Until recently, I've largely ignored the question of how long I expect to live, and similarly, how much value I place on my life. Why? For starters, thinking about mortality is scary, and I don't like to do things that are scary unless the benefits outweigh the cost.

So, do they? My answer has always been, "Nah. At least not in the short-to-mid term. I'll probably have to think hard about it at some point in the future though." Whatever the conclusion I draw — high value on life, low value on life — I didn't see how it would change my behavior right now. How the conclusions would be actionable.

Recently I've been changing my mind. There have been various things I've been thinking about that all seem to hinge on this question of how much we should value life.

Covid
Cryonics
Driving

If you expect (as in expected value) to live eg. 50 years, and thus value life at a typical value of eg. $10M:

You probably don't have to worry much about Covid and can roughly return to normal.
Cryonics becomes a wacky idea that won't work and thus isn't worth paying for.
Driving is well worth it. The price you pay for the risk of dying is something like $250/year.

But... if you expect (as in expected value) to live something like 10k years:

Covid becomes too risky to justify returning to normal.
Cryonics becomes an intriguing idea that is well worth paying for.
Driving becomes something where the risk of dying costs you more like $25k/year, and thus probably is not worth doing.

What else would the implications be of expecting (I'll stop saying "as in expected value" moving forward) to live 10k years? I'm not sure. I'll think more about it another time. For now, Covid, cryonics and driving are more than enough to make this a question that I am interested in exploring.

Focusing on the parts that matter

There are a lot of parameters you could play around with when exploring these questions. Some are way more important than others though. For example, in looking at how risky Covid is, you could spend time exploring whether a QALY should be valued at $200k or $175k, but that won't really impact your final conclusion too much. It won't bring you from "I shouldn't go to that restaurant" to "I should go to that restaurant". On the other hand, moving from an expectation of a 100 year lifespan to a 1,000 year lifespan could very well end up changing your final conclusion, so I think th...

nevw

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