Better than pascal's wager?
Offline So I was hoping to get some opinions from you guys. I keep getting pascal's wager thrown at me so I've been thinking of a way to present the question more accurately for those who are so fond of using this. Let me know what you think.
You are at a table covered in fruits, thousands of them. On the table is a
sign stating: 1 or fewer of these are safe to eat. All others will kill you.
All the fruits look good to eat. Some have notes on them. Some notes say "I am
safe to eat" some claim they are safe and offer up a reason that doesn't
mean much, such as " I am safe to eat because I am red" others say " I am not
safe to eat but I will give you painless death". Now do you choose a fruit
arbitrarily and risk the overwhelming odds of getting it wrong? Do you choose
a fruit that says it wont kill you because you like it's reasoning (I am red)?
Do you try to compare fruits and determine which one is least likely to be
poisoned based on the little information you have knowing that none of the info
is really relevant? Or do you simply not eat any fruit?
Clearly the fruit is religion and not eating any would basically be agnostic atheism.
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Wait for someone else to eat the various fruit and see what happens. Much easier than religion but just as much of a "toss up".
"I am an atheist, thank God." -Oriana Fallaci
The only thing about this wager variant is that it essentially implies that there is no advantages to eating one of the fruit - honestly, if there was nothing to be gained from eating any of the fruit but the delicious taste, I wouldn't eat any of them, regardless. Even if the odds were much better, say 2:1, I would abstain from choosing, because at least that way, you know you're going to live.
If I reworded it, I'd say
"You're starving, and will die in one hour if you do not choose a fruit"
"All the fruit will cause stomach cramps for one hour, at which time, if you chose the wrong one, you will die, and if you chose the "correct" one, you will live"
"You do not even know if one of the fruit is unpoisoned; so you may have no hope at all" (though this would tend to cater to the agnostic viewpoint)
Anyway, great argument, d4rkph03nix. I might bring this up in class tomorrow.
Thanks slice. I like your additions for the most part. Anyone else should feel free to consider them part of the question.
Or even better:
There are an infinite number of fruits. Only one of them is unpoisioned. But it has only a .000003 percent chance of being unpoisioned. You can't even see them or test them. You don't even know any of them are there. You only know about them from what other people tell you.
It doesn't matter though, your parents hold a gun to your head and make you eat one of the fruits.
The premise behind pascals wager is that there is something to gain and nothing to lose. the premise behind your wager is that there is nothing to gain and something to lose.
To make it more applicable to religion, Your fruits should be infinite just as the possible gods are. The benefit would be eternal life if you chose the correct fruit. The loss could be two things. 1) the "fruit of life" would determine your punishment for dischosing it. and/or 2) The fruit you eat causes you to become delusional for the rest of your life.
Edit: I like your part about "1 or fewer of these are safe to eat", but it might require that you eat more than one fruit (polytheism), but if you eat 5 and 1 is fake, you still lose, depending on the other 4's opinions.. that gets complicated.
Fruit is not in any way analogous to a brain fart refered to as 'god'.
What I love about this is that the closer you get to actually describing the religious decision, the more insane it gets. For instance, the normal situation is that your geographical location already has a "fruit bias". That is, your town or country leans toward a favourite fruit or fruits. Picking no fruit would result in shunning, possibly to the point of having to pick up and move. The people telling you about the individual fruits all sound totally crazy, but make lots of promises about the benefits of theirs over others.
I'd counter that there are a limited number of fruits offered, even though there are an unlimited number of possible fruits. Even if everyone came up with their own specific combination, you're still looking at a number limited by the population of the earth.
Saint Will: no gyration without funkstification.
fabulae! nil satis firmi video quam ob rem accipere hunc mi expediat metum. - Terence
If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice. So Pascal's wager(like death) is unavoidable. We all have to ask ourselves if we need to believe anything about an afterlife. If so, is there evidence to believe anything? Is there any reason to live our lives for anything but the here and now?
Here's I think is a better analogy for what Pascal's wager really applies to live:
Imaging a long table with a thousand piles of bullshit. Standing behind each pile of shit is a salesman telling you his pile of shit is the best tasting thing in the world. If you would just have faith that this is really true and eat his shit and believe that it tastes really good, you will be happy forever. He also tells you that all the other 999 piles of bullshit will poison you and kill you. Oh, and while your enjoying eating my shit, you should pay me for the pleasure of eating this shit, so I can give you more shit.
But then at the end this table is a small fruit that no one is selling. All the 1000 salesmen of bullshit tell you this is the worst of all choices, this will cause you to be tortured in hell forever and ever. But to you this seems like the right fruit to take, this fruit has a name, as Shakespeare put it:
"This above all: to thine own self be true". To be honest with oneself in all things, especially what one believes or doubts.
So which one do you choose?
Religion forces people to lie to themselves, to think and behave in ways that really don't reflect who you really are. The ready made Theist belief systems are someone else's shit to eat.
So if there is pleasant place to go in an afterlife, it would have to be a place without Bullshit right? It makes no sense to say I need to force myself to "believe" something. Because it's BS to think you actually can force yourself to "believe". You can't force yourself to love or like someone or something. To me there is no other possible choice to made except "to thine own self be true". So that is my wager.
Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure. A centrally planned totalitarian state represents a complete defeat for the civilized world, while a totally voluntary society represents its ultimate success. --Mark Skousen
Kevin's Wager
A former friend of mine, after just getting back from Bible Camp, shot shot the Wager at me. She hated bananas - hated them so much she cringed at the 'stink' anytime you even peeled one near her.
"...Janelle, eat this banana. If you don't, you'll die."
"What?"
"If you don't eat my banana, you're going to die. Old age, a tragic accident... you'll die a mortal death."
"But I'll die a mortal death anyway."
"Nope. Eat my banana, right now, without asking any questions - and you'll live forever. You'll transcend mortality."
"That's stupid."
"No, it isn't. It's having faith in the banana. Why not? I'm your friend, right? Don't you trust me?"
"Kevin, stop it. That's retarded."
"...But what have you got to lose, right? The worse that could happen is you don't end-up living forever - and, hey, you said yourself that you weren't going to anyway?"
She didn't eat the banana.
At the time I was just being a difficult jerk, but I actually created an accidental metaphor I like to look back on: the cost of pascal's wager, at the least, is having a disgusting taste in your mouth for the rest of your life. At the worst, you actually buy into what's being sold - and then there's no end to the possible harm you might do to yourself and others. If Janelle ate the banana, and believed she had actually transcended mortality right then and there, what if she became ill or was seriously injured down the road? No sense in going to see a doctor, right - afterall, she can never die. And if she's no longer of us lowly mortals, why should she be bound by mortal law? If she's above us, surely she's above them.
And on it goes...
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
That is the putative premise of Pascal's Wager, but there is a problem with this: Pascal's Wager is a fraud. There most definitely is much to be lost: Money, time, effort, and sleep, at a minimum. Depending on the sect you throw in with, the list may also include quite a few various freedoms, including the freedom to make up your own mind about things -- which the Wager is set up to try to short-circuit in the first place. As Kevin noted earlier:
That's because it simply isn't possible for anyone with any intellectual honesty to just "decide to believe." One can evaluate evidence and decide whether something merits belief, but one cannot merely choose to believe in something he or she knows to be nonsensical -- at least, not without courting insanity (or already possessing it).
Offhand, I'd say that a better analogy would be to compare the Wager to actual wagering -- gambling, in other words, with the stakes being your Earthly time and your integrity, and with absolutely no guarantee of a payout for anybody no matter which game you play. The house claims there are winners all the time, but neither you nor anyone else has ever seen one. On the basis of that evidence, you'd be better served by spending your casino time at the bar and the stage shows.
~Wordplayer
"Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read." ~Groucho Marx
Pascal's Wager is reality's bitch! It has been beaten down more times than (insert sucky sports team here).
If I may expound on that joke.
A couple are getting a divorce and have a kid. They go to court to argue over who gets the kid. The argument gets heated to the point where the judge holds a side bar. He says, " I'll take the kid to my chambers and ask him who he wants to stay with".
So the judge takes the kid into the chambers and asks, "So Johny, do you want to stay with your mother?"
"No" He answers "She beats me"
The judge then asks, "Do you want to stay with your father?"
"No" He answers, "He beats me too"
Miffed the judge asks, " If you don't want to stay with either, then who do you want to stay with?"
The kid responds, "Pascal's Wager, he never beats anyone"
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
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The Cubs? I've been a lifelong fan...
So then you believe there is a Hell, but only Steve Bartman will go there, right?
Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure. A centrally planned totalitarian state represents a complete defeat for the civilized world, while a totally voluntary society represents its ultimate success. --Mark Skousen
Cleveland(Indians, Browns, Cavaliers). My own Pascal's wager:
If there is a Hell, I'm already acclimated to it. I've been in sports fan Hell(rooting for Cleveland) all my life. So I'll stay a Cleveland fan all my life.
Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure. A centrally planned totalitarian state represents a complete defeat for the civilized world, while a totally voluntary society represents its ultimate success. --Mark Skousen