no point in being right when you're dead: death-related biases in prediction markets

If experts are rational, then they will assign equal utility to all the worlds in which they are dead. When betting about questions that are related to their death, these experts should therefore be biased towards optimism.

For example, betting that the human race will *not* be extinct by 2020 seems wiser than betting that it will, regardless of the actual odds and the agent's probability estimate. If a doomsayer is right, then his prize money will be no use to him (in fact, he will never be able to collect it).

While this scenario seems extreme and unrealistic, gambles about issues relevant to the probability of death of the agents (e.g. the Avian flu) should be similarly biased towards optimism.

Does anyone want to steal this idea? I'm surely not being original, am I?

---

Another possible bias is that experts with a strong time preference (i.e. agents who want money *now*, whether because they are currently making investments with big expected returns, or because they are expecting to die soon, or because are plainly short-sighted), will be reluctant to make long bets.

It seems possible that such people would have knowledge that the rest of us could use, but never will because they will not give their input in the form of bets.

---

Here's George Carlin's 2 cents on death-related biases.