Clearly not all—the extreme version of this is betting on human extinction. It’s hard to imagine the payout that has any value after that comes to pass.
Agreed that post-extinction payouts are essentially worthless—but doesn’t the contract “For $90, I will sell you an IOU that pays out $100 in one year if humans aren’t extinct” avoid that problem?
Small amounts and near-even-money ($90 for $100) are bad intuition pumps—this is in the range where other considerations dominate the outcome estimates. In fact, you probably can’t find many people to accept only 11% for a one-year unsecured loan.
This is exactly conditional to a bond that pays out in one year “unconditionally”. Ie this is a loan with interest. (There are a few contrived scenarios where humans are extinct and money isn’t worthless, depending on the definitions of those words. Would this bond pay out in a society of uploaded minds?)
Agreed that post-extinction payouts are essentially worthless—but doesn’t the contract “For $90, I will sell you an IOU that pays out $100 in one year if humans aren’t extinct” avoid that problem?
Small amounts and near-even-money ($90 for $100) are bad intuition pumps—this is in the range where other considerations dominate the outcome estimates. In fact, you probably can’t find many people to accept only 11% for a one-year unsecured loan.
This is exactly conditional to a bond that pays out in one year “unconditionally”. Ie this is a loan with interest. (There are a few contrived scenarios where humans are extinct and money isn’t worthless, depending on the definitions of those words. Would this bond pay out in a society of uploaded minds?)