Edit: To clarify, when I say "accept Pascal's Wager" I mean accepting the idea that way to do the most (expected) good is to prevent as many people as possible from going to hell, and cause as many as possible to go to heaven, regardless of how likely it is that heaven/hell exists (as long as it's non-zero).
I am a utilitarian and I struggle to see why I shouldn't accept Pascal's Wager. I'm honestly surprised there isn't much discussion about it in this community considering it theoretically presents the most effective way to be altruistic.
I have heard the argument that there could be a god that reverses the positions of heaven and hell and therefore the probabilities cancel out, but this doesn't convince me. It seems quite clear that the probability of a god that matches the god of existing religions is far more likely than a god that is the opposite, therefore they don't cancel out because the expected utilities aren't equal.
I've also heard the argument that we should reject all infinite utilities – for now it seems to me that Pascal's Wager is the only example where the probabilities don't cancel out, so I don't have any paradoxes or inconsistencies, but this is probably quite a fragile position that could be changed. I also don't know how to go about rejecting infinite utilities if it turns out I have to.
I would obviously love to hear any other arguments.
Thanks!
I suspect that the answer to some of these questions at an intersection between psychology and mathematics.
Our understanding of physics is empirical. Before making observations of the universe, we'd have no reason to entertain the hypothesis that "light exists." There would be infinite possibilities, each infinitely unlikely.
Yet somehow, based on our observations, we find it wise to believe that our current understanding of how physics works is true. How did we go from a particular physics model being infinitely unlikely to it being considered almost certainly true, based on finite amounts of evidence?
It seems that we have a sort of mental "truth sensor," which gets activated based on what we observe. A mathematician's credence in the correctness of a proof is ultimately sourced from their "truth sensor" getting activated based on their observation of the consistency of the relationships within the proof.
So we might ultimately have to reframe this question as "why do/don't arguments for Pascal's Wager activate our 'truth sensor'?"
This is an easier question to answer, at least for me. I see no compelling way to attack the problem, nobody else seems to either, I see the claims of world religions about how to achieve utility as being about as informative as taking advice from monkeys on typewriters, and accepting Pascal's Wager seems deeply contrary to common sense. These are unfortunately only reasons not to spend time thinking more deeply about the problem, and don't contribute in any productive way to moving toward a resolution :/