Let’s say you are told you have a 75 percent chance of dying in the next 5 years in a very painful way. The remaining 25 percent of the time you will live a long life and die in a way that is not particularly painful.
However, you can take a pill which will kill you instantly and painlessly, but you have to take it within the next 10 minutes.
What do you choose?
Even assuming I had no reason to doubt your instructions, I’d smack that pill away without a thought. Life is too fun to give up on without a fight.
Besides, I haven’t seen The Jolson Story yet.
What would be preventing me from doing nothing now, and then offing myself if the 75% came to be? In other words, the pill is irrelevant.
The effectiveness of the pill completely wears off in 10 minutes.
That’s suicide.
1). I’m too scared.
2). I believe that’s the worst sin a person can commit. A true fuck you finger in God’s face. An express elevator to the ghetto of Hell.
I’ll suffer through my natural life instead.
But it’s not the only way to kill oneself if the 75% chance comes to pass.
Anyhow, I want to be around for as much of my son’s life as I can manage. So no pill, even if it were the only way to end my life before nature does the job.
That’s a 25% chance that I won’t die soon. Sounds good to me.
Jet Boy FTW! Well, he almost won. . . 
I’d take the 25% chance too. Those are decent enough odds considering the instant-and-certain alternative.
Can’t really imagine why anyone would take the pill unless they were already contemplating suicide.
No to the pill.
Yes to spending time and money on stuff I want to do, but believe I will have plenty of time for later.
(Like buying a spinning wheel or traveling).
Maybe your perception changes as you get older and death becomes a more real concept. I’ve known a number of perople who died from cancer, AIDS, organ failure, and other lingering, painful illnesses. When faced with possibilities a lot worse than the OP laid out, none of them chose to die early, and almost all all of them went for treatments that were sometimes worse than the disease, hoping they could live at least a few months longer.
Which is something I’ve never understood, why anyone would endure something like that. Which is why, if Mr. Doctor ever tells me that I’ve got cancer (at least the type that can’t be cured with 100% certainty w/o resorting to chemo or anything nasty like that) it would be time for me to make an appointment with Dr. Kervorkian. Sorry, but I’ve witnessed too many loved ones suffer and die needlessly, I ain’t going that route.
Which is why I should ask the OP: about this 75%, exactly how painful and lingering is this death? Like a car crash, where my mangled body bleeds out over the course of a few hours? I could endure something like that, as long as it’s relatively quick. Gradually wasting away from AIDS or tuberculosis from Year #2 onwards wouldn’t be so nice, though – I’d absolutely take the pill if that’s a potential future.