• @[email protected]
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    7 months ago

    You have a magical button. If you press it now, you will get $100 and it will disappear. Every year you don’t press it, the amount of money you will get if you do press it goes up by 20%. When should you press the button? At any given point in time, waiting just one more year adds an entire 20% to your eventual prize, so it never makes sense to press it, but you have to eventually or you get nothing.

    Same thing with graphics cards.

    • Bizarroland
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      97 months ago

      Is it compound or straight percentage?

      Cuz if it’s just straight percentage then it’s $20 a year, whereas if it is compound then it’s a 2X multiplier every three and a half years roughly.

      • @[email protected]
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        47 months ago

        Compound, which more closely models the actual rate at which computing power has grown over the years.

          • @[email protected]
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            27 months ago

            Or you could wait 70 years and leave 34 million to people in your will… The point is that there is no mathematically correct choice.

            • Bizarroland
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              27 months ago

              I think I got about 77 years left in me, unless somebody comes along and kills me that is.

              That at least would be $125 million which isn’t too shabby. I find it hard to believe that anybody would say that $125 million 77 years from now would not be a considerable amount of money.

    • @[email protected]
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      67 months ago

      Once you need it, or, alternatively, once you have enough to live comfortably for the rest of your life. It’s exponential growth, you only get one chance, just gotta decide what your goal with the money actually is.

      • @[email protected]
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        17 months ago

        Yep. My point is that there’s no easily calculable, mathematically “correct” moment to push the button. Same goes for buying a graphics card.