white pill
English
Noun
white pill (plural white pills)
- Used other than with a figurative or idiomatic meaning: see white, pill.
- (philosophy, often attributive) A philosophical dilemma in which someone who faces death or disability at a certain probability is offered a perfect antidote if they pay a specified amount of money.
- 1979, Ronald A. Howard, Life and death decision analysis, page 17:
- Now that we have both the black pill and white pill results before us, we are in a position to make a few general observations.
- 1984, Management Science - Volume 30, page 414:
- We can also think of selling risks of being disabled. Suppose that a person facing a risk p of being disabled to level f could avoid that risk for a payment x. How much should he pay? We call this the disability white pill question and diagram it as shown in Figure 6.
- 1986, “How much safety?”, in Interfaces, volume 16, number 6:
- Howard [1984] bases his analysis on a "black pill” and a "white pill."
- 2017, M. Granger Morgan, Theory and Practice in Policy Analysis, →ISBN, page 124:
- While most people find the formulation of the white pill problem to be perfectly acceptable, many find the black pill problem to be very objectionable.
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Antonyms
- (philosophical dilemma): black pill