Hmm. Personally, as a Christian and a student of science (doing a Bachelor of Aviation Technology), I have to say that my thought processes were entirely different from what you described in your article.
I went with Pascal’s Wager, or at least a modified version of it. Any sort of existence is infinitely better than not existing at all; this eliminates atheism, Buddhism, and Hinduism from consideration, along with other reincarnation-oriented religions. Judaism is almost impossible to convert into, so it’s out of the running. Of the religions that remain, most of the pagan ones have relatively mediocre afterlives compared to the heavens of Christianity and Islam, and similarly mediocre punishments if I’m wrong as long as I live virtuously. If I do follow a pagan religion, and Christianity or Islam is correct, I’ll suffer eternal hellfires. Therefore, I will be either a Christian or a Muslim. Since Christianity doesn’t require me to attempt to overthrow Western civilization, has generally easier requirements to attain Heaven, and will probably allow me to avoid Hell if Islam is correct, I chose to be a Christian.
Of course, simply believing something to be true does not neccessarilly make it true, so I plan to put off testing that belief as long as humanly possible. Or, more accurately, as posthumanly possible, considering I plan to become a posthuman robot god and live forever.
I’m curious if you actually put as much thought into this as you claim to. I’m also curious if you grew up in a largely Christian environment. This entire piece sounds a bit like motivated cognition. In particular, I have to wonder whether your justification for throwing out Judaism as being “almost impossible to convert into” reflects an actual attempt to investigate this matter. Depending on the denomination/movement, the time it takes can vary from a few weeks or months (in some Reform versions) to as long as 2-3 years (in Orthodox forms). It also seems like you didn’t do much research because under your framework there are much stronger reasons to reject Judaism. In particular, the vast majority of forms of Judaism don’t believe in eternal damnation, and those that do generally severely limit the set of people whom it applies to. You seem to have an associated problem in generalizing about Christianity and Islam in that there are universalist or close to universalist forms of both those religions. Not only that, but even among non-universalists there is a chance for members of other religions to go to heaven. (If one were just looking at the Abrahamic religions for example and trying to minimize one’s chance of hell, Judaism might make the most sense since many forms of Christianity and Islam are ok with that). But you seem to have also simply avoided thinking about many religious traditions, such as Mormonism and the Ba’hai.
I’d like to think I put as much thought into it as I think so! :P I don’t think I wrote down the answer first and then filled in the proof, but I suppose I can’t be totally sure I didn’t. I did get raised in a Christian environment, but we were hardly the type who’d go to Church every week.
One of my friends as a teenager had his mother converting into Judaism; apparently people who convert into the religion have to go through the diet strictures and whatnot extra-strictly. That’s what I meant by “almost impossible to convert into”. My understanding of the Jewish view of the afterlife is that they either go to Heaven or cease existing (Sheol) which is infinitely worse than eternal hellfire, and a decent Christian will still get into Jewish heaven since we’d follow the Noahide laws, so that way I’m covered.
Mormonism was rejected because the guy who founded it was a known con man, and the nature of the Book of Mormon is such that if it is true, you can’t not believe in it and go to Heaven, and if it isn’t, then you can’t believe in it and go to Heaven. Since he was a con man and therefore it probably isn’t true, it’s probably not a good idea to believe in it.
I’ll admit that I don’t think I did much looking into Bahai, other than seeing that they were basically a religion that splintered off of Islam. Looking it up on Wikipedia, though, it looks like they believe in reincarnation? Bleh. My mind is who I am; if it gets deleted when I go onto the next world, there’s no point.
One of my friends as a teenager had his mother converting into Judaism; apparently people who convert into the religion have to go through the diet strictures and whatnot extra-strictly. That’s what I meant by “almost impossible to convert into”. My understanding of the Jewish view of the afterlife is that they either go to Heaven or cease existing (Sheol) which is infinitely worse than eternal hellfire, and a decent Christian will still get into Jewish heaven since we’d follow the Noahide laws, so that way I’m covered.
This remark makes it sound even more like you didn’t do much research. The belief that one ceases to exist was historically floating around in some sects but wasn’t a prominent viewpoint from about 100 CE to 1800 CE where it again got picked up by the most weak theistic and deistic strains of Judaism (such as some Reform and Conservative types). Most Orthodox for example believe in a heaven and (temporary) hell pretty similar to that of Christianity (although even this is complicated by the lack of any strong doctrinal statements. There’s a lot more fracturing without anything like the statements of faith or catechisms found in many forms of Christianity). Also, while it is clear that Muslims follow the Noachide laws by most approaches it is actually far from clear that Christians count as such. In particular, the belief in the divinity of a human, Jesus, according to many opinions runs afoul of the prohibition on idolatry. Islam doesn’t have this problem when running into the Noachide laws because no claim is made that Muhammad is divine, indeed quite the opposite.
ETA: Also the thing about converts keeping laws extra strictly is only true in some strains also. Note also that this simply amounts in some strains to actually requiring converts to keep the rules (for example in the United States only about half of all Conservative Jews keep kashrut but it is expected that converts keep some form. The Conservative Movement leaders believes that everyone should keep Kashrut but in practice they can’t get most of their members to actually do so).
Mormonism was rejected because the guy who founded it was a known con man, and the nature of the Book of Mormon is such that if it is true, you can’t not believe in it and go to Heaven, and if it isn’t, then you can’t believe in it and go to Heaven.
That’s not true. Many Mormons believe that non-Mormons can go to heaven. The only caveat is that non-Mormons don’t progress as much as Mormons.
Also, keeping kashrut only seems almost impossible if it’s something you don’t want to do. Obviously, there are a great many people who do it, though the feasibility depends greatly on where you live.
The sort of conversion which seem to be extremely difficult is one which will get you Israeli citizenship.
One other thought: If you are as concerned about continuing to exist as you say you are then you should be much more worried about religions in which believers don’t stop existing and non-believers do stop at death. In that case, your options become a bit more limited. I take it you aren’t either a Jehovah Witness or a classical Karaite?
My value system is just the opposite. To me eternal hellfire is the worst thing possible, hence infinitely worse than nonexistence. But since the chances for it appear infinitesimal, I easily assign greater expected utility to the freedom from cognitive dissonance that consistent empiricism affords me.
Edit: To clarify, my objection is not that you’ve ignored certain current religions; my objection is that you’ve restrained the field to current religions in the first place, as if they were somehow inherently more plausible than the vast unexplored majority of religionspace.
Hmm? If Atheism is correct, I cease to exist after I die no matter what I believe in. If it isn’t, I’ll either wind up burning in Hell, going to a relatively mediocre afterlife, or ceasing to exist, depending on which religion is correct.
What incentive could I possibly have to decide to be an atheist? It seems to be more likely to be true judging by most present science, but that doesn’t automatically make it the most rational decision to make. The best-case scenario is that I’m wrong and I wind up as a minor functionary in the Celestial Bureaucracy or something.
And I’d thank him for it, since it’s better to spend eternity burning in Religious Hell than ceasing to exist. At least in Religious Hell, I’m still me. ;)
Also, I should probably be going to bed since I live in Australia and it’s half-past midnight and I have university tomorrow.
If Atheism is correct, I cease to exist after I die no matter what I believe in.
And I’d thank him for it, since it’s better to spend eternity burning in Religious Hell than ceasing to exist. At least in Religious Hell, I’m still me. ;)
That belief in an afterlife tends to go with belief in a deity doesn’t make disbelief in an afterlife a logical consequence of atheism.
For real life example: one Russian kook preaches exactly this doctrine—strong atheism combined with strong belief of immortality of souls. Add holocaust denial, moon landing denial and admiration of Stalin as greatest hero that ever lived and you have something that sells dozens of books and gains many dedicated followers.
Any more about him would belong to “irrationality quotes” thread if one existed...
why? how do you measure that P of caring personal god who saves human souls from extinction is higher that P of unthinking mechanism (“akashic chronicle”, “reincarnation wheel”) doing the same?
why? how do you measure that P of caring personal god who saves human souls from extinction is higher that P of unthinking mechanism (“akashic chronicle”, “reincarnation wheel”) doing the same?
I don’t, but something like a reincarnation wheel or an akashic chronicle is not inconsistent with the existence of a deity so I don’t need to.
You are an atheist. You just said so. If you verbally self-identify as a Christian, then you’ll be a lying atheist.
EDIT: And if the reason that you verbally self-identify as a Christian is because you are enticed by Pascal’s Wager, then you’ve made a (subtle) mistake. I can explain the subtle mistake if you want.
Care to tell? If it’s “Pascal’s Wager is insufficiently broad” I believe that I have stated I examined a more generalized version of Pascal’s Wager before deciding.
I don’t believe that I’m an atheist; basically, what I was saying was that it’s impossible to know anything to be true with 100 percent certainty; science can only disprove things. The physical evidence indicates atheism is probably true, but the optimal decision for what belief to choose might well to be to ignore that and believe something else.
the optimal decision for what belief to choose might well to be to ignore that and believe something else.
Can you describe what you mean by “choosing to believe” in something? Right now it’s raining where I am, and I don’t seem to be able to choose to believe otherwise. I have the same difficulty in choosing to believe things I don’t know the truth of, like whether it will stop raining by the time I go home.
On the other hand, I know someone who became interested in paganism, tested it by believing in it, and found it worked, so continued to believe. I would have been fascinated to probe him further on the matter, but I didn’t think I could manage to not sound like an anthropologist inquiring somewhat condescendingly into the strange superstitions of tribal savages.
Worshipping the Goddess that infuses Nature made a difference in his life, or something like that. As I say, I didn’t feel comfortable about pressing him on the subject. It would have been like asking what sex is like.
On the other hand, I know someone who became interested in paganism, tested it by believing in it, and found it worked, so continued to believe. I would have been fascinated to probe him further on the matter, but I didn’t think I could manage to not sound like an anthropologist inquiring somewhat condescendingly into the strange superstitions of tribal savages.
how exactly paganism worked for him? pagan rituals were cool and pagan chicks were hot ;-) or it was pagan magic that really worked?
If you define “atheist” to be someone who believes, with probability 1, that there is no God, then I am also not an atheist. I think you would struggle to find any sane person who believed, with probability 1, that there is no God.
Perhaps I should bring up a point about probabilistic reasoning here. If you believe that a proposition is true with probability 1, then you cannot rationally change your belief away from probability 1. This is a consequence of Bayes’ theorem. So really, nobody believes any empirical fact with a probability of 1 or 0.
Perhaps I should bring up a point about probabilistic reasoning here. If you believe that a proposition is true with probability 1, then you cannot rationally change your belief away from probability 1. This is a consequence of Bayes’ theorem. So really, nobody believes any empirical fact with a probability of 1 or 0.
The last sentence shouldn’t be “nobody” but “no Bayesian rationalist.”
what interpretation of the word “probability” does allow you to think that the probability of something is 1 and then change to something other than 1?
As far as I know a frequentist could never do this. They’d need an infinitely long sequence of experiments to think that the probability of an event was 1?
what interpretation of the word “probability” does allow you to think that the probability of something is 1 and then change to something other than 1?
Any interpretation where you can fix a broken model. I can imagine a conversation like this...
Prankster: I’m holding a die behind my back. If I roll it, what probability would you assign to a 1 coming up?
cupholder: Is it loaded?
Prankster: No.
cupholder: Are you throwing it in a funny way, like in one of those machines that throws it so it’s really likely to come up a 6 or something?
Prankster: No, no funny tricks here. Just rolling it normally.
cupholder: Then you’ve got a 1⁄6 probability of rolling a 1.
Prankster: And what about rolling a 2?
cupholder: Well, the same.
Prankster: And so on for all the other numbers, right?
cupholder: Sure.
Prankster: So you assign a probability of 1 to a number between 1 and 6 coming up?
cupholder: Yeah.
Prankster: Surprise! It’s 20-sided!
cupholder: Huh. I’d better change my estimate from 1 to 6⁄20.
what interpretation of the word “probability” does allow you to think that the probability of something is 1 and then change to something other than 1?
They need to have inconsistent attitudes about how they calculate probability, or estimate probabilities by inherently irrational means such as assigning likelyhood based on what hypothesis they want to be true the most and acting like that belief is certain. Empirically, I’ve met individuals who claim that no amount of evidence would alter some of their beliefs so something like this may be going on. It is however possible that trying to model these beliefs as probabilities implies a degree of rationality that they simply lack. The human mind is not generally a good Bayesian.
It may be a matter of language use—if I assign something a probability of 1, it means that everything I know now points in that direction, but I leave the possibility open that I might come to know more.
I think my underlying premise is “no evidence could ever convince me otherwise” is so ridiculous that it doesn’t need to be included in the schema.
So the mistake that I think is inherent in Pascal’s Wager is the assumption that there is some outcome (heaven, existence, whatever) that is infinitely good.
Why is this mistaken?
Well, for heaven to be infinitely good, it must be the case that you value a 1/N probability of heaven more than you value a certainty of some extremely good outcome (like becoming a billionaire, curing all disease in the world, etc), for any N, no matter how large. Even N=Graham’s number.
Now there are good scientific reasons to think that heaven couldn’t really be “that good”. For example, there is a limit to how long you can exist without going into a cycle (Poincare Recurrance Theorem), a limit to how much joy you can feel (limited response of neurons) etc.
But even if you stipulated that your utility is infinite for a state that is only finitely good in the usual sense (this is perfectly logically consistent, it’s just mad), you still run into problems.
A reasoning system that has infinite utilities would sacrifice any finite possession for even a minuscule increase in the probability of the infinite utility outcome.
For example, if one read the bible with the assumption that getting into heaven is infinitely good, one would try to find the most likely interpretation of every rule and follow it exactly. Someone actually tried to do this—see A year of living biblically. The result of actually trying to follow those rules exactly would inevitably be Jail. But an idealized reasoning system that assigned an infinite utility to heaven would recommend that Jail in this life is a small sacrifice to make for infinite utility.
It seems extremely unlikely that you would actually act on the stated preference of infinite utility for heaven.
The bigger problem is that accepting Pascal wager is just first step on the road to faith. And walking the road means to live and pray as if you had faith.
Sure, I was simply referring to the isolated quote in question: comment that Normal_Anomaly was replying to had a lot of problems, but I don’t think that the sentence in question was the one that deserved criticism.
Good for you. Now you only have to renounce all pride, glory and luxury and spend your life praying for the gift of faith. It will eventually come, as Pascal reassures us.
Hmm. Personally, as a Christian and a student of science (doing a Bachelor of Aviation Technology), I have to say that my thought processes were entirely different from what you described in your article.
I went with Pascal’s Wager, or at least a modified version of it. Any sort of existence is infinitely better than not existing at all; this eliminates atheism, Buddhism, and Hinduism from consideration, along with other reincarnation-oriented religions. Judaism is almost impossible to convert into, so it’s out of the running. Of the religions that remain, most of the pagan ones have relatively mediocre afterlives compared to the heavens of Christianity and Islam, and similarly mediocre punishments if I’m wrong as long as I live virtuously. If I do follow a pagan religion, and Christianity or Islam is correct, I’ll suffer eternal hellfires. Therefore, I will be either a Christian or a Muslim. Since Christianity doesn’t require me to attempt to overthrow Western civilization, has generally easier requirements to attain Heaven, and will probably allow me to avoid Hell if Islam is correct, I chose to be a Christian.
Of course, simply believing something to be true does not neccessarilly make it true, so I plan to put off testing that belief as long as humanly possible. Or, more accurately, as posthumanly possible, considering I plan to become a posthuman robot god and live forever.
I’m curious if you actually put as much thought into this as you claim to. I’m also curious if you grew up in a largely Christian environment. This entire piece sounds a bit like motivated cognition. In particular, I have to wonder whether your justification for throwing out Judaism as being “almost impossible to convert into” reflects an actual attempt to investigate this matter. Depending on the denomination/movement, the time it takes can vary from a few weeks or months (in some Reform versions) to as long as 2-3 years (in Orthodox forms). It also seems like you didn’t do much research because under your framework there are much stronger reasons to reject Judaism. In particular, the vast majority of forms of Judaism don’t believe in eternal damnation, and those that do generally severely limit the set of people whom it applies to. You seem to have an associated problem in generalizing about Christianity and Islam in that there are universalist or close to universalist forms of both those religions. Not only that, but even among non-universalists there is a chance for members of other religions to go to heaven. (If one were just looking at the Abrahamic religions for example and trying to minimize one’s chance of hell, Judaism might make the most sense since many forms of Christianity and Islam are ok with that). But you seem to have also simply avoided thinking about many religious traditions, such as Mormonism and the Ba’hai.
I’d like to think I put as much thought into it as I think so! :P I don’t think I wrote down the answer first and then filled in the proof, but I suppose I can’t be totally sure I didn’t. I did get raised in a Christian environment, but we were hardly the type who’d go to Church every week.
One of my friends as a teenager had his mother converting into Judaism; apparently people who convert into the religion have to go through the diet strictures and whatnot extra-strictly. That’s what I meant by “almost impossible to convert into”. My understanding of the Jewish view of the afterlife is that they either go to Heaven or cease existing (Sheol) which is infinitely worse than eternal hellfire, and a decent Christian will still get into Jewish heaven since we’d follow the Noahide laws, so that way I’m covered.
Mormonism was rejected because the guy who founded it was a known con man, and the nature of the Book of Mormon is such that if it is true, you can’t not believe in it and go to Heaven, and if it isn’t, then you can’t believe in it and go to Heaven. Since he was a con man and therefore it probably isn’t true, it’s probably not a good idea to believe in it.
I’ll admit that I don’t think I did much looking into Bahai, other than seeing that they were basically a religion that splintered off of Islam. Looking it up on Wikipedia, though, it looks like they believe in reincarnation? Bleh. My mind is who I am; if it gets deleted when I go onto the next world, there’s no point.
This remark makes it sound even more like you didn’t do much research. The belief that one ceases to exist was historically floating around in some sects but wasn’t a prominent viewpoint from about 100 CE to 1800 CE where it again got picked up by the most weak theistic and deistic strains of Judaism (such as some Reform and Conservative types). Most Orthodox for example believe in a heaven and (temporary) hell pretty similar to that of Christianity (although even this is complicated by the lack of any strong doctrinal statements. There’s a lot more fracturing without anything like the statements of faith or catechisms found in many forms of Christianity). Also, while it is clear that Muslims follow the Noachide laws by most approaches it is actually far from clear that Christians count as such. In particular, the belief in the divinity of a human, Jesus, according to many opinions runs afoul of the prohibition on idolatry. Islam doesn’t have this problem when running into the Noachide laws because no claim is made that Muhammad is divine, indeed quite the opposite.
ETA: Also the thing about converts keeping laws extra strictly is only true in some strains also. Note also that this simply amounts in some strains to actually requiring converts to keep the rules (for example in the United States only about half of all Conservative Jews keep kashrut but it is expected that converts keep some form. The Conservative Movement leaders believes that everyone should keep Kashrut but in practice they can’t get most of their members to actually do so).
That’s not true. Many Mormons believe that non-Mormons can go to heaven. The only caveat is that non-Mormons don’t progress as much as Mormons.
Also, keeping kashrut only seems almost impossible if it’s something you don’t want to do. Obviously, there are a great many people who do it, though the feasibility depends greatly on where you live.
The sort of conversion which seem to be extremely difficult is one which will get you Israeli citizenship.
Especially since Mormons are in the habit of converting non-Mormons after their deaths.
One other thought: If you are as concerned about continuing to exist as you say you are then you should be much more worried about religions in which believers don’t stop existing and non-believers do stop at death. In that case, your options become a bit more limited. I take it you aren’t either a Jehovah Witness or a classical Karaite?
My value system is just the opposite. To me eternal hellfire is the worst thing possible, hence infinitely worse than nonexistence. But since the chances for it appear infinitesimal, I easily assign greater expected utility to the freedom from cognitive dissonance that consistent empiricism affords me.
This seems far from exhaustive.
Edit: To clarify, my objection is not that you’ve ignored certain current religions; my objection is that you’ve restrained the field to current religions in the first place, as if they were somehow inherently more plausible than the vast unexplored majority of religionspace.
WISHFUL THINKING ALERT!
SIREN SOUNDS
Hmm? If Atheism is correct, I cease to exist after I die no matter what I believe in. If it isn’t, I’ll either wind up burning in Hell, going to a relatively mediocre afterlife, or ceasing to exist, depending on which religion is correct.
What incentive could I possibly have to decide to be an atheist? It seems to be more likely to be true judging by most present science, but that doesn’t automatically make it the most rational decision to make. The best-case scenario is that I’m wrong and I wind up as a minor functionary in the Celestial Bureaucracy or something.
To avoid being punished by the God of Rationality. Since there’s no evidence for gods, It sends all theists to Hell.
And I’d thank him for it, since it’s better to spend eternity burning in Religious Hell than ceasing to exist. At least in Religious Hell, I’m still me. ;)
Also, I should probably be going to bed since I live in Australia and it’s half-past midnight and I have university tomorrow.
That belief in an afterlife tends to go with belief in a deity doesn’t make disbelief in an afterlife a logical consequence of atheism.
For real life example: one Russian kook preaches exactly this doctrine—strong atheism combined with strong belief of immortality of souls. Add holocaust denial, moon landing denial and admiration of Stalin as greatest hero that ever lived and you have something that sells dozens of books and gains many dedicated followers. Any more about him would belong to “irrationality quotes” thread if one existed...
Interesting. Never head of this guy. Link?
|Interesting.
as interesting as picking up rocks and observing insects crawling under them, IMHO
|Never head of this guy. Link?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yury_Ignatyevich_Mukhin
most of his works are online, in Russian of course, links from Russian wiki page
What, insects are fascinating!
Yes, but it seems fair to say that P(Afterlife|A deity exists) > P(Afterlife|~ A deity exists).
why? how do you measure that P of caring personal god who saves human souls from extinction is higher that P of unthinking mechanism (“akashic chronicle”, “reincarnation wheel”) doing the same?
I don’t, but something like a reincarnation wheel or an akashic chronicle is not inconsistent with the existence of a deity so I don’t need to.
You are an atheist. You just said so. If you verbally self-identify as a Christian, then you’ll be a lying atheist.
EDIT: And if the reason that you verbally self-identify as a Christian is because you are enticed by Pascal’s Wager, then you’ve made a (subtle) mistake. I can explain the subtle mistake if you want.
Care to tell? If it’s “Pascal’s Wager is insufficiently broad” I believe that I have stated I examined a more generalized version of Pascal’s Wager before deciding.
I don’t believe that I’m an atheist; basically, what I was saying was that it’s impossible to know anything to be true with 100 percent certainty; science can only disprove things. The physical evidence indicates atheism is probably true, but the optimal decision for what belief to choose might well to be to ignore that and believe something else.
Can you describe what you mean by “choosing to believe” in something? Right now it’s raining where I am, and I don’t seem to be able to choose to believe otherwise. I have the same difficulty in choosing to believe things I don’t know the truth of, like whether it will stop raining by the time I go home.
On the other hand, I know someone who became interested in paganism, tested it by believing in it, and found it worked, so continued to believe. I would have been fascinated to probe him further on the matter, but I didn’t think I could manage to not sound like an anthropologist inquiring somewhat condescendingly into the strange superstitions of tribal savages.
how paganism worked for him? pagan rituals were cool and pagan chicks were hot, or something more? :P
Worshipping the Goddess that infuses Nature made a difference in his life, or something like that. As I say, I didn’t feel comfortable about pressing him on the subject. It would have been like asking what sex is like.
how exactly paganism worked for him? pagan rituals were cool and pagan chicks were hot ;-) or it was pagan magic that really worked?
If you define “atheist” to be someone who believes, with probability 1, that there is no God, then I am also not an atheist. I think you would struggle to find any sane person who believed, with probability 1, that there is no God.
Perhaps I should bring up a point about probabilistic reasoning here. If you believe that a proposition is true with probability 1, then you cannot rationally change your belief away from probability 1. This is a consequence of Bayes’ theorem. So really, nobody believes any empirical fact with a probability of 1 or 0.
The last sentence shouldn’t be “nobody” but “no Bayesian rationalist.”
what interpretation of the word “probability” does allow you to think that the probability of something is 1 and then change to something other than 1?
As far as I know a frequentist could never do this. They’d need an infinitely long sequence of experiments to think that the probability of an event was 1?
Any interpretation where you can fix a broken model. I can imagine a conversation like this...
Prankster: I’m holding a die behind my back. If I roll it, what probability would you assign to a 1 coming up?
cupholder: Is it loaded?
Prankster: No.
cupholder: Are you throwing it in a funny way, like in one of those machines that throws it so it’s really likely to come up a 6 or something?
Prankster: No, no funny tricks here. Just rolling it normally.
cupholder: Then you’ve got a 1⁄6 probability of rolling a 1.
Prankster: And what about rolling a 2?
cupholder: Well, the same.
Prankster: And so on for all the other numbers, right?
cupholder: Sure.
Prankster: So you assign a probability of 1 to a number between 1 and 6 coming up?
cupholder: Yeah.
Prankster: Surprise! It’s 20-sided!
cupholder: Huh. I’d better change my estimate from 1 to 6⁄20.
They need to have inconsistent attitudes about how they calculate probability, or estimate probabilities by inherently irrational means such as assigning likelyhood based on what hypothesis they want to be true the most and acting like that belief is certain. Empirically, I’ve met individuals who claim that no amount of evidence would alter some of their beliefs so something like this may be going on. It is however possible that trying to model these beliefs as probabilities implies a degree of rationality that they simply lack. The human mind is not generally a good Bayesian.
It may be a matter of language use—if I assign something a probability of 1, it means that everything I know now points in that direction, but I leave the possibility open that I might come to know more.
I think my underlying premise is “no evidence could ever convince me otherwise” is so ridiculous that it doesn’t need to be included in the schema.
So the mistake that I think is inherent in Pascal’s Wager is the assumption that there is some outcome (heaven, existence, whatever) that is infinitely good.
Why is this mistaken?
Well, for heaven to be infinitely good, it must be the case that you value a 1/N probability of heaven more than you value a certainty of some extremely good outcome (like becoming a billionaire, curing all disease in the world, etc), for any N, no matter how large. Even N=Graham’s number.
Now there are good scientific reasons to think that heaven couldn’t really be “that good”. For example, there is a limit to how long you can exist without going into a cycle (Poincare Recurrance Theorem), a limit to how much joy you can feel (limited response of neurons) etc.
But even if you stipulated that your utility is infinite for a state that is only finitely good in the usual sense (this is perfectly logically consistent, it’s just mad), you still run into problems.
A reasoning system that has infinite utilities would sacrifice any finite possession for even a minuscule increase in the probability of the infinite utility outcome.
For example, if one read the bible with the assumption that getting into heaven is infinitely good, one would try to find the most likely interpretation of every rule and follow it exactly. Someone actually tried to do this—see A year of living biblically. The result of actually trying to follow those rules exactly would inevitably be Jail. But an idealized reasoning system that assigned an infinite utility to heaven would recommend that Jail in this life is a small sacrifice to make for infinite utility.
It seems extremely unlikely that you would actually act on the stated preference of infinite utility for heaven.
The bigger problem is that accepting Pascal wager is just first step on the road to faith. And walking the road means to live and pray as if you had faith.
Somewhat, I do not see this guy doing it...
Only atheists can honestly assert that statement.
That assertion may depend on how one unpacks atheism, physical evidence, and probably.
It would take an awful lot of contortions to make the grandparent statement look reasonable and I’m not even sure it’s possible.
Sure, I was simply referring to the isolated quote in question: comment that Normal_Anomaly was replying to had a lot of problems, but I don’t think that the sentence in question was the one that deserved criticism.
Good for you. Now you only have to renounce all pride, glory and luxury and spend your life praying for the gift of faith. It will eventually come, as Pascal reassures us.
http://www.indepthinfo.com/extended-quotes/necessity-of-the-wager.shtml
(scroll down to note 233 for Pascal’s famous wager argument in its full context)