Simpler Question About Future People

[Mickey Brausch]

[ QUOTE ]
I think you (or I) misread the OP. It states that there is a 90% chance that cancer will be already cured in 1000 years.

[/ QUOTE ]Not that Sklansky's own words are very reliable about what the man actually means [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] but here is what he wrote anyway: "There is a 90% chance that the money will be wasted because [the cure for cancer] will have occurred earlier."

This is equivalent to saying

Probability 10%: Cancer will not have been cured; future people'll use all my $X.
Probability 90%: Cancer will have been cured; future people'll make no use at all of my $X.

Which is the same as saying that, with probability 100%, future people will make use of $0.10X

Mickey Brausch

[paperjam]

[ QUOTE ]
Zero. If in 1,000 years humans have not cured cancer, then they don't deserve to cure cancer. If cancer is not cured by then, the level of technology will be back to middle ages technology.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, this is the truth. If it were possible to make such a prop bet, I would wager all my money that there will be a cure for cancer within 1000 years.

A MUCH better question would be how much would you pay to have a cure for ALL fatal illness and disease to be eliminated in 1000 years. And to that, I respond - $0. Death and disease is normal and healthy for the Earth. If everyone lived to be 500 years old, the Earth would overpopulate. Let's say from our generation on we lived to be 500, the Earth, in 500 years, would have to support in excess of 200 billion people (according to my ballparked estimation) - we currently have around 6 billion......

[wisehandpoker]

By the past century's rate of growth, 1000 years is a ridiculous amount of time, especially considering the resources already being put towards cancer research. If it's curable, it will be done by then.

That said, I'm fallible, so I'll throw in $0.01 to cover my ass.

[ChipsAhoya]

I'm surprised not one person has taken time value of money into account here.

If this hypothetical question is supposed to generate a real answer, it's pointless because you could put $1000 into a CD at just 5% interest and have 1,500,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 dollars in 1000 years. Add another 21 zeros to that if you got 10% in the stock market or something. The correct answer is zero because that much money would surely have better effects on society than a cure for cancer — if one didn't exist already...

-ChipsAhoya