Would you flip a coin for personal utopia vs instant death?

Does expected value fall apart when your death is on the line?

Yesterday, Zvi posted the following poll on X.

Would you flip a coin where 50% chance you die, 50% chance you have the best possible life for as long as you possibly lived, with as many resources as you want?

Before I share the results, think about what you would answer.

There’s some ambiguity about what “the best possible life for as long as you possibly lived” would entail. Firstly, how long are you expected to live? Are we using your current life expectancy before flipping the coin, or should we interpret it as if you are living the best possible life presumably this is one where you are incredibly healthy and live a very long time.

There’s also some ambiguity about how much your “luck” affects the environment around you. The best possible life I could see myself living is one where we have ASI that is aligned, makes us live significantly longer, creates world peace, cures all forms of mental health issues, and allows culture and community to flourish. Is this what I am flipping for? If I am selfless I should be flipping the coin even when it is weighted and I die 99.999% of the time. Or, should I be interpreting this as a life where in the current world I am as happy as possible, and can make some impact with my wealth, but not more than the existing elite can?

Okay, here are the results from Zvi’s poll on X.

As you can see, I voted that I would not flip the coin and a surprising (consider the community) number of people agreed with me.

It’s almost certainly irrational for me to not flip the coin if I am maximising how much good I can do for the world. And, even from a selfish point of view either I instantly die and my consciousness ceases to exist in this realm, or I have the highest quality of life possible. From this selfish point of view, there’s a bit more of an argument on how to compare ceasing to exist to have the best possible life, but I’m not that selfish so this isn’t my main consideration.

Even as I write this article I continue to convince myself that I should absolutely flip the coin. But, if I’m really honest with myself, I don’t think I could. And I don’t know what to think or how to feel about that.

If someone had this choice and came to me and told me they care about doing as much good for the world as they can, and have this decision, I would absolutely affirm that flipping the coin is the correct choice. I believe life is sacred so I hesitate to say I would try to convince someone else to flip the coin for the sake of the world, this would be a very selfish thing to do rather than just flipping it myself, but if someone decided on their own accord that they wanted to flip the coin then I would be all for it and agree it is the correct decision.

So why am I not willing to flip the coin????

I don’t have an answer to this. Maybe it’s the evolutionary instinct for survival. Maybe I’m fooling myself and if actually presented with the opportunity I would flip it. I don’t know.

Whenever presented with a question where ethics and expected value begin to intersect, I love to approach it by taking it to the extremes. There is also some danger of taking it out of context and removing the real-world implications, but this question has already passed that threshold anyway.

Let’s assume for this thought experiment that this coin doesn’t provide an ultimate utopia where variables we aren’t even sure are possible become true (ie. no immortality, no cure to mental health issues, no ASI), but otherwise, things go very well for both you and the world.

At what P(death) do you stop flipping it? 60%? 90%? 99%? 99.9999999%?

If I can’t come to a logical conclusion on where my threshold is (even very rough would suffice), it is hard for me to justify to myself that I am confident 50% is worth it.

And for those who would not flip it at 50% chance of death, how low does that have to go before you would decide to flip it?

10%? 1%? 0.001%?

Maybe it’s just me, be I really struggle to weigh tradeoffs and expected value when it comes to living or not. My entire model of how to think and weigh decisions disintegrates when one option is death.

But that can’t be entirely true, can it? I make decisions all the time that increase my chances of dying by minute amounts. Whenever I go snowboarding or scramble up a tough Mountain, I am certainly increasing my odds of dying by some amount. But I do it anyway because I love it and it adds to the quality of my life. So how is flipping a coin at a 0.001% chance of death for a better life any different?

Thinking about this and writing this article has left me with more questions than answers regarding how I value life, selflessness, and maximising for positive impact. And while I will never be presented with the coin toss from Zvi’s poll, I will be presented with much smaller coin tosses over lower stakes. I’m so grateful for the life I have and will do my best to make the most of it within the context of this world.