“Life Contracts”, Gwern2009-11-02 (economics, politics)⁠:

How I reinvented longevity insurance, which provides payouts if one lives to a certain point and thus might run out of savings.

I wrote this essay many years ago, after some reading about observer bias; to my dismay, several months later I would discover that this was actually a well developed field of insurance—life annuity or more specifically, longevity insurance. I still find it interesting that I got ‘here’ from ‘there’, though, and it was a good intellectual exercise¹; so it is preserved for your amusement. It remains a reminder to me to thoroughly research any idea that I’ve had—I’m not so smart that my every idea must be good and novel!²

• On the Application of Observer-Bias Effects to Contract Law