heredami comments on Lotteries & MWI - Less Wrong
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Comments (65)
Diminishing marginal returns.
The utility of your gaining a $1,000,000 is not a thousand times the disutility of your losing $1000.
There are some special cases. If someone thinks his life is worthless if he doesn't have something that could be bought or done with a $1,000,000, then the gamble could be justified. The thing that he buys pumps up the utility so much that it's more than thousands times the utility of $1000. But this is probably a really rare case.
Medical issues that make life miserable but can be fixed with ~1M$ would be a (bit more concrete) example. Relatively rare, as you said.