probably list a dozen more, some more “standard advice”, some more out there but still probably high in expected value. If I or anyone were to actually sit down and work through these one by one, we’d probably do little else for the next year.
So while bitcoin, in retrospect, may have been the most obvious and immediately high-value payoff, I’m not sure it’s easy to seperate it from all the other things above. Then again, I’m not sure you should—maybe we should have a list of “these are things you need to take care of ASAP” somewhere.