Vladimir_M comments on Abnormal Cryonics - Less Wrong

56 Post author: Will_Newsome 26 May 2010 07:43AM

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Comment author: taw 26 May 2010 10:28:01PM 3 points [-]

Interest rates over the past 20 years have been about 7%, implying that people's half-life of concern for the future is only about 15 years.

This is plain wrong. Most of these rates is inflation premium (premium for inflation you need to pay is higher than actual inflation because you also bear entire risk if inflation gets higher than predicted, and it cannot really get lower than predicted - it's not normally distributed).

Inflation-adjusted US treasury bonds have rates like 1.68% a year over last 12 years., and never really got much higher than 3%.

For most interest rates like the UK ones you quote there's non-negligible currency exchange risk and default risk in addition to all that.

Comment author: Vladimir_M 26 May 2010 11:04:28PM 1 point [-]

taw:

Inflation-adjusted US treasury bonds have rates like 1.68% a year over last 12 years., and never really got much higher than 3%.

Not to mention that even these figures are suspect. There is no single obvious or objectively correct way to calculate the numbers for inflation-adjustment, and the methods actually used are by no means clear, transparent, and free from political pressures. Ultimately, over a longer period of time, these numbers have little to no coherent meaning in any case.