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 Originally Posted by Renton
It seems like one major school of thought exhibited in this thread is that life has infinite value and 1% of infinity is still infinity. The flaw in that logic is revealed, however, when we lower the odds. 0.0001% of infinity is still infinity, yet most of us are willing to take such gambles without losing much sweat.
It's not that life has infinite value. It's that the money doesn't improve my life enough to run a 1% risk of losing my life. And as the amount you win gets larger, you quickly run into a situation of diminishing returns (of life improvement from the money).
But that's a personal decision, not an absolute maxim. For someone that is poor and hates being poor, getting a large lump sum would drastically change his life for the better. So pushing the button would be a no-brainer at some dollar amount.
For me to even consider pushing the button, the question would have to be rephrased: "How much money would you have to win and how low would the risk of death need to be?" If you can control those variables, then I don't think anyone could honestly say they would never push the button.
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