Pascal\\u2019s Wager<\\/b><\\/h2>\\n Last week<\\/span><\\/a>, amidst all my talk of betting, I promised to discuss <\\/span>Pascal\\u2019s wager<\\/span><\\/a>. As this is Patheos I would assume that most people are familiar with the wager, but if not here\\u2019s a short explanation from Wikipedia:<\\/span><\\/p>\\n " Pascal contends that a rational person should adopt a lifestyle consistent with the existence of God and actively strive to believe in God. The reasoning behind this stance lies in the potential outcomes: if God does not exist, the individual incurs only finite losses, potentially sacrificing certain pleasures and luxuries. However, if God does indeed exist, they stand to gain immeasurably, as represented for example by an eternity in Heaven in Abrahamic tradition, while simultaneously avoiding boundless losses associated with an eternity in Hell.<\\/span><\\/i><\\/p><\\/blockquote>\\n At its core, the wager dictates that anytime you\\u2019re offered a chance, however small, to win something of <\\/span>infinite value<\\/span><\\/i> by giving up something <\\/span>finite<\\/span><\\/i>, you should take it. The same injunction applies with respect to avoiding <\\/span>infinite harm<\\/span><\\/i> through <\\/span>finite<\\/span><\\/i> means.\\u00a0<\\/span><\\/p>\\n The wager is made more attractive by the fact that the finite bet religion asks us to make is not even particularly onerous. We\\u2019re not being asked to wager our lives, merely the manner in which we live our lives. Put more simply we\\u2019re supposed to do certain things while avoiding other things. Also as I pointed out in <\\/span>last week\\u2019s<\\/span><\\/a> post these things generally end up being beneficial\\u2014especially over the long run. Religious individuals accrue all sorts of advantages: a reduction in <\\/span>mortality and suicide rates<\\/span><\\/a>, an increase in <\\/span>life satisfaction<\\/span><\\/a>, times spent volunteering, and civic engagement.\\u00a0<\\/span><\\/p>\\n This seems like such a good deal that at various points religious individuals have offered Pascal\\u2019s wager up as a checkmate\\u2014an argument for which atheists and agnostics had no rebuttal. This is not true of course. Atheists and agnostics are clever people and they actually have numerous rebuttals. These range from the idea that being religious in an attempt to \\u201cwin\\u201d a bet is not true faith, to pointing out there are thousands of religions and it\\u2019s not clear where your bet should be placed.\\u00a0<\\/span><\\/p>\\n Pascal\\u2019s Mugging<\\/b><\\/h2>\\n One counterargument of more modern extraction is called <\\/span>Pascal\\u2019s Mugging<\\/span><\\/a>. This argument emerged from the rationalist\\/effective altruism\\/<\\/span>X-risk community<\\/span><\\/a>, and it takes the finite\\/infinite trade and flips it.<\\/span><\\/p>\\n Both the original wager and the \\u201cmugging\\u201d variant assume that you\\u2019re a utilitarian on some level, that you \\u201cchoose those actions with outcomes that, after being weighted by their probabilities, have a greater utility\\u201d. As a utilitarian you\\u2019re expected to make any number of difficult choices, where the probabilities are unclear, but this argument uses the example of a mugging. As is typically the case with being mugged, in the thought experiment someone accosts you and demands all of your money. But rather than threatening you with a gun or a knife, their threat is that if you don\\u2019t give them all your money they will cause an immense amount of harm in some implausible fashion.\\u00a0<\\/span><\\/p>\\n For example, imagine that the \\u201cmugger\\u201d says that they are an alien, with god-like power, and that unless you give them all of your money they will use their alien superpowers to destroy the planet <\\/span>Omicron Persei 8<\\/span><\\/a> along with its five billion sentient inhabitants. As a true utilitarian you\\u2019re now forced to calculate the probability that they can cause these deaths. And once you have done so, decide whether to give the person all of the money you\\u2019re currently carrying (let\\u2019s say it\\u2019s $100). Alternatively you can refuse and, potentially, doom five billion Omicronians to death.<\\/span><\\/p>\\n If you were a committed utilitarian you would take your best estimate of the value of an Omicronian life, multiply that by five billion then multiply that by the chances that the person standing in front of you really has the power to kill them all. If that amount is greater than $100 you\\u2019d turn over your money, and if it\\u2019s not you wouldn\\u2019t. More likely you\\u2019d just laugh, and after checking for the presence of more realistic threats you\\u2019d move on.<\\/span><\\/p>\\n Those who use Pascal\\u2019s mugging to undermine Pascal\\u2019s wager, expect that you will note the similarities, and move on from the wager with the same dismissive laugh. But for the moment let\\u2019s take a closer look at the mugger.<\\/span><\\/p>\\n Things Seen and Unseen<\\/b><\\/h2>\\n******* *\* As I said, the probability that the mugger is in fact an immensely powerful alien is infinitesimal,\\u00a0 but how infinitesimal? There are various ways to try to judge this probability, but they mostly boil down to the message and the messenger.<\\/span><\\/p>\\n *\* One of the first things that jumps out at you is how self-serving his message is. If you believe his message and give him the money, it\\u2019s great for him and bad for you. He has an incentive to lie. Beyond that his message doesn\\u2019t make sense. If he has the god-like powers he describes, why would he need $100?<\\/span><\\/p>\\n *\* What if, instead, he\\u2019s offering to help you? Maybe instead of trying to take $100 he\\u2019s insisting that he has to give you $100 or the Omicronians will all die. You would still assign a low probability to the story being true, but the whole character of the interaction has changed. Suddenly acceding to his demands \\u201cjust in case\\u201d is entirely reasonable.<\\/span><\\/p>\\n *\* Taking $100 is easy, giving up $100 is hard. What if, instead of claiming billions of sentients would die, the mugger said that giving him $100 would help him feed his family and provide spiritual benefits? He still might very well be lying, but at least he\\u2019s offering us a story that fits well into our past experience, the stories we\\u2019ve been told, and the reality of the world.<\\/span><\\/p>\\n *\* Finally, what if his message wasn\\u2019t limited to the brief threat I outlined above, what if he had a whole book on the subject which you could read? And what if the book was persuasive and well written? How does that affect things?<\\/span><\\/p>\\n *\* Moving from the message to the messenger, perhaps it shouldn\\u2019t make a difference, but I think most of us would react differently if the messenger wore a suit and spoke with a posh British accent. As opposed to a messenger who was tattooed, appeared high, and leavened his demands with profanity.\\u00a0<\\/span><\\/p>\\n *\* What if the messenger wasn\\u2019t a stranger at all, but rather your father?\\u00a0<\\/span><\\/p>\\n *\* Or what if there were more than one person telling you about this event?\\u00a0<\\/span><\\/p>\\n *\* What if there were millions?\\u00a0<\\/span><\\/p>\\n *\* What if they included all of your ancestors?\\u00a0<\\/span><\\/p>\\n *\* A More Accurate Metaphor<\\/b><\\/h2>\\n *\* Obviously there are a lot of moving parts at this point, but hopefully you\\u2019ve figured out what direction I\\u2019m headed with all this. Lots of people use Pascal\\u2019s Mugging as a quick and dirty way to dismiss Pascal\\u2019s Wager. But each step one takes towards making the example more closely resemble how religion actually works makes it less silly and more palatable.\\u00a0<\\/span><\\/p>\\n *\* A belief in God and religion does not suddenly appear without context. It\\u2019s not some weird claim that you\\u2019ve never heard before. It\\u2019s something that\\u2019s been around for thousands of years. Nor is there a single messenger, not only are there millions of other believers, but for most people there is a long line of ancestors. For the vast majority of these ancestors, belief and religion were central to their existence. Finally, as I pointed out in the last post, religion <\\/span>makes the lives of its adherents better<\\/span><\\/i>. Which is to say, most people are paradoxically better off agreeing to be \\u201cmugged\\u201d.\\u00a0<\\/span><\\/p>\\n *\* The point of all of the above is not to talk someone into religion solely by pointing out problems with a common atheist argument. Such an endeavor would obviously be futile. Nor is the point to stretch these arguments beyond where they can reasonably be applied. They\\u2019re interesting, but the argument over God\\u2019s existence has been going on for a very, very long time and these points are only the tiniest additions to that argument.\\u00a0<\\/span><\\/p>\\n *\* Also, if I\\u2019m being honest, part of my reason for bringing these points up is that they make my team look better and the other team look worse. Sort of a \\u201cChristians rule atheists drool\\u201d motivation, if you will. But that point aside, what I\\u2019m hoping people will take away from this post and all of my posts on this topic is a caution against being overly flippant about the question of God\\u2019s existence.<\\/span><\\/p>\\n *\* Critics of Pascal\\u2019s Wager often ask us to consider it in isolation\\u2014shorn of emotion, community, history, or earthly benefits\\u2014reducing it to something shallow and silly like Pascal\\u2019s mugging. That it\\u2019s a choice rational people consider once and just as quickly dismiss before moving on with their life. But in reality all of life and all of history is tied up in this choice.\\u00a0<\\/span><\\/p>\\n *\* Perhaps there is no God.\\u00a0<\\/span><\\/p>\\n *\* But I believe that there is and I have bet my entire life around that belief.\\u00a0<\\/span><\\/p>\\n *\* I readily admit that everyone is free to make that bet however they choose, and that many people are going to make a choice different from mine. What I will not concede is that this choice is silly or trivial, rather I believe it\\u2019s the most important choice we\\u2019re ever called upon to make.<\\/span><\\/p>\\n<\\/body><\\/html>\\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" *\* *******Imagine that someone walks up to you and demands all your money. If you fail to comply they threaten to kill all the inhabitants of some far off planet. How would you react? 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"Header

I was trying to generate a picture of a mugging, but that word was apparently too violent. So instead we have someone being angrily accosted. Generated by Adobe Firefly \u2013 Beta.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

To listen to this instead click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Pascal\u2019s Wager<\/b><\/h2>\n Last week<\/span><\/a>, amidst all my talk of betting, I promised to discuss <\/span>Pascal\u2019s wager<\/span><\/a>. As this is Patheos I would assume that most people are familiar with the wager, but if not here\u2019s a short explanation from Wikipedia:<\/span><\/p>\n " Pascal contends that a rational person should adopt a lifestyle consistent with the existence of God and actively strive to believe in God. The reasoning behind this stance lies in the potential outcomes: if God does not exist, the individual incurs only finite losses, potentially sacrificing certain pleasures and luxuries. However, if God does indeed exist, they stand to gain immeasurably, as represented for example by an eternity in Heaven in Abrahamic tradition, while simultaneously avoiding boundless losses associated with an eternity in Hell.<\/span><\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n At its core, the wager dictates that anytime you\u2019re offered a chance, however small, to win something of <\/span>infinite value<\/span><\/i> by giving up something <\/span>finite<\/span><\/i>, you should take it. The same injunction applies with respect to avoiding <\/span>infinite harm<\/span><\/i> through <\/span>finite<\/span><\/i> means.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The wager is made more attractive by the fact that the finite bet religion asks us to make is not even particularly onerous. We\u2019re not being asked to wager our lives, merely the manner in which we live our lives. Put more simply we\u2019re supposed to do certain things while avoiding other things. Also as I pointed out in <\/span>last week\u2019s<\/span><\/a> post these things generally end up being beneficial\u2014especially over the long run. Religious individuals accrue all sorts of advantages: a reduction in <\/span>mortality and suicide rates<\/span><\/a>, an increase in <\/span>life satisfaction<\/span><\/a>, times spent volunteering, and civic engagement.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n This seems like such a good deal that at various points religious individuals have offered Pascal\u2019s wager up as a checkmate\u2014an argument for which atheists and agnostics had no rebuttal. This is not true of course. Atheists and agnostics are clever people and they actually have numerous rebuttals. These range from the idea that being religious in an attempt to \u201cwin\u201d a bet is not true faith, to pointing out there are thousands of religions and it\u2019s not clear where your bet should be placed.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Pascal\u2019s Mugging<\/b><\/h2>\n One counterargument of more modern extraction is called <\/span>Pascal\u2019s Mugging<\/span><\/a>. This argument emerged from the rationalist\/effective altruism\/<\/span>X-risk community<\/span><\/a>, and it takes the finite\/infinite trade and flips it.<\/span><\/p>\n Both the original wager and the \u201cmugging\u201d variant assume that you\u2019re a utilitarian on some level, that you \u201cchoose those actions with outcomes that, after being weighted by their probabilities, have a greater utility\u201d. As a utilitarian you\u2019re expected to make any number of difficult choices, where the probabilities are unclear, but this argument uses the example of a mugging. As is typically the case with being mugged, in the thought experiment someone accosts you and demands all of your money. But rather than threatening you with a gun or a knife, their threat is that if you don\u2019t give them all your money they will cause an immense amount of harm in some implausible fashion.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n For example, imagine that the \u201cmugger\u201d says that they are an alien, with god-like power, and that unless you give them all of your money they will use their alien superpowers to destroy the planet <\/span>Omicron Persei 8<\/span><\/a> along with its five billion sentient inhabitants. As a true utilitarian you\u2019re now forced to calculate the probability that they can cause these deaths. And once you have done so, decide whether to give the person all of the money you\u2019re currently carrying (let\u2019s say it\u2019s $100). Alternatively you can refuse and, potentially, doom five billion Omicronians to death.<\/span><\/p>\n If you were a committed utilitarian you would take your best estimate of the value of an Omicronian life, multiply that by five billion then multiply that by the chances that the person standing in front of you really has the power to kill them all. If that amount is greater than $100 you\u2019d turn over your money, and if it\u2019s not you wouldn\u2019t. More likely you\u2019d just laugh, and after checking for the presence of more realistic threats you\u2019d move on.<\/span><\/p>\n Those who use Pascal\u2019s mugging to undermine Pascal\u2019s wager, expect that you will note the similarities, and move on from the wager with the same dismissive laugh. But for the moment let\u2019s take a closer look at the mugger.<\/span><\/p>\n Things Seen and Unseen<\/b><\/h2>\n* As I said, the probability that the mugger is in fact an immensely powerful alien is infinitesimal,\u00a0 but how infinitesimal? There are various ways to try to judge this probability, but they mostly boil down to the message and the messenger.<\/span><\/p>\n One of the first things that jumps out at you is how self-serving his message is. If you believe his message and give him the money, it\u2019s great for him and bad for you. He has an incentive to lie. Beyond that his message doesn\u2019t make sense. If he has the god-like powers he describes, why would he need $100?<\/span><\/p>\n What if, instead, he\u2019s offering to help you? Maybe instead of trying to take $100 he\u2019s insisting that he has to give you $100 or the Omicronians will all die. You would still assign a low probability to the story being true, but the whole character of the interaction has changed. Suddenly acceding to his demands \u201cjust in case\u201d is entirely reasonable.<\/span><\/p>\n Taking $100 is easy, giving up $100 is hard. What if, instead of claiming billions of sentients would die, the mugger said that giving him $100 would help him feed his family and provide spiritual benefits? He still might very well be lying, but at least he\u2019s offering us a story that fits well into our past experience, the stories we\u2019ve been told, and the reality of the world.<\/span><\/p>\n Finally, what if his message wasn\u2019t limited to the brief threat I outlined above, what if he had a whole book on the subject which you could read? And what if the book was persuasive and well written? How does that affect things?<\/span><\/p>\n Moving from the message to the messenger, perhaps it shouldn\u2019t make a difference, but I think most of us would react differently if the messenger wore a suit and spoke with a posh British accent. As opposed to a messenger who was tattooed, appeared high, and leavened his demands with profanity.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n What if the messenger wasn\u2019t a stranger at all, but rather your father?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Or what if there were more than one person telling you about this event?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n What if there were millions?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n What if they included all of your ancestors?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n A More Accurate Metaphor<\/b><\/h2>\n Obviously there are a lot of moving parts at this point, but hopefully you\u2019ve figured out what direction I\u2019m headed with all this. Lots of people use Pascal\u2019s Mugging as a quick and dirty way to dismiss Pascal\u2019s Wager. But each step one takes towards making the example more closely resemble how religion actually works makes it less silly and more palatable.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n A belief in God and religion does not suddenly appear without context. It\u2019s not some weird claim that you\u2019ve never heard before. It\u2019s something that\u2019s been around for thousands of years. Nor is there a single messenger, not only are there millions of other believers, but for most people there is a long line of ancestors. For the vast majority of these ancestors, belief and religion were central to their existence. Finally, as I pointed out in the last post, religion <\/span>makes the lives of its adherents better<\/span><\/i>. Which is to say, most people are paradoxically better off agreeing to be \u201cmugged\u201d.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The point of all of the above is not to talk someone into religion solely by pointing out problems with a common atheist argument. Such an endeavor would obviously be futile. Nor is the point to stretch these arguments beyond where they can reasonably be applied. They\u2019re interesting, but the argument over God\u2019s existence has been going on for a very, very long time and these points are only the tiniest additions to that argument.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Also, if I\u2019m being honest, part of my reason for bringing these points up is that they make my team look better and the other team look worse. Sort of a \u201cChristians rule atheists drool\u201d motivation, if you will. But that point aside, what I\u2019m hoping people will take away from this post and all of my posts on this topic is a caution against being overly flippant about the question of God\u2019s existence.<\/span><\/p>\n Critics of Pascal\u2019s Wager often ask us to consider it in isolation\u2014shorn of emotion, community, history, or earthly benefits\u2014reducing it to something shallow and silly like Pascal\u2019s mugging. That it\u2019s a choice rational people consider once and just as quickly dismiss before moving on with their life. But in reality all of life and all of history is tied up in this choice.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Perhaps there is no God.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n But I believe that there is and I have bet my entire life around that belief.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I readily admit that everyone is free to make that bet however they choose, and that many people are going to make a choice different from mine. What I will not concede is that this choice is silly or trivial, rather I believe it\u2019s the most important choice we\u2019re ever called upon to make.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" *Imagine that someone walks up to you and demands all your money. If you fail to comply they threaten to kill all the inhabitants of some far off planet. How would you react? And is this similar to Pascal’s Wager? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5106,"featured_media":350,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aliens-ufos","category-pascals-wager"],"yoast_head":"\nWould You Wager on Pascal's Mugging?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Imagine that someone walks up to you and demands all your money. If you fail to comply they threaten to kill all the inhabitants of some far off planet. How would you react? 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