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!
Let's entertain as an axiom the claim that, in the absence of evidence, promises of utility/disutility become less likely the more is promised.
If I promise you $1 to drop off a letter at the post office for me, you'd believe me. If I promise you $1,000,000, you'd think I was joking.
More specifically, let's make our axiom the claim that, if we integrate the likelihood of a payoff over the range of utilities promised, that integral is convergent.
No matter how much utility is promised, the amount of utility received in expectation is finite.
In other words, there is no infinite expected utility.
If this is accepted, then expected utility (always finite) is controlled largely by mechanistic plausibility and empirical evidence, not just the sheer amount promised.
For example, if I have a history of making and keeping extravagent promises, you know I have billions of dollars in the bank, and you can see a reason it would be worth it to me to pay $1,00,000 to have you take my letter to the bank, you might think it's pretty likely I'll pay you as I promise. These sorts of considerations become extremely important as the amount of utility promised increases.
You don't have to accept the axiom, but if you do, then I think you end up at the common-sense position that you should reject Pascal's Wager, be open to the possibility of small utility gains on limited evidence, and require larger amounts of evidence the more utility is promised. This principle comes in handy when avoiding scams.
Why didn't Pascal, a brilliant mathematician, come up with this argument on his own? I can think of a few possibilities:
I would say if we use other people's judgment as a guide for our own, it's an argument for the belief in the divine/God/the supernatural and it becomes hard to say Christianity and Islam have negligible probability. So rules that are like "ignore tiny probability" don't work. Your idea of discounting probability as utility rises still works but we've talked about why I don't think that's compelling enough.
I don't have good survey evidence on Pascal's Wager, but I think a lot of religious believers would agree with the general concept- don't risk your soul,... (read more)