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by throwawaymath 2850 days ago
If you want me to "argue logically", you should start with defending the points you've made for which the burden of proof is on the positive. My point is that you're generalizing without any substantive support for the generalization. For example:

> So generally, the more you have to lose, the more you will worry. Simple.

This is not simple and I don't follow that it's true a priori. Moreover I don't necessarily agree that it's the correct characterization, either. I don't know anyone with wealth whose approach to thinking about wealth is that they have "more to lose." That strikes me as begging the question. I can understand why a given rich person might feel that way, but I don't see why the modal rich person would feel that way.

The essence is that you're asking me to refute a statement that you have not actually supported. Had you supported with something grounded I'd agree that my anecdotal reply isn't much of a refutation. But so far it's my direct experience and observations against something which boils down to intuition. Intuition is misleading.

1 comments

>This is not simple and I don't follow that it's true a priori.

Is it not?

1. Having something comes with the risk of loosing it.

2. with risks comes the potential to add worry.

3. People with more to lose have more potential to be worried about it

How is my reasoning flawed?

The only thing you cannot lose is your past. You might lose the memory of it, but that does not nullify it's existence.

1. Having more of something - gives one the tolerance to lose some of it without feeling the pinch.

2. Again - the ability to take risks increases - this is one reason the rich get richer - they can make riskier investments while the poor can't make such bets

3. People with more to lose - are the people who lose a greater percentage of their savings - a rich person losing $1000 vs a poor person losing $1000 - a poor person loses more

I am talking about prospect of losing everything. Not some of it...
But the probability of loosing your life savings is greater if you’re poor (since the quantity is smaller), so you have more to worry about.
But loosing a million bucks is going to hurt much more than losing 100 bucks. Apart from that, it is much easier to sit on 100 bucks, not doing anything with it, than to sit on a million dollars. Doing nothing with money is less worrisome than taking risks with a lot of money..
This is not logical reasoning, there are too many gaps.

Logical reasoning works best with absolutes, things like individual motives (applied to larger populations) and "risk", "worry" etc have a lot of nuances - you need to work with probabilities backed by data.

That is why I said potential..