I don’t see how. To me cost is what you pay, not what you get. If the poll said “an unknown but probably extremely small chance of cybernetic immortality”, then it could be comparable to cryonics.
If an expectued utility maximizer is willing to pay a cost C to get a benefit with probability ~1, it should be willing to pay p*C to get the same benefit with probability p. If C is unbounded, then so is p*C even for very small p.
it should be willing to pay pC to get the same benefit with probability p.
This was about real people, not ideal utility maximizers. Even if one agrees with “it should be willing to pay pC to get the same benefit with probability p”, which most risk-averse people won’t, “Any and all cost” does not mean infinite cost to most people (sacrificing their firstborn is probably not on the list, neither is killing the rest of the humanity).
If you want to question the assumption that’s fine (I agree that people don’t really want it at literally any cost), but don’t complain that I gave the explanation you said you didn’t see of how the assumption implies the conclusion.
Because cryonics is not even close to “certain immortality now”.
“Any and all cost” would subsume low probabilities if it were true (which, of course, it is not).
I don’t see how. To me cost is what you pay, not what you get. If the poll said “an unknown but probably extremely small chance of cybernetic immortality”, then it could be comparable to cryonics.
If an expectued utility maximizer is willing to pay a cost C to get a benefit with probability ~1, it should be willing to pay p*C to get the same benefit with probability p. If C is unbounded, then so is p*C even for very small p.
This was about real people, not ideal utility maximizers. Even if one agrees with “it should be willing to pay pC to get the same benefit with probability p”, which most risk-averse people won’t, “Any and all cost” does not mean infinite cost to most people (sacrificing their firstborn is probably not on the list, neither is killing the rest of the humanity).
If you want to question the assumption that’s fine (I agree that people don’t really want it at literally any cost), but don’t complain that I gave the explanation you said you didn’t see of how the assumption implies the conclusion.