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I'm sure this will be analyzed a lot from many legitimate different perspectives, but IMO the root fallacy here is the fetish for quantification. Sam said he would take a bet with a 50-50 chance of ending the world or making it "twice as good". The meaning of ending the world is obvious, but does it mean to make the world twice as good?

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The message I got from his answer to that question was that he didn't see an ethical problem with the idea the he has the right to put everyone else at extreme risk.

Its also just bad understanding of probability. Making bets to end the world isn't a one time deal, its an obvious repeated game. You don't just need to win one 50-50 bet, humanity needs to win all of them which approaches 0 probability.

The focus on "rational" value maximization on individual bets is doubly blind: - First, you and I might have different utility functions which are based on valuing outcomes differently; if utility functions are different, there may not be a single "most rational" choice - Second, a single bet is a single bet, but investing in a company or following a specific policy is more like staking a gambler to make a sequence of bets.

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