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PaperclipPerfector  8d ago (text post)   30598 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 21, 2025

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Isn't doing nothing the most foolish option, due to Pascal's wager?

The wager presupposes too much. What if God wanted burnt offerings or specific prayers and not just belief? What if she's really pissed you imagined her as a bearded dude once?

Then it's in your interest to estimate the probability space and act accordingly. Not to assume everything magically cancels.

Throwing up your hands and doing nothing is lazy and irresponsible, considering the stakes.

Pascal was quite right to criticize this attitude of carelessness or dismissal in Pensées 195:

Before entering into the proofs of the Christian religion, I find it necessary to point out the sinfulness of those men who live in indifference to the search for truth in a matter which is so important to them, and which touches them so nearly.

Of all their errors, this doubtless is the one which most convicts them of foolishness and blindness, and in which it is easiest to confound them by the first glimmerings of common sense, and by natural feelings.

For it is not to be doubted that the duration of this life is but a moment; that the state of death is eternal, whatever may be its nature; and that thus all our actions and thoughts must take such different directions according to the state of that eternity, that it is impossible to take one step with sense and judgment, unless we regulate our course by the truth of that point which ought to be our ultimate end.

There is nothing clearer than this; and thus, according to the principles of reason, the conduct of men is wholly unreasonable, if they do not take another course.

On this point, therefore, we condemn those who live without thought of the ultimate end of life, who let themselves be guided by their own inclinations and their own pleasures without reflection and without concern, and, as if they could annihilate eternity by turning away their thought from it, think only of making themselves happy for the moment.

Yet this eternity exists, and death, which must open into it, and threatens them every hour, must in a little time infallibly put them under the dreadful necessity of being either annihilated or unhappy for ever, without knowing which of these eternities is for ever prepared for them.

This is a doubt of terrible consequence. They are in peril of eternal woe; and thereupon, as if the matter were not worth the trouble, they neglect to inquire whether this is one of those opinions which people receive with too credulous a facility, or one of those which, obscure in themselves, have a very firm, though hidden, foundation. Thus they know not whether there be truth or falsity in the matter, nor whether there be strength or weakness in the proofs. They have them before their eyes; they refuse to look at them; and in that ignorance they choose all that is necessary to fall into this misfortune if it exists, to await death to make trial of it, yet to be very content in this state, to make profession of it, and indeed to boast of it. Can we think seriously on the importance of this subject without being horrified at conduct so extravagant?

This resting in ignorance is a monstrous thing, and they who pass their life in it must be made to feel its extravagance and stupidity, by having it shown to them, so that they may be confounded by the sight of their folly. For this is how men reason, when they choose to live in such ignorance of what they are, and without seeking enlightenment. "I know not," they say ..."

I've estimated the probability space and accepted that we are bipedal meatbags driven by complex neural networks.

Bipedal meatbags driven by complex neural networks in dire need of something to believe in in order for their societies to function.

This, while apparently true, is the concern of societies, not the truth-seeker.

Ah wait, we're truth-seeking?

In that case we're all meatbags about to be ground to dust by an uncaring universe in which all conciousness exists only for a brief flash of hospitable conditions in between eternities of lifeless desolation and oblivion.

Great, truth found, now what?

Now I'm going to go and enjoy my hospitable conditions.

My point is Pascal's rant at the irresponsibility of those who "turn away their thought from eternity" is built on the axiom that there is something to be gained by peering into eternity.

Well, no, it's not. Rather, it's that there is some non-zero chance that there is, which does not seem at all like a bold claim to me.

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