I often use the following thought experiment as an intuition pump to make the ethical case for taking expected value, risk/uncertainty-neutrality,[1] and math in general seriously in the context of doing good. There are, of course, issues with pure expected value maximization (e.g. Pascal's Mugging, St. Petersburg paradox and infinities, etc), that I won’t go into in this post. I think these considerations are often given too much weight and applied improperly (which I also won’t discuss in this post).

This thought experiment isn’t original, but I forget where I first encountered it. You can still give me credit if you want. Thanks! The graphics below are from Claude, but you can also give me credit if you like them (and blame Claude if you don’t). Thanks again.

Thought experiment:

Say there's this new, obscure, debilitating disease that affects 5 million people, who will die in the next ten years if not treated. It has no known cure, and for whatever reason, I know nobody else is going to work on it. I’m considering two options for what I could do with my career to tackle this disease.

Option A: I can become a doctor and estimate [...]

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