It’s trivial to bet on the end of the world—it’s called “taking a loan that you expect not to pay back”. You “win” if anything happens that prevents your debt being collected—extinction, civilization or monetary collapse, personal death or bankruptcy. If you can find suckers to lend you at better rates because they’re getting advertising value from it (like Bryan is), so much the better.
The problem is it’s NOT trivial to bet on world survival, without accepting pretty bad odds (going interest rates) and without locking up capital you’d rather use elsewhere. edit: this isn’t a big problem—survival is it’s own payout for most of us. You ALREADY have your entire existence on that side of the line.
If dollars correspond 1:1 with utility, then I think you can simply adjust for the opportunity cost of lending money out as a loan. See my “toy model” in a comment response above. However, I don’t think dollars correspond 1:1 with utility, and the act of betting has a potentially asymmetrical reputational effect regardless of whether the participants are right or wrong. We can still bet on the end of the world, but we shouldn’t assume that the betting odds reflect the true confidence levels of the participants in the bet.
I still think bets are a piece of weak evidence about a person’s true confidence in their claims. If Bryan refused to take this bet with Eliezer, I’d be somewhat more inclined to think he’s blowing hot air. But I don’t think that their 2:1 bet means that we can take Eliezer as putting 2:1 odds on the end of the world in 2030.
Edit: I take it back. Why would Eliezer take a higher-”interest” bet with Bryan when he could just take out ~unlimited money in a long-term loan at more favorable rates? I no longer think you can bet in a meaningful way on the end of the world.
It’s trivial to bet on the end of the world—it’s called “taking a loan that you expect not to pay back”. You “win” if anything happens that prevents your debt being collected—extinction, civilization or monetary collapse, personal death or bankruptcy. If you can find suckers to lend you at better rates because they’re getting advertising value from it (like Bryan is), so much the better.
The problem is it’s NOT trivial to bet on world survival, without accepting pretty bad odds (going interest rates) and without locking up capital you’d rather use elsewhere. edit: this isn’t a big problem—survival is it’s own payout for most of us. You ALREADY have your entire existence on that side of the line.
If dollars correspond 1:1 with utility, then I think you can simply adjust for the opportunity cost of lending money out as a loan. See my “toy model” in a comment response above.However, I don’t think dollars correspond 1:1 with utility, and the act of betting has a potentially asymmetrical reputational effect regardless of whether the participants are right or wrong. We can still bet on the end of the world, but we shouldn’t assume that the betting odds reflect the true confidence levels of the participants in the bet.I still think bets are a piece of weak evidence about a person’s true confidence in their claims. If Bryan refused to take this bet with Eliezer, I’d be somewhat more inclined to think he’s blowing hot air. But I don’t think that their 2:1 bet means that we can take Eliezer as putting 2:1 odds on the end of the world in 2030.
Edit: I take it back. Why would Eliezer take a higher-”interest” bet with Bryan when he could just take out ~unlimited money in a long-term loan at more favorable rates? I no longer think you can bet in a meaningful way on the end of the world.