In the limit of high expectation of the world ending, the expected value loss if the world survives goes to zero, so we’ve now established that the bet can, in fact, work.
With respect to the actual values, given that the bet is for an amount of money small relative to expected income, I’d expect fairly linear effects where the expected utility cost* of doing extra work/spending less to accumulate $200 in the future is pretty close to twice the utility cost of having $100 more to spend now, such that if the chance of the world ending is greater than 50% it makes sense to make the bet.
(*ignoring discount rates, wage rate changes etc., which aren’t the point)
Further edit: if the world is likely to end, yes Yudkowsky wins alpha.
In the limit of high expectation of the world ending, the expected value loss if the world survives goes to zero, so we’ve now established that the bet can, in fact, work.
With respect to the actual values, given that the bet is for an amount of money small relative to expected income, I’d expect fairly linear effects where the expected utility cost* of doing extra work/spending less to accumulate $200 in the future is pretty close to twice the utility cost of having $100 more to spend now, such that if the chance of the world ending is greater than 50% it makes sense to make the bet.
(*ignoring discount rates, wage rate changes etc., which aren’t the point)
Further edit: if the world is likely to end, yes Yudkowsky wins alpha.