beero1000
Veteran Member
I came across the sketch of a fun argument against Pascal's Wager in a footnote of How Not To Be Wrong by Jordan Ellenberg (a good book, if you're interested). It's one I hadn't seen before, and I like it, so I thought I'd flesh it out and post it.
Basically, Pascal argues that there are two possibilities - either god exists or does not. There is a finite cost to being religious, and a finite gain to not being religious. If god exists, then you'd get an eternity of pleasure in heaven due to being religious, and either a no gain (or an eternity of pain, if god is wrathful). If god does not exist, the gain/loss is finite regardless of what you do. Then, the expected value calculation seems to come out in favor of being religious.
Here's the (economic) counter-argument:
There is a time value of pleasure/pain - some amount of pleasure now is better than the same amount later. So, to find the present value of an eternity in heaven, we need to discount the future pleasure - this becomes A/r, where A is the 'pleasure of an instant of heaven' and r is the 'pleasure interest rate'. If an instant in heaven is a finite amount of pleasure (justified by a biological argument from brains?) and the discount rate is positive, then this is a finite present value gain, not an infinite one, even over an infinite stretch of time.
This rules out the infinities of Pascal's wager, and brings it back down to a case-by-case computation of expected values. This way, a low probability of god's existence can very easily be used as a reason to not be religious.
I like it. What do you think?
Basically, Pascal argues that there are two possibilities - either god exists or does not. There is a finite cost to being religious, and a finite gain to not being religious. If god exists, then you'd get an eternity of pleasure in heaven due to being religious, and either a no gain (or an eternity of pain, if god is wrathful). If god does not exist, the gain/loss is finite regardless of what you do. Then, the expected value calculation seems to come out in favor of being religious.
Here's the (economic) counter-argument:
There is a time value of pleasure/pain - some amount of pleasure now is better than the same amount later. So, to find the present value of an eternity in heaven, we need to discount the future pleasure - this becomes A/r, where A is the 'pleasure of an instant of heaven' and r is the 'pleasure interest rate'. If an instant in heaven is a finite amount of pleasure (justified by a biological argument from brains?) and the discount rate is positive, then this is a finite present value gain, not an infinite one, even over an infinite stretch of time.
This rules out the infinities of Pascal's wager, and brings it back down to a case-by-case computation of expected values. This way, a low probability of god's existence can very easily be used as a reason to not be religious.
I like it. What do you think?