The problem with this isn’t the quantities of utility involved, it’s the assumption that a god who cares about such conversions to Christianity is the only option for a divine, rather than a God of Islam who would burn Christian converts hotter than atheists, or a PC Christian god who would have a heaven for all who were honest with themsleves and didn’t go through pro forma conversions.
Each of these possibilities has some probability associated with it. Taking them all into account, what is the expected utility of being a Christian? One may ignore those to make the question simpler, but unless all the possibilities cancel out nicely, you’re still going to end up with something.
The answer to the wager is that the random assumption that all forms of magic but one have less probability than that one story about magic is a dumb assumption.
Perhaps no one outweighs all the rest, but if you add them all together, they’d point in one general direction. It’s so close to zero that if you tried to calculate it, you’d barely be able to do better than chance. You’d still be able to do better, though.
I think there is a significant chance you are right, but that it is less than .5. I hope others can add to this discussion. I am reminded of this, if you tell me I am seeing an actual banana that I am holding, rather than an image my brain made of a collection of atoms, then...I don’t even know anymore.
Each of these possibilities has some probability associated with it. Taking them all into account, what is the expected utility of being a Christian? One may ignore those to make the question simpler, but unless all the possibilities cancel out nicely, you’re still going to end up with something.
Perhaps no one outweighs all the rest, but if you add them all together, they’d point in one general direction. It’s so close to zero that if you tried to calculate it, you’d barely be able to do better than chance. You’d still be able to do better, though.
I think there is a significant chance you are right, but that it is less than .5. I hope others can add to this discussion. I am reminded of this, if you tell me I am seeing an actual banana that I am holding, rather than an image my brain made of a collection of atoms, then...I don’t even know anymore.