Wretchard, #13: Imagine you’re trapped in a cave with the water rising slowly to the roof. If you stay, you’ll drown. Beneath you are two circular glimmers probably representing exits through which you may swim outside the cave into the sea. You can’t stay in the cave. One of the exits may too long to swim, or perhaps both, and you’ll drown in the middle. Which one do you take? There’s no obvious way to determine, a priori, which. The thing to do is choose either one. You may die, but that’s irreducible risk. What you mustn’t do is stay in the cave.

Perhaps I should have rephrased my original question. What you are describing above is essentially a “nothing to lose” scenario; that is, if you choose an exit and swim for it, the worst that can happen is the same as if you just stay in the cave. What I had in mind is more along the lines of what RWE described at #22 above. To apply that to your example, suppose that if you stay in the cave you will drown as before, but if you swim for one of the exits and don’t make it, then not only do you drown but one or more of your loved ones – or countless millions of your countrymen – die with you. Then what?

Dave D., #16: “One chance to get it right” scenarios don’t justify refusal to decide, Joshua. Usually, refusal to make a decision is itself a decision, and the refusal is a weasely attempt to deny responsibility.

Or simply an estimation that the expected value of inaction is, all things considered, greater than that of action. The thing is, if the “action” decision entails a risk of something so horrible that the decisionmaker deems it absolutely unacceptable, whereas the “inaction” decision does not, that tends to hopelessly skew the expected value in favor of inaction, no matter how slight the risk may be, or how unpleasant (though short of unacceptable) or great the risk of inaction. This gets us back to my response to Wretchard above.

The trouble this poses is that your estimation of expected value may not be the same as that of outside observers. This becomes a big problem if said outsiders have the force of the state at their disposal and the inclination to use it against you, or otherwise have the ability to make your life miserable, or ensure that you are remembered as a villain rather than a hero.