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Climate Change and Pascal's Wager
What is the best decision using pascal's logic?

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Climate Change and Pascal's Wager

robf130
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1 of 1 people found this post helpful Posted 08/05/08 - 06:59 PM: Subject: Climate Change and Pascal's Wager	#1
Hi everyone, first time posting. I hope this isn't a repost. Anyway, a lot of attention has been paid to the science behind climate change (ie: global warming) and I think this has taken away from what the issue really is at its core: a risk management decision. So what if climate change was substituted for "God's existence" in Pascal's Wager: Pascal's Wager (found it online somewhere) The "Climate Wager"

Caldwell
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0 of 1 people found this post helpful Posted 08/05/08 - 11:59 PM:	#2
Are you implying that "god's existence" and "global warming" have the same empirical foundation or basis for analysis? The "uncertainty" in Pascal's wager is not the same uncertainty that scientists face in global warming. The latter has to do with measurements of cause and effect, and the fact that we cannot look into the future, we can only make calculations. Pascal's wager is a totally different type of inquiry.

Deftil
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Posted 08/06/08 - 12:30 AM:	#3
I found this amusing. So, if I'm not mistaken robf, what you are saying is that we should take a "better safe than sorry" approach to climate change and work to combat it to be on the safe side?

Cuthbert
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Posted 08/06/08 - 12:37 AM:	#4
I think the implication is that there are some points of analogy, not that it's analogous at every point. The consquences of ignoring global warming might be damnable. Same with the consequences of ignoring god. The costs of reducing carbon emissions might be acceptable, even if global warming is not caused by carbon emissions. And the costs of believing in god may be acceptably low, whether he exists or not. So the questions seems to be - is Pascal's argument sound? If it is, is it relevantly analogous to the global warming scenario? Of course there are also points of disanalogy. We know about god only through personal experience and revelation, which may be illusory or fictional. We know about global warming through empirical evidence: this is unlikely to be fictional, but it may be mistaken in other ways. It's an interesting question, whether the points of disanalogy vitiate the whole exercise. It's not obvious to me that they do - or that they don't. I tend to think that Pascal's argument isn't sound, however. It's like this. If there's a fire breathing dragon in the park, then it's worth my while never to go in the park. All I have to lose is a place to go for a walk occasionally. But what I have to gain is life itself. Therefore it's rational never to go walking in the park. Now the conclusion is clearly false. The argument just shows that, if I assume the existence of some threat or promise, then I can justify pretty much any action or inaction. But that doesn't in turn justify believing in the existence of the threat or promise.

Caldwell
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Posted 08/06/08 - 12:46 AM:	#5
Deftil wrote: So, if I'm not mistaken robf, what you are saying is that we should take a "better safe than sorry" approach to climate change and work to combat it to be on the safe side? Yes. That approach is called: superstition. Pascal's wager is a superstitious reasoning. We resolve to take action based on scientific findings that global warming is real.

Cuthbert
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Posted 08/06/08 - 02:08 AM:	#6
But the analogy is quite strong, because as well as knowing that global warming is real (relatively easy) we need to know what proportion of it is attributable to various kinds of human action, the relative short- and long-term costs and benefits of alternative action and inaction and the just global distribution of those costs and benefits (fiendishly hard). The question is how to make a rational decision in the absence of adequate information, which make the analogy apt.

Maloy
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Posted 08/06/08 - 07:05 AM:	#7
As flawed as Pascals wager is (assuming that God punishes us for being wrong, is unwilling to accept a believer of a different God and that the god depicted in the Bible is God), I think the best bet is to clean up our act. Global warming is said to be our fault by some and a natural part of a cycle by others (the Earth warms and cools in cycles anyhow). Whether or not global warming is our fault, it still makes sense to go green. Edited by Maloy on 08/06/08 - 07:21 AM. Reason: addition
In the infinite library, there are no two identical books. -- The library of Babel. The only true nihilist is a dead nihilist.

Cadrache
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Posted 08/06/08 - 08:05 PM:	#8
I like how the news never talks about the el nino/la nina cycle anymore. If I had calculated it correctly, The current la nina (the warming up cycle) coincided with the current 'the earth's warming up' spiel. Then again we are 'suppose to be in an ice age' cycle... Coincidently, the same thing seemed to happen around the 'acid rain, reduce sulfur, CFC's! rage as well. Always the problem with making predictions that take time as a variable to create the calculation. From wiki... [/quote]Modern geologists and geophysicists consider the age of the Earth to be around 4.54 billion years[quote] Even if we have data spanning 400 years... we are making scientific fact based from observing 4/45400000th of a cycle. Ie. We have static data for 0.00000008% of a single variable. It's like trying to guess one of them blow up pictures. If it is a 16 foot car,all you can see is 0.000001409 feet of said car! That is 0.000429 millimeters folks; if I did my math right.) Now the earliest origins of "The climate wager". The earliest I've seen this is from Youtube. The person who discuses this wants you to prove the LOGIC wrong. He used a couple different terms as well.

Maloy
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Posted 08/06/08 - 09:51 PM:	#9
I'm no geologist, but doesn't carbon dating and the rate of erosion show more or less how old the Earth is? I mean, if we cut a tree and count the rings, we can tell how old the tree is. There must be a way to tell how old the Earth is. I don't know... Too tired to google.
In the infinite library, there are no two identical books. -- The library of Babel. The only true nihilist is a dead nihilist.

Lord Drivel
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Posted 08/06/08 - 10:27 PM:	#10
Pascal's Wager is not about "being righteous" but about whether one should believe in God. It is perfectly possible, according to Christians to believe in God and still be condemned; just as it is perfectly possible to believe in global warming ( not exactly the same as Climate Science one might say), and find that it is too late to do anything about it, or that if one did try to do something about it this would plunge the world into a decades long depression that would outweigh any of the effects of global warming, outcomes hardly what you would call "oh well".

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