Clearly not all—the extreme version of this is betting on human extinction. It’s hard to imagine the payout that has any value after that comes to pass. In some, you can find the conditional wagers that work, in some you can find a better resource or measurement to wager (one gram of gold, or one day’s average wage as reported by X government). In many, though, there just is no wager possible, as the utility of the parties diverges too much from the resources available to account for in the wager.
Clearly not all—the extreme version of this is betting on human extinction. It’s hard to imagine the payout that has any value after that comes to pass.
Agreed that post-extinction payouts are essentially worthless—but doesn’t the contract “For $90, I will sell you an IOU that pays out $100 in one year if humans aren’t extinct” avoid that problem?
Small amounts and near-even-money ($90 for $100) are bad intuition pumps—this is in the range where other considerations dominate the outcome estimates. In fact, you probably can’t find many people to accept only 11% for a one-year unsecured loan.
This is exactly conditional to a bond that pays out in one year “unconditionally”. Ie this is a loan with interest. (There are a few contrived scenarios where humans are extinct and money isn’t worthless, depending on the definitions of those words. Would this bond pay out in a society of uploaded minds?)
Clearly not all—the extreme version of this is betting on human extinction. It’s hard to imagine the payout that has any value after that comes to pass. In some, you can find the conditional wagers that work, in some you can find a better resource or measurement to wager (one gram of gold, or one day’s average wage as reported by X government). In many, though, there just is no wager possible, as the utility of the parties diverges too much from the resources available to account for in the wager.
Agreed that post-extinction payouts are essentially worthless—but doesn’t the contract “For $90, I will sell you an IOU that pays out $100 in one year if humans aren’t extinct” avoid that problem?
Small amounts and near-even-money ($90 for $100) are bad intuition pumps—this is in the range where other considerations dominate the outcome estimates. In fact, you probably can’t find many people to accept only 11% for a one-year unsecured loan.
This is exactly conditional to a bond that pays out in one year “unconditionally”. Ie this is a loan with interest. (There are a few contrived scenarios where humans are extinct and money isn’t worthless, depending on the definitions of those words. Would this bond pay out in a society of uploaded minds?)