Pascal’s Wager tends to be dismissed because he originally only looked at Christianity vs Atheism. But the logic holds even if you generalize Pascal’s Wager by expanding the considered options to include every existing religion, every past religion, and even possible religions; Christianity still dominates the cost-benefit-chance analysis. Funnily enough, in this Generalized Pascal’s Wager (GPW), the only threat to Christianity is another Abrahamic religion: Islam. Mainly due to the doctrine in Islam that if you attrubute partners to God (ie, the Holy Trinity) untill the moment up to your death, then you won’t ever be forgiven, and so you’ll go to Hell. Christianity still wins though due to the “costs/benefits-while-wrong” side of the utility calculus (less fasting, praying, etc and more infrastructure, aesthetics, parsimony, inheritance, etc.). Also, Islam taken a huge Solomonoff Complexity hit to its a priori measure of credence due to its reactionary nature against Christianity. Other religions like Buddhism, Shintoism, etc don’t due well in their utility calculus since they don’t have explicit commands to accept them as more than moral teachings. As in, you can become a Christian and simultaneously avoid violating Buddhist prescriptive commands (a Christian ascetic monk is already living in accordance with Buddhist prescriptions and going beyond them). Not even having mentioned yet how Buddhism doesn’t even threaten with Hell (inf negutil for eternity), but merely having to be a squirrel “in your next life” for a couple years. On the benefit side, Buddhism only promises inf posutil after perhaps infinitely many hurdles rather than one. Finally, on conceivable/possible religions, like Pascal’s Mugging or the Spaghetti Monster, they perform poorly due to higher Solomonoff Complexity and nullutil-when-wrong, respectively. Discussion: what decision theories are consistent with outputting Christianity (accepting Jesus Christ as God) ?
Pascal’s Wager tends to be dismissed because he originally only looked at Christianity vs Atheism. But the logic holds even if you generalize Pascal’s Wager by expanding the considered options to include every existing religion, every past religion, and even possible religions; Christianity still dominates the cost-benefit-chance analysis. Funnily enough, in this Generalized Pascal’s Wager (GPW), the only threat to Christianity is another Abrahamic religion: Islam. Mainly due to the doctrine in Islam that if you attrubute partners to God (ie, the Holy Trinity) untill the moment up to your death, then you won’t ever be forgiven, and so you’ll go to Hell. Christianity still wins though due to the “costs/benefits-while-wrong” side of the utility calculus (less fasting, praying, etc and more infrastructure, aesthetics, parsimony, inheritance, etc.). Also, Islam taken a huge Solomonoff Complexity hit to its a priori measure of credence due to its reactionary nature against Christianity. Other religions like Buddhism, Shintoism, etc don’t due well in their utility calculus since they don’t have explicit commands to accept them as more than moral teachings. As in, you can become a Christian and simultaneously avoid violating Buddhist prescriptive commands (a Christian ascetic monk is already living in accordance with Buddhist prescriptions and going beyond them). Not even having mentioned yet how Buddhism doesn’t even threaten with Hell (inf negutil for eternity), but merely having to be a squirrel “in your next life” for a couple years. On the benefit side, Buddhism only promises inf posutil after perhaps infinitely many hurdles rather than one. Finally, on conceivable/possible religions, like Pascal’s Mugging or the Spaghetti Monster, they perform poorly due to higher Solomonoff Complexity and nullutil-when-wrong, respectively. Discussion: what decision theories are consistent with outputting Christianity (accepting Jesus Christ as God) ?