Will Ray Kurzweil die of natural causes?
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Just wanted to provide some clarify for any other potential bettors (since I personally misunderstood by what the author meant as 'natural').

These are the leading causes of death in the USA. The author of this market is including all of them, except for "Accidents", as "natural":

  1. Heart disease (695,547)

  2. Cancer (605,213)

  3. COVID-19 (416,893)

  4. Accidents (224,935)

  5. Stroke (162,890)

  6. Chronic lower respiratory diseases (142,342)

  7. Alzheimer’s disease (119,399)

  8. Diabetes (103,294)

  9. Chronic liver disease and cirrhosis (56,585)

  10. Kidney disease (54,358)

It seems that besides accidents the only other thing that could qualify as un-natural would be murder? It is unclear if being killed by an animal is natural or not, as well as any case where Ray does anything that leads to a 'natural' death.

Can you clarify what is meant by "natural causes"? For example clearly things like getting hit by a bus aren't natural, while dying of old age without an acute cause of death is 'natural'.

But what about someone who has cancer and dies during chemotherapy? Or someone who is old and dies from the flu. Are those "natural causes" or not?

@RiskComplex If someone died during chemo that would qualify as dying of natural causes, as the cancer caused them to get chemo, and cancer is a natural metabolic phenomenon.

For the flu, if it wasn't a lab made virus, then it counts cleanly as a natural death.

For most pathogen, I'd consider it natural deaths; even something like an allergenic reaction.

Biowepons like anthrax do not count as natural.

In the end it will come to a judgment call. I'd answer any hypotheticals to make the line more apperant

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@AnilJason Interesting. What about cases like a smoker dying from lung cancer?

@RiskComplex In areas of doubt, I'd favor the result towards natural causes. Luckily with Kurzweil it is unlikely those cases would be an issue.

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