[gwnn]

mike777, on 2014-April-16, 00:25, said:

ok so at ten you had the wisdom to say it was crap got it.



"Historically, Pascal's Wager was groundbreaking because it charted new territory in probability theory, marked the first formal use of decision theory, and anticipated future philosophies such as existentialism, pragmatism, and voluntarism"
Alan Hájek

to put it another way...posters say it is crap that at ten they knew it.

to be honest this sounds like Nobel prize stuff or "Fields medal" or Templeton

Otoh...so far at least 2 posters or more claim this is middle school crap.

You are free to discuss my posts, or if you are going to ignore it more or less completely, use a disclaimer when you quote it, thanks. Do you think the Christian God is happy to accept people who try to decieve him out of self-interest? Do you think there is a non-zero probability for this? Do you think Pascal catered to this in his equations (well, maybe he did, I admit I didn't read the original, I just hear it parroted by other religious people)?

[mike777]

gwnn, on 2014-April-16, 01:38, said:

You are free to discuss my posts, or if you are going to ignore it more or less completely, use a disclaimer when you quote it, thanks. Do you think the Christian God is happy to accept people who try to decieve him out of self-interest? Do you think there is a non-zero probability for this? Do you think Pascal catered to this in his equations (well, maybe he did, I admit I didn't read the original, I just hear it parroted by other religious people)?

and your question is?


I stand by my post
You refute zero.

His work was important for science and theology.

[gwnn]

mike777, on 2014-April-16, 02:10, said:

and your question is?

You can find my questions in the post you quoted, ended by question marks. There are three (3) question marks, so you should be able to find three (3) questions.

[mike777]

gwnn, on 2014-April-16, 02:15, said:

You can find my questions in the post you quoted, ended by question marks. There are three (3) question marks, so you should be able to find three (3) questions.

and the answer is?

clearly none refutes my basic point or you don't know it.

[gwnn]

mike777, on 2014-April-16, 02:28, said:

and the answer is?

clearly none refutes my basic point or you don't know it.

Your basic point was to respond to one sentence of my post with an appeal to authority. A smart person thinks Pascal's wager is brilliant, therefore my argument is invalid. That is a logical fallacy. Asking me the answer to questions I asked you is not how human communication generally works.

[Trinidad]

mikeh, on 2014-April-15, 09:49, said:

This sort of thinking is prevalent in at least NA society. I think that the idea sounds fine but of course it is like the bible...nobody can live by this credo. Some beliefs are so harmful to others that we should not tolerate those who actively promote them, nor should we be 'fine' with anyone who both holds and acts on them.
Here are some points of view with which I am not fine....and I can't imagine that you are:

a) it is ok for an adult man to sexually express his love and affection for pre-pubescent children
[and 5 more "it is ok for ..." followed by some sick act]

Well, I realize that I am boggling your imagination, but I am fine with all of those points of view.

- I am not fine with the acts.
- I strongly disagree with these points of view.
- But I am absolutely fine with someone holding and expressing these points of view.

To get very concrete: In the Netherlands, there used to be a Pedophile Association (called "Martijn"). One of their aims was to persuade law makers to change the laws to be more lenient to pedophilia.

This organization is forbidden now. Many people, including myself, found this ban horrible. That was not because these people (and I) think pedophilia is such a great idea. It was because people thought it was a bad idea to ban having and expressing points of view.

It is also noteworthy that the points of view that you listed at some point in time were well accepted in some or all parts of the world. Who is going to say how human morality will be in 500 years from now? There is no universal, timeless definition of evil. Perhaps pedophilia will be entirely normal and they will laugh at us for denying children sexual pleasure or for being so narrow minded to think that children should be protected. And perhaps they will be horrified by the idea of someone eating a doughnut. (Children are taught in class: In the 21st century, people would actually eat doughnuts. The kids will be as disgusted as the kids of today are when the teacher tells them about the quality of drinking water in the Middle Ages.) Banning points of view is slowing down progress.

To summarize: Beliefs are not harmful to others, no matter how weird, violent, disgusting, revolting, ...add more adjectives to taste..., these beliefs are. Acts can be harmful to others.

To give an example: Your belief, that some beliefs are harmful, is not harmful. But you acting on that belief (e.g. not tolerating those who hold beliefs that you find harmful) may well be.

Rik

[nige1]

Trinidad, on 2014-April-16, 03:18, said:

Well, I realize that I am boggling your imagination, but I am fine with all of those points of view.
- I am not fine with the acts.
- I strongly disagree with these points of view.
- But I am absolutely fine with someone holding and expressing these points of view.
To get very concrete: In the Netherlands, there used to be a Pedophile Association (called "Martijn"). One of their aims was to persuade law makers to change the laws to be more lenient to pedophilia.
This organization is forbidden now. Many people, including myself, found this ban horrible. That was not because these people (and I) think pedophilia is such a great idea. It was because people thought it was a bad idea to ban having and expressing points of view.
It is also noteworthy that the points of view that you listed at some point in time were well accepted in some or all parts of the world. Who is going to say how human morality will be in 500 years from now? There is no universal, timeless definition of evil. Perhaps pedophilia will be entirely normal and they will laugh at us for denying children sexual pleasure or for being so narrow minded to think that children should be protected. And perhaps they will be horrified by the idea of someone eating a doughnut. (Children are taught in class: In the 21st century, people would actually eat doughnuts. The kids will be as disgusted as the kids of today are when the teacher tells them about the quality of drinking water in the Middle Ages.) Banning points of view is slowing down progress.
To summarize: Beliefs are not harmful to others, no matter how weird, violent, disgusting, revolting, ...add more adjectives to taste..., these beliefs are. Acts can be harmful to others.
To give an example: Your belief, that some beliefs are harmful, is not harmful. But you acting on that belief (e.g. not tolerating those who hold beliefs that you find harmful) may well be.

Trinidad echoes Evelyn Beatrice Hall, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it". Also applies to some of the views of mikeh and trinidad

[nige1]

gwnn, on 2014-April-16, 00:19, said:

[SNIP] If someone had called Pascal's wager silly or arrogant, my likeliest response would have been a high five. Why can't you try to address the point mikeh was making, nige1? I know his posts can drag on, but this particular one was refreshingly to the point. He didn't just say "Pascal is silly!! Haha!" There was a post after those assertions, a post in which he explains why he says that.

I've read the relevant posts but I'm afraid that I'm intellectually under-equipped to confirm that gwnn and mikeh are better at probability and philosophy than Blaise Pascal. Like Henry's cat "I know everything about nothing and not too much about that". FWIW, IMO, the value-systems of most of us have a lot in common with Pascal's wager: their basis is more hope and faith than scientific deduction.

[helene_t]

gwnn, on 2014-April-16, 00:19, said:

Also, expressions like 'it costs you NOTHING' and 'it will cost you EVERYTHING' do not belong in proper probability assessment.

Why not? My econometrics teacher said that Pascal's wager is a falacy because the integral over infinite time of the utility of being in Heaven is not infinite because consumers weigh utility by a weight function that decays in time. But he was probably joking.

It is difficult, today, to imagine that anybody could ever have taken Pascal's wager seriously but the way people thought about those things may have been different in Pascal's time. Maybe it wasn't much of an issue that you would have to chose between an infinity of Gods and couldn't worship all of them. And although today, I think, most people would say that you cannot chose to believe (and even if you could, God would not honor a belief that chosen on the basis of a cost/benefit analysis), this is also something people might have thought about differently in Pascal's time.

At first I thought Pascal was joking when he proposed the wager. He might well have been, but apparently many of those who cited him were serious.

[gwnn]

nige1, on 2014-April-16, 04:28, said:

I've read the relevant posts but I'm afraid that I'm intellectually under-equipped to confirm that gwnn and mikeh are better at probability, and philosophy than Blaise Pascal. Like Henry's cat "I know everything about nothing and not to much about that". FWIW, however, IMO, the value-systems of most of us have a lot in common with Pascal's wager: their basis is more hope and faith than scientific deduction.

No one in this thread claimed that they are better at probability and philosophy than Blaise Pascal. We claimed that we do not find this particular work of his very impressive. If you are going to attack us on arrogant wording, you could try to word your posts slightly more carefully. If you don't want to address the issues, fine, but don't mock people who actually did address them. Making pseudo-humble explanations about how you are incapable of addressing them do not cut it.

[gwnn]

helene_t, on 2014-April-16, 04:59, said:

Why not? My econometrics teacher said that Pascal's wager is a falacy because the integral over infinite time of the utility of being in Heaven is not infinite because consumers weigh utility by a weight function that decays in time. But he was probably joking.

Because of a bunch of unknowns, we do not know what the reward really would be like, we do not know what the criteria of awarding it would be (in particular, whether people who just do it for the reward will be accepted), we do not know the probabilities of particular gods, etc. Meanwhile, we do have a good idea about the costs of being religious and it is, in all cases that I can think of, definitely non-zero, so we are comparing a non-zero cost to a very much unknown reward and just assuming that the latter will be infinitely bigger than the former. Sure enough, there are also earthly rewards to earnest religious belief, many of which may well outweigh the earthly costs already. But they do not work for everyone, for example, for people who care about holding true beliefs.

[nige1]

gwnn, on 2014-April-16, 05:13, said:

No one in this thread claimed that they are better at probability and philosophy than Blaise Pascal. We claimed that we do not find this particular work of his very impressive.

I perused the posts of mikeh and gwnn. I read them to claim that Pascal's theological probability argument is silly and ignorant. helene_t confirms that it is risible. Your criticisms might all be correct but I feel that reasoning based on "I hope I'm right" beliefs is the only way many of us can arrive at our value-systems.

gwnn, on 2014-April-16, 05:13, said:

If you are going to attack us on arrogant wording, you could try to word your posts slightly more carefully. If you don't want to address the issues, fine, but don't mock people who actually did address them. Making pseudo-humble explanations about how you are incapable of addressing them do not cut it.

I've also addressed relevant issues in detail, as far as I'm able. (See earlier posts).

[kenberg]

nige1, on 2014-April-16, 05:41, said:

I perused the posts of mikeh and gwnn. I read them to claim that Pascal's theological probability argument is silly and ignorant. helene_t confirms that it is risible. Your criticisms might all be correct but I feel that reasoning based on "I hope I'm right" beliefs is the only way many of us can arrive at our value-systems.

All of us must act as we think best and hope that we are right. It's the human condition. Pascal claims that because of this we should believe in God. This does not follow at all, not even loosely.

I said that I was confident that I and my religious friends would agree on the irrelevancy of Pascal's Wager. I mean that I doubt that a single one of them came to his/her faith through this reasoning. I of course am unaware of your own interior thoughts, you may be an exception. I just don't believe that the religious people that I have known have arrived at their conclusions via this dispassionate cost-benefit (as Helene correctly referred to it) analysis. So the religious folks, in my experience, did not come at it this way and I can assure you that at least this non-religious person does indeed find the philosophy bizarre.

So I call this approach to faith irrelevant.

If we really want to approach this with abstract philosophy (which I do not particularly recommend), a starting point might be something I recall from my own religious instruction: "The Lord thy God is a Jealous God, Thou shalt have no other Gods before Me". This is the quote as I recall it, I may be wrong on a detail or two. This explicitly acknowledges several other Gods and insists that you pick the right One. No doubt each of the other Gods are equally insistent that you pick Him or Her, rather than some Other. Ok, now we are stuck. What to do? Maybe the best approach is to borrow from Bill Maher and say "I'm Swiss". If I remain non-aligned, maybe whichever god is actually God will take it easy on me. Those who chose wrongly are in deep stuff, but maybe God accepts this wait and see approach. Or maybe not.

incidentally, the novel American Gods sort of followed this theme. Maybe not exactly.

The bottom line is that the Wager argument goes nowhere. It could just as well be an argument for becoming a witch. So scrap it. We all do indeed do our best and hope that we are right.

[nige1]

gwnn, on 2014-April-16, 05:19, said:

[SNIP] Sure enough, there are also earthly rewards to earnest religious belief, many of which may well outweigh the earthly costs already. But they do not work for everyone, for example, for people who care about holding true beliefs.

The Bellman in Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark said:

What I tell you three times is True.

[gwnn]

nige1: from your cryptic post I gather that you doubt that there are people for whom religion would not improve their lives? All I said that there are some of them. So the proof of this will be quite simple: I tried and they did not work for me (they did not improve my quality of life). QED. To clarify: I am not saying I am superior to all religious people or even "the average religious person." I just know that there is at least one person for whom the earthly rewards to religious belief did not outweigh the earthly costs.

[Winstonm]

Trinidad, on 2014-April-16, 03:18, said:

Well, I realize that I am boggling your imagination, but I am fine with all of those points of view.

- I am not fine with the acts.
- I strongly disagree with these points of view.
- But I am absolutely fine with someone holding and expressing these points of view.

To get very concrete: In the Netherlands, there used to be a Pedophile Association (called "Martijn"). One of their aims was to persuade law makers to change the laws to be more lenient to pedophilia.

This organization is forbidden now. Many people, including myself, found this ban horrible. That was not because these people (and I) think pedophilia is such a great idea. It was because people thought it was a bad idea to ban having and expressing points of view.

It is also noteworthy that the points of view that you listed at some point in time were well accepted in some or all parts of the world. Who is going to say how human morality will be in 500 years from now? There is no universal, timeless definition of evil. Perhaps pedophilia will be entirely normal and they will laugh at us for denying children sexual pleasure or for being so narrow minded to think that children should be protected. And perhaps they will be horrified by the idea of someone eating a doughnut. (Children are taught in class: In the 21st century, people would actually eat doughnuts. The kids will be as disgusted as the kids of today are when the teacher tells them about the quality of drinking water in the Middle Ages.) Banning points of view is slowing down progress.

To summarize: Beliefs are not harmful to others, no matter how weird, violent, disgusting, revolting, ...add more adjectives to taste..., these beliefs are. Acts can be harmful to others.

To give an example: Your belief, that some beliefs are harmful, is not harmful. But you acting on that belief (e.g. not tolerating those who hold beliefs that you find harmful) may well be.

Rik

So, your claim is that actions are totally random while beliefs are non-random? Let's say person X, who belongs to a group whose tenets declare that being gay is an abomination that should be punished, beats up a gay man. Your claim is that this belief system had no part in the action?

Sorry, but I do not buy that. Actions are a result of beliefs.

[mikeh]

Trinidad, on 2014-April-16, 03:18, said:

Well, I realize that I am boggling your imagination, but I am fine with all of those points of view.

- I am not fine with the acts.
- I strongly disagree with these points of view.
- But I am absolutely fine with someone holding and expressing these points of view.

To get very concrete: In the Netherlands, there used to be a Pedophile Association (called "Martijn"). One of their aims was to persuade law makers to change the laws to be more lenient to pedophilia.

This organization is forbidden now. Many people, including myself, found this ban horrible. That was not because these people (and I) think pedophilia is such a great idea. It was because people thought it was a bad idea to ban having and expressing points of view.

It is also noteworthy that the points of view that you listed at some point in time were well accepted in some or all parts of the world. Who is going to say how human morality will be in 500 years from now? There is no universal, timeless definition of evil. Perhaps pedophilia will be entirely normal and they will laugh at us for denying children sexual pleasure or for being so narrow minded to think that children should be protected. And perhaps they will be horrified by the idea of someone eating a doughnut. (Children are taught in class: In the 21st century, people would actually eat doughnuts. The kids will be as disgusted as the kids of today are when the teacher tells them about the quality of drinking water in the Middle Ages.) Banning points of view is slowing down progress.

To summarize: Beliefs are not harmful to others, no matter how weird, violent, disgusting, revolting, ...add more adjectives to taste..., these beliefs are. Acts can be harmful to others.

To give an example: Your belief, that some beliefs are harmful, is not harmful. But you acting on that belief (e.g. not tolerating those who hold beliefs that you find harmful) may well be.

Rik

Please note that I did not say that one should punish a pedophile for being attracted to children. As I understand these things, a pedophile can't help feeling sexual attraction to children, and I don't support criminalizing thoughts one cannot avoid having. What I was careful to say was that I would not tolerate people who say that it is ok to act out on those feelings...people who go beyond saying that they recognize that the pedophile can't help being a pedophile to say that it is ok for the pedophile to abuse children.

IOW, I would support the ban of the organization, and I would do so on the grounds that it can be demonstrated that childhood sexual abuse isn't just 'icky' or 'disgusting' (since those are subjective reactions and the pedophile would disagree) but is in fact a net harm to society by virtue of the long-term deleterious effect that childhood sexual abuse causes the children, or many of them.

IOW, I can justify my position using the scientific method to show that on balance the pedophile who acts out imposes a societal cost that outweighs any societal benefit that arises from his (or her) feeling of fulfilment.

Once again, I think you haven't understood my post, so your response misstates my argument.

[nige1]

gwnn, on 2014-April-16, 05:19, said:

... Sure enough, there are also earthly rewards to earnest religious belief, many of which may well outweigh the earthly costs already. But they do not work for everyone, for example, for people who care about holding true beliefs.

gwnn, on 2014-April-16, 07:18, said:

nige1: from your cryptic post I gather that you doubt that there are people for whom religion would not improve their lives?

Some religious people do care about holding true beliefs.

[Trinidad]

Winstonm, on 2014-April-16, 07:34, said:

So, your claim is that actions are totally random while beliefs are non-random? Let's say person X, who belongs to a group whose tenets declare that being gay is an abomination that should be punished, beats up a gay man. Your claim is that this belief system had no part in the action?

Sorry, but I do not buy that. Actions are a result of beliefs.

Of course, actions are, I would say, "influenced by" beliefs. But actions that are allowed are allowed by a legal framework (and a social/moral framework). In my country, and fortunately many others, it is illegal to beat up a gay man. As a result, even though beating up gay men does occur, most people who oppose homosexuality and believe that it should be allowed to beat up gay men, refrain from doing so.

Rik

[mikeh]

nige1, on 2014-April-16, 07:53, said:

Some religious people do care about holding true beliefs.

And how do they test that their beliefs are true? There's the rub. They can't, not in the sense of any objective, verifiable, test. It's been tried and without exception whenever religious belief is tested empirically, the results are never better than what would be expected if the beliefs lacked validity. Look up research into the effect of prayer, as an easy example.

So despite this nice-sounding platitude, in reality no religious person tests belief, and most would argue that it would be immoral to do so, since that would suggest they lacked that mainstay of delusional thinking: faith despite reason or evidence.