Pascal's mugging

Pascal's Mugging is a strange kind of problem named after famous French mathematician Blaise Pascal. In Pascal's Mugging, someone comes up to you and tells you that there is a small chance that something really bad will happen unless you give them a lot of money. This might seem crazy at first, because why would you want to give them money if there is only a small chance that something bad will happen?

But here's the thing - even if the chance of something bad happening is small, the possibility that you could be saving a lot of lives or be rewarded with a lot of money if it does happen is huge! So if the reward is big enough, you might be willing to give them money even though the chance of it being useful is small. This is why it's called Pascal's Mugging - there's a small chance you might be mugged and get nothing out of it, but there's a huge reward if it turns out to be useful.