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Instance of Eliezer X-Risk Communication #47
"Imagine there was a grasshopper, and then a bumblebee. And imagine the grasshopper was 120 IQ in grasshopper-normalized intelligence. Then imagine a millionaire sycophant (grown, not built) that the grasshopper trusts pushes a TEN-THOUSAND POUND Diamondoid Bacteria off of a skyscraper--AND EVERYONE DIES".
Epistemic Status: Joke
Why you, as a 25 y/o should write a Will
You might die. If you did, would your money go to your feelings-over-facts relative who thinks a Humane Society is the same thing as the Humane League? Would this be in accordance with your values?
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The SSA’s Life Tables tell us that if you are 25, you have an annualized chance of death of 1.8 in 1,000. I don’t know how much money you have, but let’s be generous and say you have $100k.
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0.0018 (annual chance of death) / 12 = 0.00015 monthly
0.00015*$100,000 = $15/month
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Would you bother to cancel a subscription that charged you $15 per month? What if you knew you’d have to cancel it eventually and that it would become more expensive every day you lived?
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My lawyer says it can be as easy as filling in his template. Could this be worth 30 minutes?
I remember wondering the same a few years ago, and I came to the opposite conclusion. I think the biggest differences in my reasoning were:
Also quickly noting that you're using the annualized chance of death for males in the US, but a significant percentage of EA Forum readers are women, so have less than half the mortality rate between 15 and 37, and/or live in countries with a much lower youth mortality risk (e.g.in the UK it's 0.6 per 1,000 25 y/o males, in Italy 0.4, in the Netherlands 0.4 if I'm interpreting this correctly, I expect Germany and other European countries to be similar, Canada 0.97, Australia 0.6)
I think this post's argument assumes your $100k is lost by default if you don't have a will, but on a quick GPT-5 query it looks like in the UK it goes to your spouse, parents, siblings or siblings' children, and in California something similar. Assuming you're survived by a spouse or these family members and you're happy with your assets going to them then it seems like it's not the same as cancelling a $15/mo subscription. (But plausibly still worth it, I think it just needs a bit more explanation!)
Yes good point. Was thinking of this as "how many potential QUALYs would be lost if your money went to your not-so-EA relatives". But yes, if you think they would spend the money wisely then this makes sense.Â
I've wondered about this, so thank you for thinking this up and calculating! Considering how I did about as much work this past week to get a $3 monthly subscription cancelled, this is kind of genius.
Update: if most of your assets are in stocks or something like that, the easiest thing might be to quickly update your beneficiary information on your account.Â
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This might end up covering enough of your assets such that the will is unnecessary.Â