Pascal's wager is bullshit

[Starmaker]

There should really be no reason why people should bet on a lottery, as the chance of winning is exceedingly small (Exception - when you deliberately game the system by buying thousands of tickets).

No. People who spend negligible amounts of money on tickets are not (very) stupid. Really, watching the lottery show costs more than the ticket itself (okay, I actually have no idea about lottery tickets in America, but a "fair" ticket in Russia is $2...$4, 0.5 to 1.0 the hourly wage I got as a college dropout). On the other hand, a lottery as a means of systematic investment (buying thousands of tickets) is dumb, dumb, dumb, because the miniscule* chance to change your life for the better by winning a lot of money is not compensated by the very noticeble negative impact wasting money on thousands of tickets makes in your life.

Remember, the lottery organizers (assuming their honesty) do not care how many different persons buy their tickets (given a constant amount of sold tickets). To them, every buyer is as good as the next one. The buyers, on the whole, are going to lose. And you making yourself a bigger part of the whole will make you lose more.

*I know a dictionary word Mozilla spellcheck doesn't know. I'm awesome.

[Username17]

Pascal's Wager is from the Pensées, which was not published until after he died and wasn't finished. It is held up as a classic of Christian apologetics, but as far as I can tell it was designed as a sophisticated piece of trolling by an atheist ever penned. The layout of the apology is supposed to be showing life, the universe, and everything in the context of there not being any god and then have people come to grips with how wretched that is, and therefore come to Christianity as specifically defined by the French King.

To put things in perspective, this was an era where if you wrote a philosophical text whose conclusion was that you should abandon French Monarchy or French Catholicism, you could get fined, imprisoned, or killed. Ad Pascal's conclusion is that you should accept both. But along the way, he:

• Demonstrates that every part of the universe, from math & matter to man & morality can exist in the absence of the divine.
• Demonstrates that there is absolutely no evidence for, or reason to believe in divinity of any kind.
• Conclusion: Jesus

-Username17

[Juton]

There are two big problems with Pascal's wager:

The first is, depending on definitions, you cannot make a rational choice to have faith. Either you have it or you don't. Ask a Christian if he could make a choice to start having faith in Zeus or Odin. If the person you're talking to is not retarded they should say that, because of their faith it would be impossible to believe in any G/god other than YHWH/Jesus.

The second is that there is more than two choices (Atheism vs Christianity). Islam proclaims itself as true, you can throw Judaism in there as well, if you wanted to be really pluralistic you can start including Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism etc. Not only that, but if you restrict yourselves to Christianity and its derivatives then you have to choose between being Mormon, Jehovah's Witness, Catholic, and various Protestant denominations.

So your chance of going to heaven using Pascal's wager isn't 1, it's 1/N and N is pretty large once you start listing subgroups that think they are special. You can't have faith in all of them. Even if you choose one of them rationally it still won't work because you need faith, and you either have that or you don't.

[RobbyPants]

The first is, depending on definitions, you cannot make a rational choice to have faith. Either you have it or you don't. Ask a Christian if he could make a choice to start having faith in Zeus or Odin. If the person you're talking to is not retarded they should say that, because of their faith it would be impossible to believe in any G/god other than YHWH/Jesus.

Yeah. If nothing else, the idea to just start simply believing in something is really crazy. I don't even know how I'd begin to go about making myself believe something. I could pretend, and say things in public and to myself to fake it, but that's not really belief.

So, if the premise if "believe because you don't have anything to lose by doing so", it seems like you'd have a lot of liars walking around all pretending to each other. And I assume an all powerful god would be a little smarter than to be duped by that.

[Koumei]

And I assume an all powerful god would be a little smarter than to be duped by that.

Are you sure? Men have nipples.

[angelfromanotherpin]

Are you sure? Men have nipples.

And they're very enjoyable, thank you.

[sabs]

So there are actually infinite possible Gods, an infinite number of which damn all theists to hell and send all atheists to heaven.

Got it in one.

The reason I originally started being an Atheist. (At like 11)
1 Billion Chinese can't all be wrong. And really if The Sky wizard is going to send 3/4's of the worlds population to hell, fuck him. I don't need him anyway.

[tzor]

Pascal's wager really has nothing to do with religion, it's a simple exercise in infinity probability. If the question of whether a god exists or not is equally probable and the notion of wagering for god yeilds the reward of infinite happiness then you are stuck with the following matrix.
[/td][td][/td][td]God Exists[/td][td]God Doesn't Exist[/td][/tr]

Wager on God	infinity	zero
Wager on no God	negative infinity	zero

Now that doesn't count any positive results of the wager you get from this life, but even then that pesky infinity comes into play; if the probability of God existing is anything other than a zero, the odds are that it is better to place the gamble on the chance with the big prize than the one with the chance on the big penalty.

But there are a whole number of big unknown assumptions here. The first is that sine we don't know the probability exists. The second is that there are only two parts to the wager, that is to say, anyone who wagers on God will get the reward if they are right.

Thus the table can get really complex, with various different wagers on "God" this brings up negative infinity onto the "Wager on God - Method X" table because if Method Y is correct you get the same penalty as the Wager on no God. In the more complex table the argument collapses entirely, from a purely waging point of view.

[CatharzGodfoot]

But there are a whole number of big unknown assumptions here. The first is that sine we don't know the probability exists. The second is that there are only two parts to the wager, that is to say, anyone who wagers on God will get the reward if they are right.

You don't even need to worry about the second part. As soon as you turn the reward matrix into an expected value matrix, you get this:[/td][td][/td][td]God Exists[/td][td]God Doesn't Exist[/td][/tr]

Wager on God	unknown	zero
Wager on no God	unknown	zero

If you're starting from the perspective of an empiricist atheist, you'll probably come up with this:[/td][td][/td][td]God Exists[/td][td]God Doesn't Exist[/td][/tr]

Wager on God	NaN	zero
Wager on no God	NaN	zero

--because division of infinities by infinities is undefined.


That being said, worrying about hypothetical simplified religions isn't super useful. With actual religions, you generally come up with matrices more like this:[/td][td][/td][td]God Exists[/td][td]God Doesn't Exist[/td][/tr]

Wager on God	probably go to hell anyway	hang out with friends on Sunday, be a part of a community of people who generally support each other
Wager on no God	negative infinity	get burned at the stake (or proselytized to by people you otherwise respect, which is even worse)

[echoVanguard]

How is it that all of the decision matrices include only theism and atheism, without a category for agnosticism?

echo

[Psychic Robot]

And really if The Sky wizard is going to send 3/4's of the worlds population to hell, fuck him. I don't need him anyway.

[Username17]

How is it that all of the decision matrices include only theism and atheism, without a category for agnosticism?

echo

Because agnosticism is not actually a decision. It's just the process of delaying the decision until further information becomes available.

But back to Pascal's Wager: one of the most telling bits in there that Pascal is in fact trolling people is the part where he states that some people may be unable to believe in Christianity on the grounds that there is no evidence or reason to believe in it. And his conclusion is that such people should pretend to believe in Christianity. Nominally because in doing so they may come to actually believe in time.

But basically the subtext of the whole book is that there is absolutely no reason to believe in any of this shit, but if you don't go through the motions the Dominicans will pound spikes into your hands. It's a cowardly book, but red hot anal pears make cowards of us all.

But what it seriously isn't is a compelling argument to actually believe in Christian teachings. And when dumbasses like Ray Comfort and Scott Adams use it as such, they expose their own poor reasoning skills.

-Username17

[RobbyPants]

But what it seriously isn't is a compelling argument to actually believe in Christian teachings. And when dumbasses like Ray Comfort and Scott Adams use it as such, they expose their own poor reasoning skills.

Did Scott actually put any of this in Dilbert, or is this something from one of his wacky blogs?

[Psychic Robot]

I'm assuming it was on his blog. He is slightly crazy and has an inflated sense of self-worth.

[Username17]

But what it seriously isn't is a compelling argument to actually believe in Christian teachings. And when dumbasses like Ray Comfort and Scott Adams use it as such, they expose their own poor reasoning skills.

Did Scott actually put any of this in Dilbert, or is this something from one of his wacky blogs?

Just his blogs as far as I know. But then, when he started going apeshit crazy, I stopped reading the comic. I mean, that shit came out years he started being a kooky global warming denier.

-Username17

[RobbyPants]

I've never read his blogs until now, and I've always liked the comics.

[echoVanguard]

agnosticism is not actually a decision. It's just the process of delaying the decision until further information becomes available.

I don't think this is necessarily true. While it might be for some agnostics, there are others who assert that theistic knowledge is inherently unknowable, and that assertion of either existence or nonexistence is intrinsically misguided.

echo

[Username17]

agnosticism is not actually a decision. It's just the process of delaying the decision until further information becomes available.

I don't think this is necessarily true. While it might be for some agnostics, there are others who assert that theistic knowledge is inherently unknowable, and that assertion of either existence or nonexistence is intrinsically misguided.

echo

That is just atheism plus fappery.

-Username17

[Kaelik]

I was going to make a complicated post about how God is not any differnt than anything else, and that if you have no evidence that it exists, and it`s actually impossible to ever have evidence ever, that is exactly like any other definitially unknowable thing, like invisible unicorns.

But then Frank did it way better.

[Vnonymous]

The question of whether god exists or not is more along the lines of "Can a square be round". You can say that definitively god does not exist because god cannot exist. When you actually say God you are talking about some hideous construct that can only be conceived of due to mistakes in human language and thought. The problem with the "YOU CANT SAY HE DOESN'T EXIST UNTIL YOU SEARCH EVERY ATOM IN THE UNIVERSE" objection is that when you define god as some random atom you are no longer talking about the god that people believe in.

[echoVanguard]

For the record, Kaelik, while Frank's post is funnier, your statement has infinitely more merit. From a philosophical standpoint, a statement that invisible unicorns do not exist is radically different from a statement that we do not know whether invisible unicorns exist - which is, in turn, radically different from a statement that we cannot know whether invisible unicorns exist.

Determining whether philosophy and fappery are logically distinguishable, however, is left as an exercise for the reader.

echo

[Username17]

For the record, Kaelik, while Frank's post is funnier, your statement has infinitely more merit. From a philosophical standpoint, a statement that invisible unicorns do not exist is radically different from a statement that we do not know whether invisible unicorns exist - which is, in turn, radically different from a statement that we cannot know whether invisible unicorns exist.

In order to be "radically" different, they would have to be "practically" different. There are no functional differences between those three statements as applies to invisible unicorns. In every case the assumed caveat is that if new measurement systems are discovered that allow us to detect invisible unicorns and invisible unicorns are demonstrated, that the statement will be amended accordingly. Thus, none of those statements is radically or in fact perceptibly distinct from any of the others.

You can fap around about shades of meaning all you want, but all three claims are interchangeable as far as the real world gives a shit.

-Username17

[tzor]

I was going to make a complicated post about how God is not any differnt than anything else, and that if you have no evidence that it exists, and it`s actually impossible to ever have evidence ever, that is exactly like any other definitially unknowable thing, like invisible unicorns.

Your argument breaks down into two parts.

"you have no evidence that it exists" - If something is true is it true regardless of someone finding evidence for it. Black holes existed long before we "discovered" them. Lack of observation is no proof of falsehood.

"it`s actually impossible to ever have evidence ever" - I'm sorry, but that's a straw man. Plain and simple, it's a strawman. Your entire argument is made possible by wanking and then burning a strawman.

But, please. I would be lothe to ruin your mental masturbation. Please continue.

[echoVanguard]

For the record, Kaelik, while Frank's post is funnier, your statement has infinitely more merit. From a philosophical standpoint, a statement that invisible unicorns do not exist is radically different from a statement that we do not know whether invisible unicorns exist - which is, in turn, radically different from a statement that we cannot know whether invisible unicorns exist.

In order to be "radically" different, they would have to be "practically" different. There are no functional differences between those three statements as applies to invisible unicorns. In every case the assumed caveat is that if new measurement systems are discovered that allow us to detect invisible unicorns and invisible unicorns are demonstrated, that the statement will be amended accordingly. Thus, none of those statements is radically or in fact perceptibly distinct from any of the others.

You can fap around about shades of meaning all you want, but all three claims are interchangeable as far as the real world gives a shit.

-Username17

Demonstrably false. If the claims "Jesus does not exist", "We can't know if Jesus exists" and "Jesus might not exist" are functionally identical, logical people would react to them identically. They do not, because they evince fundamentally different outlooks on the same problem.

Your argument seems to hinge on two assumptions:

1. In every case the assumed caveat is that if new measurement systems are discovered that allow us to detect X and X is demonstrated, that the statement will be amended accordingly.

2. The value of an argument is intrinsically equal to its provability.

1 is both provably false and logically unsound, and 2 only has meaning if you consider all unanswerable questions to be pointless (which is a personal preference).

Incidentally, declaring that someone's argument doesn't matter regardless of whether it is correct is a form of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignoratio_elenchi .

echo

[Orion]

logical people

Well there's your problem. You don't get to declare people logical and then use their opinions as a measure of truth, people are logical insofar as their conclusions match their evidence, and nobody is very logical much of the time.

Also "does not exist" and "can't know if it exists" are totes the same. You can trust me because I'm a logical person.