I see a problem with risking everything that is if your goal is to either make it to the top or make it to the bottom, then risking it all is the way to go. Yet, that’s a poor long-term strategy. Eventually risk will realize and you’ll lose it all.
To really risk everything I have to burn bridges, damage my brain, and lose all my money.
In the end, you always have yourself. Except when you die. And then it doesn't matter.
Interestingly, though, I've always stopped for people on the side of the road to render aid and had many fun stories come from it but I almost never do when I have women in the car. I'm not entirely sure why but I don't.
The only exception was years ago on the Road to Hana where it was after dark on the South East side of the island and we came upon a family with a busted tyre. But I think on the mainland, probably not.
So maybe there's more to loss than oneself. I think I'd eat total death myself over harm to those I am responsible for.
You always have yourself but consider also how much impact in psyche it might have, will you really have "yourself" after blowing all the savings? It could trigger regret (especially if some opportunity shows up after savings are gone) and could spiral down into depression. It is easy to say "I am strong, I would handle it" before something bad happens.
I think the opportunity cost thing is a meaningful thing, but I doubt it'll really hurt since I have significant amounts of money I can draw on through my network.
It's true death has utility in an economic sense, as one needs not look further than the funeral/death care industry to find utility. But if we are talking about death of the self, the negative infinite utility claim seems more convincing than the non-negative-infinite one. In fact, negative infinite utility might be a near-perfect synonym for death.
And at the risk of sounding overly nihilistic, it may well overpower the benefit of everything/anything, again if we are specifically talking about the self.
When crossing the street, there's a tiny risk of death, but a fairly good chance of a somewhat desirable outcome (getting to the other side.) If you considered your death to have negative infinity utility, and the desirable outcome to have finite positive utility, then you would opt to not cross the street ever, because negative infinity times small probability plus positive finite number times large probability is still negative infinity in total.
Essentially, any time you're weighing up your options, and one of the outcomes has negative infinity utility with non-zero probability, then the outcome of that course of action also has negative infinity utility, the way these terms are usually defined.
Thus, given the behaviour of most people, they do not think of their death has having negative infinity utility.
Weighing probabilities is one thing, and assumes humans are capable of rationally weighing these outcomes (which isn't clear) but even then which part of our scientific understanding of death precludes death having negative infinite utility?
Still, this doesn't disprove death as negative infinite utility, as the risk of death also exists from _not_ crossing the street; one isn't preventing the risk of death by refusing to cross the street. In fact, staying permanently in one place, never crossing the street, and doing nothing indefinitely out of a fear of death, would simply guarantee one's death.
>and the desirable outcome to have finite positive utility
Extend the timescale and the desirable outcome leads to the same outcome as the "undesirable" one.
The "West" is possibly on the verge of some large rule changes.
Here is the idea: you go in a casino with $1000, that's your self-imposed limit, you will not die if you lose it, but it means you will stop playing, and you will have no way to recover from your losses, time to go home. That's what ruin is.
And this is something you have to take into account. For example, imagine you find a game where you have 50% chance of losing your bet, and 50% of winning your bet +2%. You can bet up to $1000. In theory, you get the best expectancy ($10) if you play $1000, but since it is your limit, you actually have a 50% chance of losing it all with no other chance to play this profitable game again, the result is you can expect to leave the casino poorer. If instead, you start with smaller bets, slowly ramping up as you play, you will be able to take full advantage of the game indefinitely, and almost certainly end up richer.
Note that in a real casino, games have a house edge, so from a pure money perspective, ruin is not a bad thing because it prevents you from playing more negative expectancy games, and it will happen eventually. But since if like me, you just go there to have fun and consider the house edge to be the price of entertainment, then lowering the risk of ruin is actually the main goal.
Bringing down risk taking to a simple “risk it all” is a trivia that is maybe inspiring but naive.
What’s worse, those kinds of strategies are appealing to people mostly because of survivorship bias: one hears inspiring stories from those who risked it all and made it to the top but rarely from those who loosed it all (those don’t sell too well).
Losing your apartment isn't really an absorbing state if you can still take a salaried job, re-accumulate, and then continue to make further bets.