This isn’t helpful. You are criticizing the version of the argument that Pascal originally presented, not the version that Phil gave in his post. This is a classical failure mode when discussion philosophical issues (and disturbingly common among professional philosophers). That there might be flaws in the original form of an argument doesn’t mean that a repaired version doesn’t work. Pascal almost certainly didn’t know about the idea of simulations for example. This sort of thing is similar to creationists who focus on Darwin’s original work rather than the modern understanding of evolution.
Actually I don’t understand your objection, did you base it only on those two words.. or did you take into account what I said? I still think what I said refutes Phil’s argument. Maybe Phil can comment.
I your comment the first time that some of your arguments do deal with some of the issues that Phil raised. But when I read it the first time it seemed parts of your response and primary criticism seem to address the version of Pascal’s wager where one ignores the actual probability in question because the reward is infinite. But Phil’s version tries to make actual estimates of the probability and essentially deals with the problem of all the unknown hypothetical religions but giving an argument that assigns them a low probability compared to the believed religions.
I don’t think it’s a reasonable hypothesis that the God of the simulation secretly wants people to flick the lightswitch off and on 17 times before entering every room but has never told anyone. Creating an infinity of possible alternatives and then assigning them all equal probability would cause you difficulties in many more situations than choosing a religion.
In general when there is an infinity of possible hypotheses (and there always is, in any situation) one does not quantify over them: decisions cannot be made in this way.
I didn’t quantify over an infinity of possible hypothesis. I considered only hypothesis that were suggested by the data. We aren’t dealing with pure prior probabilities here. We have observations; and even without observations, we have priors based on hypothesis complexity.
Since you say there are always an infinity of possible hypotheses, how would you choose between them, in any situation? Your claim implies that Bayesian reasoning is always impossible.
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This isn’t helpful. You are criticizing the version of the argument that Pascal originally presented, not the version that Phil gave in his post. This is a classical failure mode when discussion philosophical issues (and disturbingly common among professional philosophers). That there might be flaws in the original form of an argument doesn’t mean that a repaired version doesn’t work. Pascal almost certainly didn’t know about the idea of simulations for example. This sort of thing is similar to creationists who focus on Darwin’s original work rather than the modern understanding of evolution.
Actually I don’t understand your objection, did you base it only on those two words.. or did you take into account what I said? I still think what I said refutes Phil’s argument. Maybe Phil can comment.
I your comment the first time that some of your arguments do deal with some of the issues that Phil raised. But when I read it the first time it seemed parts of your response and primary criticism seem to address the version of Pascal’s wager where one ignores the actual probability in question because the reward is infinite. But Phil’s version tries to make actual estimates of the probability and essentially deals with the problem of all the unknown hypothetical religions but giving an argument that assigns them a low probability compared to the believed religions.
OK. I thought this was about Pascals Wager.
I was responding to
by giving a different counter-argument (which does not fail).
I don’t think it’s a reasonable hypothesis that the God of the simulation secretly wants people to flick the lightswitch off and on 17 times before entering every room but has never told anyone. Creating an infinity of possible alternatives and then assigning them all equal probability would cause you difficulties in many more situations than choosing a religion.
I didn’t quantify over an infinity of possible hypothesis. I considered only hypothesis that were suggested by the data. We aren’t dealing with pure prior probabilities here. We have observations; and even without observations, we have priors based on hypothesis complexity.
Since you say there are always an infinity of possible hypotheses, how would you choose between them, in any situation? Your claim implies that Bayesian reasoning is always impossible.