Greater is a transgression done for the sake of Heaven than a commandment not for the sake of Heaven.” (Talmud, Nazir 23b)
The Narrative: A World Reduced to a Cave
After witnessing the cataclysmic destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Lot and his two daughters flee to a cave in the mountains. There, isolated from civilization, the daughters reach a devastating conclusion: they are the last humans on Earth. Rashi notes that they genuinely believed no man remained alive.[1]
Acting on this belief, they devise a plan to preserve humanity by intoxicating their father and conceiving children through him (Genesis 19:31–38). Their sons were named Moab (“from father”) and Ben-Ammi (“son of my people”)—names the Torah itself records without condemnation.[2]
Remarkably, these problematic origins did not preclude redemption. Much later, halakhah ruled: “An Ammonite [male] and Moabite [male], not a female,” permitting women of those nations to enter the community of Israel. This is how Ruth the Moabite became the ancestress of King David,[3] and how Naamah of Ammon became the mother of King Rehoboam.[4]
The Torah presents this episode without explicit moral commentary, leaving us to grapple with its complexity. Beneath the surface lies a profound exploration of how decisions are made in extreme situations, how perception shapes reality, and how absolute certainty in one’s assumptions can lead to moral ambiguity.
The Decision-Making Science
In signal detection theory, choices under uncertainty balance two types of errors: misses (failing to respond to a real threat) and false alarms (responding to a non-existent threat). When the cost of a miss is catastrophic, rational agents adopt a more “liberal” criterion, accepting more false alarms to avoid the one disaster.[5]
Catastrophe also shifts the brain’s priors: predictive-processing models show that trauma can overweight danger expectations, biasing decisions toward worst-case assumptions.[6]
Lot’s daughters faced exactly this dilemma: if humanity truly faces extinction, they must do whatever it takes to ensure the survival of their species. If, however, it is a false alarm and the world was not destroyed, they would be committing incest.
Reeling from apocalyptic catastrophe, they minimized the miss (humanity’s extinction) by adopting a liberal criterion and making a costly response to what turned out to be a false alarm, wrongly inferring that humanity had ended.
According to decision-making science, economics, and game theory, they made the optimal call under the circumstances: avert an unacceptable outcome (human extinction) at a finite cost, no matter how high, even if mistaken.[7] The Talmud has a term for this: aveirah lishmah—a transgression for the sake of Heaven.
Uncertainty and Moral Decision-Making
Let us now consider the daughters’ choice from the quantum perspective. Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle tells us that certain pairs of physical properties cannot be simultaneously known with perfect precision. The more precisely we know one quantity (such as position), the less precisely we can know its complementary quantity (such as momentum).
Lot’s daughters faced a moral uncertainty principle: the more certain they became about the world’s destruction, the less clarity they had about the moral choice. Conversely, had they deliberated more about the moral propriety of their plan, the more they would have questioned their assumption of humanity’s total destruction.
Their perceived certainty about external reality created uncertainty in moral reasoning, and vice versa. This is not merely metaphorical—it reflects a deep structural parallel between quantum mechanics and ethical decision-making.
In quantum mechanics, we learn to operate within uncertainty, making probabilistic predictions rather than deterministic pronouncements. The daughters, lacking this framework, chose deterministic action based on limited data—a cautionary tale about the dangers of false certainty.
Takeaway: Living with Uncertainty
When the world feels like it is burning—as many of us may be experiencing now—check your priors. Ask yourself: What am I treating as a catastrophic miss? What “false alarms” am I tolerating as a result? Am I confusing my limited perspective with absolute reality?
Torah’s narrative mirrors quantum truth: uncertainty rules, and certainty comes at a price. In practice, this means Learning to accept uncertainty rather than forcing premature conclusions; pausing before making high-stakes choices, especially when trauma has shifted your baseline assumptions; and consulting wise counsel to expand your reference frame beyond the “cave” of your immediate experience.
The daughters of Lot acted rationally within their constrained worldview. Their story reminds us that even well-intentioned decisions made under extreme uncertainty can have unforeseen consequences—some redemptive, others costly. The wisdom lies not in avoiding all mistakes, but in maintaining epistemic humility: recognizing the limits of what we can know, and remaining open to realities beyond our current horizon.
[1] Rashi on Genesis 19:31, citing Bereshit Rabbah 51:8.
[2] Genesis 19:37–38; Rashi ad loc.
[3] Yevamot 76b; Ruth 4:17–22.
[4] 1 Kings 14:21.
[5] Green & Swets, 1966; U.S. National Academies overview of ROC tradeoffs.
[6] Wilkinson, 2017; Kube, 2020.
[7] D. McNicol, A Primer of Signal Detection Theory, George Allen & Unwin Ltd, https://www.hms.harvard.edu/bss/neuro/bornlab/nb204/statistics/sdt.pdf (retrieved 11/05/2025).