h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Lucinda,
GTBacchus said I might want to check out your article, and I'm glad I did: it was edifying. I'm really glad you took the time to write somethign about Pascal's Wager.
I think GTBacchus wanted me to see if I think the entry is even-handed; well, no, I don't think it is even-handed or impartial, but I still enjoyed thinking about it.
Here are a few (possibly captious) thoughts I had:
---History, paragraph 2: "we'ev"
---History, paragraph 2: You might be right that the Wager was cutting edge, but since the logic dates back to Constantine, how so?
---Original, paragraph 1: As far as I know, Pascal never explicitly used a matrix in his religious writings.
---Original, paragraph 2: "should [try to] believe in God"
---Original, paragraph 2: I thought Pascal acknowledged the "infinitessimally small" possibility, and the wager still works.
---Disagreements, paragraph 3: The drug thing is funny, but its placement seems way out of line. Besides which, I think the reason these would be more born-again drug-offenders is that lots of addicts find help in God. These folks slip up now and then.
---Sequel, paragraph 4: In the Wager, I don't think there's ever a case that puts an infinite of any kind on BOTH sides of the coin. I could be wrong, but please check the text.
---Sequel, paragraph 5: Christians have "no imagination or sense of adventure"?! ... This is sooooooooo far from even-handed.
---Probability of God, the whole section: God's existence need only remain POSSIBLE for the wager to hold.
---The Final Part of the Trilogy, paragraph 2: "Other gods" are not an issue in the wager. Sure, Pascal was a Christian, but his wager centers upon God, not Christ. Concerning "bigger tables," the the world's major religions are not mutually exclusive.
---The Final Part of the Trilogy, paragraph 2: "Discordianism"?! ... that puerile "eristic" rant? Aaaaaargh. I guess you're trying to be complete in your criticism of Christianity (er, I mean "Pascal's Wager), but why not cite the more respectable Nietzschean/Dionysian model or ANYTHING with a little respectability?
---Conclusion, paragraph 3: "Be grateful if it works for you, but try no harder." Gosh, my encyclopedia's gotten preachy!

Whew,... sorry about the tone here, but I got frustrated towards the end.

Hiya, and thanks for the comments!

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general


Thanks for all the help and comments - many of your points I can sympathise with, and where appropriate I've made minor changes to be somewhat fairer - they're listed under 'specifics' below.

In a sense I'm surprise you picked up so few points - considering you think it definately *isn't* even-handed I would expect you to have complaints about more areas - if there's anything you've held back on to keep your post short, please do say so.

I *am* aiming to be even-handed - though impartial may be harder to achieve. I've been on the other end of this argument far too many times - and I know how infuriating it is to find an edited entry which effectively directly insults you without blinking an eye - and it's made doubly so by the current difficulty in getting such entries updated to be fairer.

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What does 'captious' mean?

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I'm presenting Pascal's Wager as it is now - not necessarilly as it was originally formulated. Many of the counter arguments, and counter-counter-arguments, have been subsequently created - so I haven't slavishly followed his writings.

I'll put a bit in the 'history' section to clarify this, I think - point out that the idea didn't die with Pascal.

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specifics

---History, paragraph 2: You might be right that the Wager was cutting edge, but since the logic dates back to Constantine, how so?

Constantine didn't write it down formally in any way - he just got scared and converted. He didn't use concepts of probability and the infinite to do so.

Does this need clarification? I thought it was rather self-evident, to be honest...

---Original, paragraph 2: "should [try to] believe in God"

I disagree that "try to" is needed here - the choice is presented between believing and not believing - and believing is the choice that should be made. Whether the choice exists is one of the possible problems with the wager (not one I agree with, incidentally: I think you CAN choose to believe in something), and is dealt with later.

There is a special word for the belief that one can choose one's beliefs, but I forget it...

---Original, paragraph 2: I thought Pascal acknowledged the "infinitessimally small" possibility, and the wager still works.

Well, my A-level maths tells me it doesn't. Infinitessimal x infinity is undefined, so it all falls down.

---Disagreements, paragraph 3: The drug thing is funny, but its placement seems way out of line. Besides which, I think the reason these would be more born-again drug-offenders is that lots of addicts find help in God. These folks slip up now and then.

Placement? You've lost me...

That's one way of interpreting the statistics... another might be that when people are offered get-out-of-hell-free cards they're inclined to go out and use them...

---Sequel, paragraph 5: Christians have "no imagination or sense of adventure"?! ... This is sooooooooo far from even-handed.

Specifically, I said: "[this belief] either shows their greater spirituality, or that they have no imagination or sense of adventure, depending upon which way you look at it."

I assert that it might, if you look at it a certain way, show that they have no sense of adventure. It might also show their greater spirituality.

Seems to me that a non-christian could complain that I'm saying that he has "lesser spirituality" - if I'm open from flames from both sides, I must be being fair...

I'll remove "imagination or" - that way there's one positive way, and one negative way, of looking at it - which is fairer, I think. Is spirituality not more important than a sense of adventure?

---Probability of God, the whole section: God's existence need only remain POSSIBLE for the wager to hold.

If you mean the infinitessimal bit, then I think I answered this earlier. If you mean the frequentist or agnostic or rationalist arguments - well, these are points of view, not ones I agree with, but perfectly self-consistent, and given a sufficiently firm belief in these points of view, the Wager becomes ineffective.

---The Final Part of the Trilogy, paragraph 2: "Other gods" are not an issue in the wager. Sure, Pascal was a Christian, but his wager centers upon God, not Christ.

Specifically, it centers upon the Christian god. See next bit.

---Concerning "bigger tables," the world's major religions are not mutually exclusive.

Disagree on two counts.
1) They are mutually exclusive.
2) Major religions are not the be-all and end-all of conceptions of God.

"Avoiding the Wrong Hell" is just about the largest problem with the Wager, imo, and one that I've been unable (sadly) to find a counter-argument for. If you have such an argument, I'd love to hear it, so I can include it - best yet if it's good enough to cut and paste...

---The Final Part of the Trilogy, paragraph 2: "Discordianism"?! ... that puerile "eristic" rant? Aaaaaargh. I guess you're trying to be complete in your criticism of Christianity (er, I mean "Pascal's Wager), but why not cite the more respectable Nietzschean/Dionysian model or ANYTHING with a little respectability?

For the record, I'm certainly not criticising Christianity - most christians believe in their God for reasons which have precisely nothing to do with Pascal's Wager. Nor am I criticising the Wager - as I noted in the entry, for many people it is logically correct and without flaws of any kind.

Well, I don't know about the Nietzschean/Dionysian model, so that's a hindrance...

I'll change the "if Discordianism is correct" to "in the unlikely event that Discordianism is correct", which might make it clearer that I'm not suggesting it as a serious threat, only as a (particularly strong) example - the Discordians will complain, but there aren't so many of them and they're less likely to mailbomb my house.

Though a cynic might observe that one asking for even-handedness is writing off another religion as a puerile rant... pot-kettle-black?

---Conclusion, paragraph 3: "Be grateful if it works for you, but try no harder." Gosh, my encyclopedia's gotten preachy!

Since when has the guide been an encyclopedia? Check out http://www.h2g2.com/A245008 - I'm *WAY* less preachy than that...

I may change that to be a "one researchers opinion of the wager can be summarised as follows" blockquote - lemme think about it.

Speaking as a Discordian, I excommunicate you both!

(Yes! I got to excommunicate someone! )

oh - the edited version is at http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A517646 - I've deleted this version now...

seeya around