So the $6000 cost is averting roughly 100 micromorts (~50% of catching it from the new person * 0.02% IFR), ignoring long COVID. Most of the things you list sound like < 1 micromort-equivalent per instance? That sounds pretty consistent.
E.g. Suppose unhealthy eating knocks off ~5 years of lifespan (let’s call that 10% as bad as death, i.e. 10^5 micromorts). You have 10^3 meals a year, times about 50 years, for 5 * 10^4 meals, so each meal is roughly 2 micromorts = $120 of cost. On this model, you should see people caring about their health, but not to an extraordinary degree, e.g. after getting the first 90% of benefit, then you stop (presumably you value a tasty meal at ~$12 more than a not-tasty meal, again thinking at the margin). And empirically that seems roughly right—most of the people I know think about health, try to get good macronutrient profiles, take supplements where relevant, but they don’t go around conducting literature reviews to figure out the optimal diet to consume.
Also, I think partly you might be underestimating how risk-avoiding people at Event Horizon and my house are—I’d say both houses are well above the typical rationalist. (And also that a good number of these people are in fact rich, if we count a typical software engineer as rich.)
Another possibility I didn’t mention is that rationalists are just rich. But if this is the case, then why are they even in a group house? I understand the community aspect, but living in a group house is not something rich people usually do, even highly social rich people.
There’s a pretty big culture difference between rationalists and stereotypical rich people. One of those is living in a group house. I currently prefer a group house over a traditional you-and-your-partner house regardless of how much money I have.
So the $6000 cost is averting roughly 100 micromorts (~50% of catching it from the new person * 0.02% IFR), ignoring long COVID. Most of the things you list sound like < 1 micromort-equivalent per instance? That sounds pretty consistent.
E.g. Suppose unhealthy eating knocks off ~5 years of lifespan (let’s call that 10% as bad as death, i.e. 10^5 micromorts). You have 10^3 meals a year, times about 50 years, for 5 * 10^4 meals, so each meal is roughly 2 micromorts = $120 of cost. On this model, you should see people caring about their health, but not to an extraordinary degree, e.g. after getting the first 90% of benefit, then you stop (presumably you value a tasty meal at ~$12 more than a not-tasty meal, again thinking at the margin). And empirically that seems roughly right—most of the people I know think about health, try to get good macronutrient profiles, take supplements where relevant, but they don’t go around conducting literature reviews to figure out the optimal diet to consume.
Also, I think partly you might be underestimating how risk-avoiding people at Event Horizon and my house are—I’d say both houses are well above the typical rationalist. (And also that a good number of these people are in fact rich, if we count a typical software engineer as rich.)
There’s a pretty big culture difference between rationalists and stereotypical rich people. One of those is living in a group house. I currently prefer a group house over a traditional you-and-your-partner house regardless of how much money I have.