Journalist

[Stonehead]

Anyone making the argument that covering your ass is a good reason to believe in God is an idiot and missing some very important details.

 

Think it was Pascal who presented this argument. Something called Pascal's wager.

[archenemy]

You also get to learn about him in fluid dynamics. Good times.

[selkirk]

I didn't say that I minded being paranoid

Just that your making me paranoid

 

 

Pascal had something to do with Fluid Dynamics? Are you sure? I think I'd know that sort of thing, but it doesn't ring a bell?

 

 

[AlpineK]

The main thing I remember from school about Pascal is it's the main computer language I'd write programs in. Not that I ever did anything with that knoledge.

[Stonehead]

Talkin' about famous dead people:

 

Belief in the traditional sense, or certitude, or dogma, amounts to the grandiose delusion, "My current model" -- or grid, or map, or reality-tunnel -- "contains the whole universe and will never need to be revised." In terms of the history of science and knowledge in general, this appears absurd and arrogant to me, and I am perpetually astonished that so many people still manage to live with such a medieval attitude.

 

--Robert Anton Wilson

http://www.rawilson.com/trigger1.html

 

 

[Stonehead]

This guy is still alive but (damn!) those ideas!

 

“Older mechanical technologies make us see the world as deterministic, knowable and manipulable. New emergent technologies like the Internet teach us that control is an illusion, the universe is out of control and laughing at us, and that the more we watch and control, the more problems we have.”

 

http://fas.sfu.ca/newsitems/cory-doctorow-2007-leonardo-lecture

[archenemy]

I didn't say that I minded being paranoid

Just that your making me paranoid

 

 

Pascal had something to do with Fluid Dynamics? Are you sure? I think I'd know that sort of thing, but it doesn't ring a bell?

 

He studied and worked with toricelli's flow rate stuff (forgive me if I spelled wrong--my memory is not that good)

[selkirk]

hmmm, I'll have to look into that

 

 

 

Though I can't believe you missed the pefect pavlov play on words

[archenemy]

I don't know what you mean. Once I slip into dorkdom, it's all over.

[JayB]

Same Pascal. His output wasn't confined to mathematics.

 

Pensées:

 

"The Pensées (literally, "thoughts") represented a defense of the Christian religion by Blaise Pascal, the renowned 17th century philosopher and mathematician. Pascal's own religious conversion had led him into a life of asceticism, and the Pensées were in many ways his life's work."

 

Pascal's Wager, found in the Pensées:

 

The Wager is described by Pascal in the Pensées this way[2]:

 

Let us now speak according to natural lights...Let us then examine this point, and say, "God is, or He is not." But to which side shall we incline? Reason can decide nothing here. There is an infinite chaos which separated us. A game is being played at the extremity of this infinite distance where heads or tails will turn up… Which will you choose then? Let us see. Since you must choose, let us see which interests you least. You have two things to lose, the true and the good; and two things to stake, your reason and your will, your knowledge and your happiness; and your nature has two things to shun, error and misery. Your reason is no more shocked in choosing one rather than the other, since you must of necessity choose. This is one point settled. But your happiness? Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is.

 

In his Wager, Pascal provides an analytical process for a person to evaluate options in regarding belief in God. As Pascal sets it out, the options are two: believe or not believe. There is no third possibility.

 

Therefore, we are faced with the following possibilities:

 

* You believe in God.

o If God exists, you go to heaven: your gain is infinite.

o If God does not exist, your loss (the investment in your mistaken belief) is finite and therefore negligible.

* You do not believe in God.

o If God exists, you go to hell: your loss is infinite.

o If God does not exist, your gain is finite and therefore negligible.

 

With these possibilities, and the principles of statistics, Pascal hoped to have demonstrated that the only prudent course of action is to believe in God. It is a simple application of game theory (to which Pascal had made important contributions)."

 

From Wikipedia.