Jun. 28th, 2005

jack: (Default)
Pascal's Wager is an ingenious idea, and one that it was necessary to formulise, but it came up in conversation the other day, and I wanted to list a selection of the problems with it that mean it maybe isn't a good idea to rely on it.

I'm interpreting Pascal's Wager as "If I believe X, then I'll go to heaven, and it's possible that X is true, and infinite reward times small chance is infinite reward, so I should believe X." I don't know if "Well, you never know, what have I got to lose" counts.

1. Moral

It's based soley on what's good for the gambler. I'm slways worried by people who say if there wasn't any god they'd just do whatever they felt like. I doubt god would be ok with that.

2. Practical

Can you make yourself believe? It's difficult to make yourself believe anything even if you'd *like* to if you *don't*. So it only really works as a post-fact justification. Though, to be fair, living as if something was true does get your mind used to it. But you can't pretend a relationship with god, only if belief is one way could you even theoretically force it.

Of course, you could argue that you can't force belief, but the Wager says you should open yourself and try to listen (which I did).

3. Mathematical

We've been assuming X is "believe in god" but the argument works equally well if X is "don't believe in god" or "die my hair red" or "join the spanish inquisition[1]." Since you can't do all of them, the argument is obviously flawed.

In fact, a mathematician would probably see the flaw as assuming there's a positive probability of god existing. If you're inspired, or assume, or deduce, then ok, but then you don't need this, and if you don't, then you're just saying "X is possible so X has a positive probability" which is impossible. Imagine picking a real number at random and choosing zero. It's possible but any sensible assignment of probability has to give it probability zero.

[1] Which does solve problems 1 and 2: if, at the risk of your soul, you convert other people, you might get some success. But problems 3+ still bring you down, and an argument that leads to the inquisition is terrifying.

4. More maths

I got this one from wikipedia, who I should probably alert to (3). Even if you're not certain of god, but think there is a positive probability, then throwing a big die and having a 1/100 chance of believing has an infinite expectation. Can you choose between them?

5. Conclusion

Of course, some people would say I'm making equally unsupported assumptions (eg. that my memory is roughly accurate, or that scientific method works). But I think they're necessary assumptions -- that I can't justify. If you've met god, then you have no doubt. But if you've never seen him but want to hedge your bets, then this isn't the way.
jack: (Default)
*sigh*

I spend half a day debugging, and what was the problem? The debugger was running in the simulator (which doesn't work) not the board. That was the problem *last* time too. It would be more efficient to check that first every time, together with a couple of common flaws. But I always think "I'll remember, no-point fixing it."

In addition to doing profiling on programs, I should do profiling on me. If I spend 80% of the time debugging, I need to write code more carefully. If I spend 50% of the time looking things up I need a better reference system. If I spend too long typing I should c&p common commands.

If I keep my flat tidy (three days and counting it's been left in a suitable-for-mum-queen-katie-or-george state) it's a lot less work to clean it, because a swift wipe suffices for washing up. Why don't I do this?

I could go on (preventive maintence vs. repairs) but I've already had to remove my "one-liner" tag, so I'll stop :)