the money was essentially conned from the insurance company.
I don’t see it as “conned” (or perhaps I’m inferring some connotations that you don’t intend to imply by that word?): The man took “suicide-insurance”. That is to say, he signed a contract with the insurance company saying something along the lines of “I’ll pay you $X per month for the rest of my life. If I don’t commit suicide for 2 years, but then commit suicide after that, then you have to give me 1 million dollars.”
I’m sure the insurance company fully understood the terms of the contract (in fact, it is practically certain that it was the insurance company itself which wrote out the contract). The insurance company fully understood the terms of the deal and agreed to it. They employ actuaries and lawyers go over the draft of their contracts to ensure it means exactly what they think it means. No party was mislead or misunderstood the terms. So how is that a con?
I agree, I don’t think it’s a con. It only seems like a con because you are betting with the insurance company about the contents of your brain and most people naturally assume that they understand the contents of their own brain better than some outside agency.
However, I think that assumption is pretty clearly false. It seems that institutions have the benefit of a lot of past experience and can use that experience to understand people better (and predict their behavior better) than they understand or could predict themselves.
I don’t see it as “conned” (or perhaps I’m inferring some connotations that you don’t intend to imply by that word?): The man took “suicide-insurance”. That is to say, he signed a contract with the insurance company saying something along the lines of “I’ll pay you $X per month for the rest of my life. If I don’t commit suicide for 2 years, but then commit suicide after that, then you have to give me 1 million dollars.”
I’m sure the insurance company fully understood the terms of the contract (in fact, it is practically certain that it was the insurance company itself which wrote out the contract). The insurance company fully understood the terms of the deal and agreed to it. They employ actuaries and lawyers go over the draft of their contracts to ensure it means exactly what they think it means. No party was mislead or misunderstood the terms. So how is that a con?
I agree, I don’t think it’s a con. It only seems like a con because you are betting with the insurance company about the contents of your brain and most people naturally assume that they understand the contents of their own brain better than some outside agency.
However, I think that assumption is pretty clearly false. It seems that institutions have the benefit of a lot of past experience and can use that experience to understand people better (and predict their behavior better) than they understand or could predict themselves.