carter allen

Research Assistant @ NYU EA Psych Lab
16 karmaJoined Aug 2022

Comments
2

I want someone to write a post on bets as insurance. Sometimes, placing monetary bets against your own interests may help make worst-case scenarios less bad. For example, if one thinks Trump is an existential threat, they might bet money on Trump winning so they have more resources to deal with the fallout in the event that he does win. One could also bet against good news, e.g., last year I bet real money against the room-temperature superconductor stuff being legit, which ensured that either it was legit, or I'd make a bunch of money; I thought this guaranteed net good news in either case. 

Someone could think through the risks and benefits of this approach and/or create a larger list of promising insurance-bets.

Agree with everything here.

But the argument isn’t that people should spend the money they’d otherwise donate to charity on themselves/flying business class, it’s that they should use it to further whatever their particular path to impact is.