On betting on AI doom

Tyler Cowen and Bryan Caplan among others have both challenged so-called AI doomers to put money where their mouth is, bet on extinction. I'm not the first person to point out the big problems with this:

The naive version: a direct bet on extinction is incoherent because the doomer would expect to be dead.

The slightly more advanced version: the doomer gets paid up front and pays back double (Or whatever the betting odds are) with interest later if doom doesn't happen. But this doesn't quite make sense either. If doom does happen, the doomer has a brief and mostly useless window to spend the money, and the accelerationist has no reason to expect the doomer to save any money. And if the doomer does save it (plus enough extra to cover the doubled payback), they've effectively just locked up double the original capital until the end of the world. Neither party has a coherent incentive structure.

Here's a version that perhaps actually works (under some assumptions and unless I'm overlooking something here): bet on protective policy outcomes that are correlated with survival or at least longer timelines.

Examples: Will the US enact a federal datacenter moratorium before 2030 with export controls? Will the US and China sign a meaningful bilateral agreement on frontier AI before 20XX? Will there be a federal AI safety law? (Edit: I changes the examples a bit)

These outcomes point to longer timelines and higher survival probability. The structure is much more sensible because the marginal utility of money is higher in the surviving-or-longer-timelines branch than in the short-timelines-to-doom branch.

Concretely: if the doomer bets $100 YES on a moratorium and it doesn't pass, they've lost the money in a world where they're going to be dead sooner. If the moratorium does pass, the $100 (at appropriate long odds) becomes a much larger payout in a world where the doomer actually expects to live, or at least live longer. So the doomer wants their payout in the surviving-or-longer-timelines branch, which means betting YES on protective policy at appropriate betting odds.

For the accelerationist side, it depends on flavor. If they're an effective accelerationist who thinks faster AI development gets them to literally owning galaxies sooner (Leopold Aschenbrenner and Dwarkesh: galaxies may become purchasable for money soon after ASI), they'd have a clean reason to bet NO. If they just think AGI isn't coming and therefore low P(doom), they shouldn't really have a strong view on a datacenter moratorium, or it depends on their specific view.

Importantly though, it's not necessary to bet with an effective accelerationist at all. You can just bet with people who are betting on the object-level reality: will a moratorium pass or not? You'd expect to have an edge: you have the insight that the money will be more valuable to you in the branch where the moratorium does happen, so you're willing to take the side at odds others aren't.

Or am I overlooking something here?

(I know this particular betting market is about a moratorium anywhere in the US but couldn't find anything better)

(Couldn't think of a better shorthand for doomer that made it clear who I am talking about)