Pascal's wager
Jun. 28th, 2005 11:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackPascal'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.
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.
Re: Making yourself believe something...
Date: 2005-06-29 03:19 pm (UTC)I'm rather fond of this one as well.
You can ask but I don't know if I can answer. It's to do with certainty and tradition, mostly.
I would say you were Emeth - that if it came to the crunch, you would see things for what they were. Anyone can be a dwarf, or even the talking animals that perished/lost the ability to talk. Aslan lets them live in NewNarnia, but they don't get it so they don't get the whole thing. (It's in CSL's book The Great Divorce).
I'm always afraid of losing my clearsight - I know that I can be incredibly stupid about somethings, because I don't let myself see something. I can often see into people - in the bible it's called "discernment of spirits" - it's not wholly reliable, and it's not there all the time, just when I really need it.