If you’re looking for rationalizations for not giving into Pascal’s Wager here, a better one might be “If I wanted to maximize my chance at immortality, paying 100$ for prayers is less effective than investing 100$ into cryonics.”
You can only “invest $100” in cryonics by buying an insurance policy with a $100 premium that covers a very short period, where the chance of immortality is the probability that cryonics works multipled by the probability that you will die during the exact period covered by the premium before you have to pay a second premium. Because the chance that you will die during the period is non-zero, the return on the investment is also non-zero. However, the overhead for this investment is huge (and bear in mind that overhead includes such things as “everyone thinks you’re crazy for making a single payment that only returns anything if you die within the week.”)
Furthermore, what does it even mean to say “this instance of Pascal’s Mugging maximizes my return, over several instances of Pascal’s mugging”? If it’s an instance of Pascal’s mugging, the return is useless information and maximizing it is meaningless.
If you’re looking for rationalizations for not giving into Pascal’s Wager here, a better one might be “If I wanted to maximize my chance at immortality, paying 100$ for prayers is less effective than investing 100$ into cryonics.”
You can only “invest $100” in cryonics by buying an insurance policy with a $100 premium that covers a very short period, where the chance of immortality is the probability that cryonics works multipled by the probability that you will die during the exact period covered by the premium before you have to pay a second premium. Because the chance that you will die during the period is non-zero, the return on the investment is also non-zero. However, the overhead for this investment is huge (and bear in mind that overhead includes such things as “everyone thinks you’re crazy for making a single payment that only returns anything if you die within the week.”)
Furthermore, what does it even mean to say “this instance of Pascal’s Mugging maximizes my return, over several instances of Pascal’s mugging”? If it’s an instance of Pascal’s mugging, the return is useless information and maximizing it is meaningless.