Russian roulette: the need for stochastic potential outcomes when utilities depend on counterfactuals
俄罗斯轮盘赌:效用依赖反事实时为何需要随机潜在结果
Summary It has been proposed in medical decision analysis to express the ‘first, do no harm’ principle as an asymmetric utility function in which the loss from killing a patient would count more than the gain from saving a life. Such a utility depends on unrealized potential outcomes, and we show how this yields a paradoxical decision recommendation in a simple hypothetical example involving games of Russian roulette. The problem is resolved if we abandon the stable unit…