Should We "Wager" on God? Cosmic Skeptic vs Liz Jackson
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- Опубликовано: 1 апр 2020
- In this live discussion, Alex O'Connor (Cosmic Skeptic) and Dr. Liz Jackson discuss the merits of Pascal's Wager. Is it sound?
Cosmic Skeptic's Channel: / alexjoconnor
Dr. Jackson's website: liz-jackson.com/
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#PascalsWager #CosmicSkeptic #God
Watching this discussion as a math major is the most frustrating thing in the world.
Agreed, and I'm just a CS major. The Cantor point by Liz was very sloppy... In that kind of mathematics all "countable" infinites are considered the same size. In this case 0.1x is the same as 0.9x. As Cantor shows for example, all even numbers have same cardinality as the natural numbers. (since they can be mapped to each other) A case where one infinity is considered "bigger" than the other is the natural numbers vs the real numbers. (since they cannot be mapped)
20 minutes in and I'm already yelling at the screen. Where does she get this idea that positive infinity is valid, but negative infinity is mathematically undefined? If f(x) = 1/x, what does f(x) approach as x approaches 0 from the negative side?
@@noahcoburn Ah, you might be able to help with a question I have about the idea of "approaching infinity". If we toss a coin we might get 10 heads, or 10 tails in a row, or even more. But the more we toss the coin the closer we get to the expected value (1/2, or 50%), i.e, we get closer to an equal amount of heads and tails. Another way of saying 'the more we toss the coin' is to say, "as we approach infinity". I think I get what this means but the idea of approaching infinity puzzles me. Say you and I are going to each toss a coin for the rest of our days. You start today, and after a time have made 1,000,000 tosses. I keep saying I'll start tomorrow and have made zero tosses by the time you've made your million tosses. You, according to some, would be approaching infinity. I would be well behind you. But, it seems to me, you are no closer to infinity than I am. I am infinite spins away from it, as are you. What am I misunderstanding here?
@@matthewphilip1977in a linear sense you are technically correct. No point on a number line is any closer to infinity than any other. You can realistically define “approaching infinity” to just mean “becoming really really big”.
However, let’s try a thought experiment. Imagine a lighthouse that’s just off the coast of an infinitely long shoreline. (Let’s also pretend that light travels instantaneously between any two points for this experiment - it doesn’t of course, but infinity only really exists in the conceptual mathematical sense anyways, so let’s ignore physical limitations here). As the angle that the light is shining at changes, the light sweeps along the coast. However, assuming that the light’s angle with the coastline changes at a constant rate, it will eventually, in finite time, sweep the entire length of the infinite coastline. (Look at a graph of the function f(x) = tan(x); it shows roughly what this would be like.) in that sense you can say that the angle of the beam of light changes constantly, but it’s location on the coast approaches infinity at a certain defined time.
It would make sense to use a percentile approach. So, instead of using infinity use 100% of possible benefits versus 0% benefit. Using infinity already involves Christian presuppositions
What this told me about Pascals wager-
If we look at the maths, we should believe in god, if we look closer and it doesn't actually add up, ignore the maths and just believe in god anyway.
It's nonsense.
@@andrewharper1609 No, It's nonsense times infinity.
@@jarrod752 Fair enough.
@@jarrod752 You forgot to add 3 to that infinity.
@@FahadAyaz Is that _Nonsense_ plus 3 times infinity, or nonsense times infinity plus 3? Do I need parenthesis so my math comes out right?
33:30 Liz: "So what we need to do is modify our math to account for that..."
Alex: "So we need to modify our maths to fit our beliefs rather than to modify our beliefs to fit the maths?"
But she just doubles down: "In this case, definitely, actually!"
What a mic drop moment. Well, or rather a jaw drop moment, at least for me!
Don't get me wrong, everybody should feel free to believe in whatever he wants, but if you're just modifying your math to fit your beliefs as soon as it's getting inconvenient you really don't need to use math to begin with!
Funny enough that's what Einstein did in his Cosmo logical constant. Then he acknowledged it as his biggest Folly
@@jasonhuschle471 As far as I understand the cosmo constant is true. But could be wrong. It might make sense that Einstein IN HIS time thought he was wrong.
NO! She says "defeasible" 35:37 - in other words the math is vague and people can disagree about what it means. She says it. Don't lie.
She is NOT saying just modify. So don't misrepresent her.
@@examiningkubrickphilosofia1530 in 1998 we found out that he was right but the equation that we use it for now is not what he intended it for
@@thomasmuandersontheneousul4184 so if I understand you correctly what she said or it's kind of weird I think she is saying as well as you is that Infinity can be thought of in many different ways and we need to understand that a little better before we add the math .is that what you mean. I don't want to miss represent you just understand. By the way she admits that she doesn't understand it she's also not a mathematician she's a philosopher maybe she doesn't understand it doesn't mean other people don't. Basically she's using I don't understand it so no one else can.
I've never felt more sad then when she said we need to modify the math to fit our beliefs. 😔
As much as I find the Pascal Wager utterly uninteresting and bland, I can still tell you that the usual approach in any scientfic pursuit, is to adopt the math that better models the observations AND intuition. It's true in physics, economy and biology. Any model that would produce some result that is objectively counterintuitive would need to be changed.
@Wim Harleev Oh look! Soemeone who's unafraid to display his cheer stupidity in public!
Dirac's function, 1930, his use of math made no sense, Schwartz invented distribution theory so the math could fit Dirac's theory.
I'm a religitard and an algortihmic reseacher. Must be hard having the brain of a dog and being craped all over by a religitard. I feel sad for you. You're so dumb
See you around dumb.
@Wim Harleev Actually he's right physicists use it all the time, they fudge the maths to fit their equations.
@@criticclips1560 I'm a physicist, give me one example where "physicists fudge the maths to fit their equations". You understand that equations are maths right?
@@BTimelessC It's called rennormalisationwhen physicists produce models which the outcome is infinty they have to fudge the numbers to their equations. Go look at the ultra violet catastrophe model.......or when einstein tryed to input random universal constatnts in order for him to beleive in the steady state theory in his time.....he was lucky enough to be alive when proven wrong.
Dr. Liz:
-"I need to prove my hypothesis, lets use math!"
-"The result dont make sense, mathematics must be incomplete."
This is was very alarming, specially coming from a post doc. The math proves the hypothesis, not the other way around.
Yeah it makes we wonder about the scientific vigor for liberal arts degrees.
@@averagejoe112 The "scientific vigor" most colleges/universities are looking for is intellectual slave labor... which really requires availability and commitment more than steadfast intelligence.
@@letsomethingshine The best way I've seen it put is: Every (modern) scientific genius has credible qualification, but not everyone with credible qualification is a scientific genius.
Oscar Rodriguez proof you can buy a degree and learn nothing
the math itself and her postulation of the wager is laughable and utilizes pseudo math, her use of the concept of infinite probability makes no sense, as 100% probability is 1, so when she says infinite she clearly means 1, and then she will just get balanced equations that amount to nothing.
She gave away the game around 34:00 when she asserts that we should re-arrange her math to fit her a priori beliefs
I thought exactly the same. If she's going to reject it if doesn't yield the results she, "wants" - then she's after support for her subjective view - that's all.
Why do you think she gave away the game? Can you explain specifically what she did that you disagree with and why? It's funny, she goes on to explain exactly why she says what she says, and yet you pretend like she didn't. I'd be interested to see you engage with her actual response.
@Barry Anderberg she placed intuitions over mathematics so instant fail. We use math to confirm intuition, not the other way round.
@@Gumpmachine1 if you type in your calculator or solve freehand 2+2+2 and get 7 is your math wrong or are your intuitions wrong?
@@Gumpmachine1 *What is your argument that a priori knowledge does not justify mathematical truths? Or as you put it - we do not use intuition to confirm math.*
I could listen to Alex read a list of my most embarrassing faults.
Sean S “The court finds you guilty on eight counts of spending an excess of £7400 on vintage Ken dolls”
I have a box. Using a ruler, it measures 12". However, I want it to fit a 10" cubic area.... Damn... I need a new ruler.
Yes, get a metric one!
@@Nelsathis 🤨
40 min in and they prove how worthless Pascal's wager is.
Cromwell Fluffington really? I thought it was the first 20 lol
@@coopertownsend4485 call me an optimist. I had hoped that there would be a fair argument to contend with. Sadness followed once again.
Can you expand on your comment and explain what you mean and why?
@@barry.anderberg watch the video. She completely destroys her whole argument. Essentially infinity beats all stops working when you consider more than 1 god or a god that wants you to be an atheist to get into heaven. Thus she claims Infinity doesn't beat all you have to consider the probabilities. Which then defeats the whole basis of the wager that Infinity beats all...
She essentially debunks Pascal's wager herself. And repeatedly so.
@@LikeGod_ButBetterLooking Well said
well i don't want to fall into confirmation bias but when she's trying to modify the number to seem true she's just refusing to admit she's wrong
@@ManuelCastro-ns5sd or rather, conclude your hypothesis is wrong and if anything interesting comes from it being wrong, use that to show it was worthwhile testing for
I agree with you, but i don't believe that she's that wrong. I think i know what she was TRYING to say and it makes sense.
@@ManuelCastro-ns5sd LOL I don't think you get it. I don't think she's pro-God its an issue of method. This is a deeper issue of math as a method. You can "save" a theory by manipulating data. Is this bad? this is a problem WITHIN ANY THEORY. So either you abandon all theories (pragmatism) or indeed modify the math. No easy answer either way.
I think that she’s more trying to adjust the math to fix what seems to be an absurd conclusion more than trying to justify her hypothesis in general
@Psicólogo Miguel Cisneros when people value status more than sound arguments, we are lost as a society.
Here's the accurate door analogy: there are an infinite amount of doors, and you have NO IDEA what might behind any of them.
Yes correct. An option that is lacking in her reasoning and clearly points out the weakness of her reasoning and her arguments.
*Im wrong but I don’t want to admit it...let’s “modify the math”.
No body gains an infinite everything if you were to do that you would also loose an infinite everything
some one yup. I don’t understand all the terminology and concepts, but somewhere along the way cosmic made a good point that didn’t fit her model or something so she wanted to “modify the math” to make it fit her argument haha. Even tho at the beginning she said she wanted to be intellectually honest and doesn’t mind saying “ you know, that’s a good point I’ll have to think more about it”.
some one one word, Indoctrination.
@@alexrogers777 the Problem is that at some point they just have to admit they the have no idea about the existence of a god, but they can't do that because of their beliefs. Witch is kinda sad
@@MegaSage007 sorry i'm not intressted in your cult, i'm busy living in reality right now
It just seems like she's a huge believer first and is trying to make the argument work even if it means it leads to absurdities and intellectual dishonesty/confirmation bias. Pascal's wager is dead and she needs to move on, it's like beating a dead horse.
That's every Christian in a nutshell
@Paul Simon McCarthy exactly. They love to dust off old arguments and resurrect them back to life.
@@lawless7859 says the atheist claiming authority... silly that you can't see how pompous you sound.
Michelle Laudet says the theist who didn’t read the “it just seems like...” at the start of that statement. Just because you don’t like what they think, doesn’t make them pompous.
@@thomascaulfield5232 Not sure that I was directing the pompous statement to only one post, not in my nature to judge one comment on its own, I only judge comments like "pompous" in view of a whole series of posts, everyone can get passionate in one post... if I called someone pompous, it was simply directedfor that person to reflect on their own presentation of their own arguments... arguments cannot not of themselves be pompous- it is the person behind the argument who is pompous, takes an arrogant self appointed highest expert on whatever is the subject and simply pontificates on their own, sort of like a weak leader using blunt force to get his or her way... I am following a way, up to whomever to decide the way to truth for themselves, if they even want to bother with truth, for that matter... 🤷♀️ have a great day... the atheist crowd is at broken record, on repete stage at this point.
"Mathematically negative infinite is not really a thing."
That line hurt
I know, right? It's exactly as defined as positive infinity
Also she had no knowledge of l’hopital’s rule. Any math undergraduate could explain it while drunk. Does she actually have a phd in math? I find that really hard to believe.
@@thedude882 She has a Ph.D. in philosophy, not math.
TL;DR: Positive infinities pop up naturally in classical mathematical considerations. Negative ones tend not to. You can define them, but she was probably refering to the idea that they don't appear as naturally (and thus have not been defined classically).
I think what she might've been referring to is that the classical infinite numbers (i.e. not considering surreal numbers) are defined based on the natural numbers, i.e. aleph_0 is the smallest number bigger than any natural number. You could of course shift perspective to whole numbers and define an -aleph_0 as the biggest ("most positive") number less than any whole number, nothing is stopping you. But that's a bit artificial in the sense that the positive infinities appear naturally, since they describe the sizes of sets, i.e. they refer to the number of elements. This concept is not easy to mirror semantically for negative numbers, where we tend to thing of objects missing (i.e. dollars on my bank account). However, it's difficult to conceptualize how a negative infinity is to be interpreted in this context.
@@MyMusics101
It seems to me that -infinity arises quite naturally: Negative integers are defined using the naturals. If before the construction of the integers one adds +infinity to the naturals, then the negation of +infinity will clearly be -infinity.
Argument against Pascal's Wager: You can't fool God. He will see that you're just making a bet, not genuinely believing. So it's no use.
Exactly, you can't just pretend to believe in god. I'll believe in god when I'm convinced that god exists, that's just how belief works. I can't choose to believe.
Exactly why free will does not exists. One can certainly profess anything, but an all knowing God would know the difference.
Barackus no one is saying that you pretend to believe. The suggestion is to try on the lifestyle to see if you’ll be more receptive to the idea of God existing. I’m not a vegan, but I can imagine myself attempting to become vegan by following certain steps in my diet. I wouldn’t be “pretending” or trying to fool myself, I would experimenting. Similarly a skeptic can be invited to church and see if he would be open to trying on the lifestyle of a Christian.
@The Scapegoat Mechanism essentially fake it to you make it.
Gump Groot I call it practicing
Whilst enjoyable at an academic level, the simple and important question is whether one should choose a course of action based upon ' just in case'. Insurance polices are based on this principle. We hope that we don't have to use it but it's there in case. Whilst this is a reasonable 'safety net' in terms of material goods, this is a very poor basis on which to base your life on.
I think Pascal's wager could be boiled down do "would you sign an insurance policy that gave you infinite money, if your house burned down?" When we try to judge how much we should pay for this policy using decision theory, we come to absurd conclusions, like, you should get the policy, even if it cost all your money and the chance of your house burning down was 1 in a million. Because decision theory break down when we add infinite into the equation.
I wonder if God would really appreciate a believer pretending to believe "just in case". Seems to me to go against a lot of what the god of the Bible is supposedly about.
Belief in Zeus is just as valid with this nonsense. You can apply this wager to any of the tens of thousands of deities, and it is just as valid, and therefore invalid.
@@dragan176 Would we sign an insurance policy that would give us infinite money if our house burned down but you have to wait until after you die to file the claim in an after life branch of the insurance company.
You don’t have to think of the wager in purely fearful terms. Another way of looking at it would be to place your hope in something that will satisfy your existential longing for happiness.
Alex is completely correct that the infinities make the whole argument absurd
@Mike When doing philosophy it's more helpful to look at the arguments themselves and not just whether the person arguing for them has a phD or not. Moreover, Alex is not just "some random kid" as you so blatantly dismiss him, but a philosophy student at Oxford who has debated or conversed about these type of topics for a few years (so not random).
@Miguel Cisneros Ok...? Nobody said to disrespect her so what the hell are you on about XD
@Miguel Cisneros Nope, We respect her personally but I don't (respect) her arguments.
@Miguel Cisneros which one?
"Mathematically negative infinity doesn't exist". I nearly choked on my drink.
Not only this, but the way infinities can be calculated upon.
Haha in the same way that negative numbers are "imaginary" and dont exist at all, she demonstrates either a lack of understanding or a wilful misuse of probability and the concept of infinity.
@@alexhorner4746 Negative numbers aren't imaginary. The square root of -1 (negative one) is the imaginary number (to clarify). It's not that this number does not exist, it's simply that no one has yet found a suitable way to express it mathematically other than this. If someone says that all negative numbers are imaginary and/or don't exist, that is incorrect. :)
@RAYfighter Philosophy of mathematics is a field, much of which is related to epistemology which is itself her area of expertise.
@@michaelobrien8372 you are getting confused because we usually have a subset of numbers that we specifically call imaginary.
In the same way that we invented numbers to solve x^2 =-1 we invented numbers to solve x - y = 0 where y > x.
They are both as "Imaginary" as each other. We just have a much more intuitive understanding of negative numbers than complex ones.
Replace 'infinity' with 'i don't know' and you've got the truth.
"There's a possibility that atheists go to heaven and theist go to hell."
-Dr. Liz Jackson (2020)
@@HarryNicNicholas Ha, ha. I agree with you more or less. 👍
@@HarryNicNicholasno, satan hates both none the less, if you do end up in hell satan will hate you, he just hates Christians more.
Alex a smart lad
And more importantly can communicate well
E M truly he is
Even though I'm sure a lot of people can reason pretty well given some time, his clarity of thought on-the-spot is amazing
Very true
He is and he looked even smarter in this company.
LMAO At 1 hour 8 minutes she basically tells you to indoctrinate yourself.
It's an interesting argument I haven't heard before... and yeah its kind of messed up.
That's also essentially what Pascal himself said. Fake it until you make it.
@Stefan Urban unless it's the wrong god and religion that turn out to be real. Not to mention all the arguments about the best way to worship, the varying arguments about what you can and cant do, and the fact that religion has put people in miserable positions... so be potentially miserable in this life and IF heaven exists yay, if not, you wasted your time. Pascals wager ignores these situations. Some people do lose alot because of religion.
Why would atheists care about that? I am amazed to see that atheist care but cannot explain why they care, neither can their account for the morals they have. If it is the case that there is no God, then all that exists is time and chance acting on matter. If this is true then the difference between your thoughts and mine correspond to the difference between shaking up a bottle of Coke and a bottle of Fanta. You simply bubble atheistically and I theistically. This means that you do not hold to atheism because it is true, but rather because of a series of chemical reactions. Morality, tragedy, and sorrow are simply things that are passing. They are all empty sensations created by the chemical reactions of the brain. If there is no God, then all abstractions are chemical brain fizz. This means that we have no reason for assigning truth and falsity to the chemical fizz we call reasoning or right and wrong to the irrational reaction we call morality. If no God, mankind is a set of bi-pedal carbon units of mostly water. And nothing else, why care and boast in the intellect as most atheists do?
If I evolved to believe and some are still at the animal level that has no faith in God there is nothing we can do about it. We can just preach in the hope that those that have the senses to detect the inner voice of God and want God will find what we say resonate in them. Could be that I can see things you cannot see, that I have senses that have evolved to experience God that is higher than the dimensions science can test. I can see Shakespeare in the play and you say he is nowhere in the play? Why would it matter to the atheist?
The atheist does have an answer but fails to live life according to the conclusions that one gets from the answers.
God revealed himself to me in a vision. I called on Him for salvation and He saved me. My life is the proof of Him saving me.
I believe every person is built with a prompting that there is a God. If you disagree, no problem. Do a polygraph and see if you are not fooling yourself on this matter.
The atheist is challenged to provide the preconditions for intelligibility according to his worldview.
The fact that they dedicated this much work to defend one of the worst arguments for religion is astonishing. Even her back up of saying “we should go for the religion that gives us the highest chance of infinite utility” is insane because they you have to try to determine the probability of each religion which is impossible.
That's actually the logical conclusion and what one should do.
Christianity would rank high on that list because it's one of the few religions that relies on a choice of heart (repenting and following Jesus) versus most religions which require you to do a number of specific spiritual actions or live a perfect life.
To believe that someone spent the time to put together that “expected utility” table is truly depressing ...
Yeah this argument is very depressing
@@matematic5256 No, It's depressing times infinity.
Dr. Liz “and now I’m just rambling”...That’s the only place I find she makes a valid point.
I think Lizs position leads to a lot of absurdities. I could for example come to her and say
"give me all you have or I will tell my all powerful, non-detectable friend to torture you and your familly for all eternity, at which point I will take all your stuff anyway"
Since both have a non-zero chance of happening (even if immesurably small) and one is a case on infinite loss, while the other is a non-infinite loss, she should chose the one with the best amout of utility or at least the smallest amount of loss. If she truly believes what she says she should give me all her wealth because this will produce smaller amout of loss, than a potential infinite loss of being tortured forever.
At the end o the day I think she bends the math to try and justify her already accepted position. Around 40 min she even said something that could easily be paraphrased as "If math doesn't match the conclusion I want, I means the math is wrong and not my conclusion".
I think she strongly and sincerely believes in God and tries to justify believing in it but she is going at it from a very intellecually dishonest way.
Good way to put it wish it would have been asked on the QnA...altho they moved fast with the QnA
>>> non-detectable friend
Use your brain to detect it.
We actually reply to a closely related objection in detail in the paper; see section 5.5 on Pascal's mugging: philpapers.org/rec/JACSPW
@Zachary Stewart oh sweetheart nobody who actually lives any kind of meaningful life would feel the need to push other peoples down like you just did.
Do you know using the name of the Lord in vain is a sin?? Do you want to go to hell??
@Zachary Stewartit's called messiah complex. It's a disorder where people Believe that they have found "something" (it can be a way to salvation, a big conspiracy, a profecy le doom, etc). In those cases the goal isn't the "something" per se but the recognition.
The bible also says that one shouln't pay attention of those who pray aloud, that they are hipocrites and do it for atention.
And here you are. Using the name of god to try to put your follow Human down. No for his sake, but for yours. There're names for people like you, some called them pharezees, others false christians. I just called them jerks.
As a math student... so much of this conversation is upsetting. On both sides.
She does seem really nice. As nice as Alex. I'm happy I didn't quit watching. Two very nice people discussing a topic they disagree on and being polite.
Good point. Alex is the least angry internet atheist I've ever seen...
Having a mathematician on would have maybe been a nice tempering influence on the methods discussion at the beginning, regarding calculations using different types of infinity. Great discussion though! Thank you all 💪
João Farias trust me I think we had cosmic sceptic for that friend
@@coopertownsend4485 I did appreciate his commentary on it but I believe there is still relevant mathematical knowledge to be considered (eg. L'Hôpital's rule) which could have helped with that portion of the discussion.
João Farias eyy my favorite calculus topic
@@coopertownsend4485 cs is half right, and from how Jackson was talking she seemed to be going in the right direction. She at least had a basic understanding of what infinities are,though the fact that she doesnt know enough calculus to recognize l'Hopitals rule makes me question her credibility there. I think that was taught in Calc 1. I would have to read the full paper to make a meaningful comment there.
My first line of questioning would be on what we mean when we say infinite pleasure or infinite pain. The question of infinite length of the minimum amount of pleasure or an infinite length of maximum pleasure is not an inconsequential one as was brought up, and I would argue is one of the most basic questions we need to answer before we can meaningfully model this. They are different both mathematically and conceptually. The other thing I would ask is why we are using infinity in our matrix at all? It seems to me that if we accept that there is a possibility of an infinite reward or punishment in the way it was discussed in the video, and we accept that the finite cases don't matter (which I think do matter), we essentially can abstract those as bad outcome and good outcome. It eliminates any of the goofy things we have to prod infinities with. All in all, I think the argument becomes much simpler and more powerful if you give infinities the bird.
@@TheSandurz20 I completely agree, I feel as though neither participants in this discussion really have a deep understanding of the math in regards to these problems, or the complications that infinity and zero have when introducing them in their equations.
My understanding on statistics and probability is rather minimal, but my understanding of calculus makes the conversation on this topic rather painful to get through. I really would rather have an individual who has a mathematics degree (or at least a degree that requires a lot of mathematics for it) to be available to correct mathematical misconceptions when debaters introduce math into the debate.
This is similar to how whenever an apologist brings up quantum mechanics and immediately I want to know why there isn't a moderator available with the experience and qualifications to call out the misunderstandings of an incredibly complex subject.
"So we should modify the math to fit our beliefs instead of modifying our belief to fit the math?"
Utterly brilliant that quick-witt and sharp mind makes you a strong intellectual foe on any war of ideals.
Equations are developed to suit the observation. Alex is a straw man telling a narrative to explain why maths can't be used, but he is just manipulating the numbers to deviate the conversation, and then saying maths can't be used.
@@PicoGirl I don't think Alex is a "strawman" nor am I sure his argument is logically a strawman argument. Be careful how one makes a point, a dull blade kills as well as does a sharp knife. But is death really necessary?🤷♀️
@@PicoGirl But you are correct, Alex is just interested in wrapping arguments up in circles, manipulating the narrative to his advantage. He wins the battle, but I highly doubt he will win the war...
@@michellelaudet5363 Making a straw man argument to defeat the argument is what Alex does best. Strawman definition:
an intentionally misrepresented proposition that is set up because it is easier to defeat than an opponent's real argument.
@@PicoGirl I agreed with your point, I was trying to tease you, and also make an ironic statement on the sharpness of Alex's wit rather than his intellectual arguments. I am not very strong on naming logical fallacies, I was also poking fun at that in myself... I did like your original comment...😉
"We should modify the math to fit the theory." This is where I stopped watching.
As much as I find the Pascal Wager utterly uninteresting and bland, I can still tell you that the usual approach in any scientfic pursuit, is to adopt the math that better models the observations AND intuition. It's true in physics, economy and biology. Any model that would produce some result that is objectively counterintuitive would need to be changed.
Michael O'Brien Oh yeah, good for you.Bc later she claimes that math rely on intuition therefore everyone, disregard if they say they rely on math or not, rely on Intuition. 1:24:24
"My Intuition is so strong ..." yeaaaaah....
If your don't believe in the flying spaghetti monster, you are going to hell.
@@tonybanks1035 yes, but the way to modify the math in this case is to remove the infinity's, you don't modify math by changing the definitions of established concepts.
@@tonybanks1035 Scientists adopt math that better models observations because it's more likely to be true. They allow the empirical evidence to dictate their theory rather than assuming that their world view is correct and manipulating models to suit their theory. That's literally the definition of confirmation bias and cherry picking.
The thing that most often gets overlooked in these discussions is the amazing lighting on Cameron. It's so well-balanced.
I have to give him that. The cinematography is spectacular. Kudos.
PHD, and wrote several papers in support of an argument that can be used in support of any God. 🤷♂️
There are PHds who have written papers in support of astrology. Someone's nominal credentials don't make their arguments more credible.
@@alankoslowski9473 I think its more the fact that someone with a doctorate in philosophy is surprisingly convinced by pascals wager when pascals wager is philosophically flawed and can be philosophically argued against. You'd think anyone that knows a thing or two about philosophy could spot the problem
@@BenYork-UBY
I didn't think of that, but I'm not the interested in pure philosophy; that is entirely conceptual proposals that have no demonstrable practical relevance. God is an example of such concepts.
@@alankoslowski9473 That's true to an extent, but formal training in philosophy from professionals is very helpful.
@@jackparker8759
In this case all it does is enable her to present an elaborate conceptual argument that can't be empirically tested. Even in conceptual terms it's unconvincing since there's no way to determine the intentions of an entirely hypothetical god. Maybe god rewards those who don't believe in it and punishes those that do. There's no way to determine if this is more likely than god rewarding believers, so both are equally possible.
"Modify the math"🤦♂️ At least she tried
Have you heard of a thing called Inferential Statistics?
@@RadicOmega Did you have a point?
Exactly, right at 33:40 Alex asks: so you need to change the Math to fit your beliefs instead of changing your beliefs to fit the Math...? and she acknowledges. That is clearly confirmation bias, it's fallacious reasoning.
@@marianomazzieri6560 Yeah. Math is a logical tool to get correct answers IF your initial assumptions are true. She either has to concede that her initial assumptions are false or she has the wrong logical tool at her disposal. I would say both as she has not even proven mathematically that the propability of some a god existing is definable or not. Propability as a mathematical tool has strict rules what you can and cannot do with it and she is not abiding to the rules.
She could invent math that would fit her case, but I think IMO it is impossible as the problem has logical errors. You can invent math but it has to be logically consistent.
@@RanEncounter yes, my point is that we "modify math" for philosophical reasons *all the time,* it is what inferential statistics does: we take categories which necessarily can't be quantified, and we use our reasoning to apply math in a way that is intuitive, there is nothing wrong with this whatsoever.
So here’s my take on infinity as a computer scientist. Because of the finite amount of random access memory in computers, if we write a program that does something infinitely such as a “while(true)” or forever loop then if the computer does not have a “break” or some other kind of conditional statement then the computer would literally perform its task within the loop until it runs out of memory and crashes. However, imagine for a moment that we did somehow had the memory capacity in a computer to create a program that could do something an infinite amount of times(we don’t and probably never will but bear with me for this thought experiment). If we were to write a program, for example that creates a variable called i and sets it equal to 1 and then just checks to see if i is greater than zero and if it is then i is incremented by 1 and it does this forever and then after this loop in the code on the next few lines we write some code that adds 10. So for you code junkies out there it would look something like this:
Int main(void)
{
int i = 1;
Do
{
i = i + 1;
{
While (i > 0);
i + 10;
printf(“%i”, i);
}
This program simply increases i by one and then checks to see if i is greater than zero and then if it is repeats itself. Then after the loop it adds 10 to i and prints i. But wait.... the loop will never end! It will continue to increment i by one forever and it will never move on to the next part of the code in which 10 is added to i. This is why infinity cannot be used as a number. Alex was right, it’s nonsense. Infinity plus 10 makes no logical or mathematical sense and so you cannot use it in an argument.
Infinity is a tricky concept for many people. And I think you are jumping to conclusions.
Infinity can, in fact, be used as a number in certain contexts. Infinity plus 10 isn't always nonsense. One example that comes to mind are ordinal (and cardinal) numbers, which you can google if interested. But it's worth mentioning they don't really appear (at least not directly) in decision theory, but maybe other arguments using them can be given.
But I'm just saying, it has mathematical sense and it could be used in an argument (although probably neither of people in the video should use it, since it's obvious they don't understand it).
From a computer science perspective (not really my area, so I might be saying nonsense now), maybe understanding infinity would be easier if you took that program you wrote and assume that some theoretical computer could do that loop and continue with the program (assuming it has infinite memory so that numbers don't overflow and that it has a way of storing infinity somehow, etc, etc....).
Just some corrections:
"until it runs out of memory and crashes" this does not necessarily happen if you don't allocate new memory (stack or heap) on every cycle of the loop.
Even the example you provided will eventually have integer overflow (wrap around to "max" negative value) and terminate...
You should have known this as a "computer scientist".
BTW I agree with the philosophical point you are trying to make but the CS points and example are sloppy...
Where can I find an objective list of the probabilities of all major religions?
Nowhere😂😂😂
The probability of a religion being true goes up to 1 if born into that religion.
The kind of probability in question isn't objective; it's subjective. This is standard in decision theory.
@@lizjackson111 if it's subjective, then it hinges on what the wagerer already believes. How do we account for the confirmation bias?
@@lizjackson111 Question, Liz... in decision theory, isn't there a lot of value in seeing how our decisions turn out so next time we can evaluate better? For this wager, there's no 'evaluation' after. It's the end.
I'm not sure whether the fact that Alex is an undergrad debating fully-fledged, doctorate professionals in matters of theology means he understands and discerns the discussions at hand better than many professionals, or the defenses of theological assertions are continually shown to be ridiculously inadequate. Either way, great debate. I genuinely feel hope for humanity when I see two people who disagree so much manage to have a friendly discussion.
Alex, that was the best introduction I have ever seen @4:00
12:20 Alex O'Connor is his own person with his own style, but his response here is reminiscent of Hitch.
On refusing Pascals Wager: ""which of us is the more moral, which of us is the more honest, which of us is the more courageous, which of us has the bluest eyes and is the most sexually attractive"" ~ Christoper Hitchens
Beating a dead horse x infinity
Pascal's Wager is literally wishful thinking.
Hey man, my friend Tommy said that Aliens send mind probes that infect our minds. Don't worry though! All you have to do is wear a tinfoil hat, and the probes don't work!
Even if you don't believe his claim, there's no risk to wearing a tinfoil hat! There is a downside if you don't wear it though, so you might as well wear it, right?! it's a win-win!
Simple as that haha
More like hypocritical cowardice
@Gary Thistle who cares about what people think?
@@chillingdudex I do. When enough people think like garbage, we end up with theocracies and people like Trump getting elected. You should care A LOT what other people think.
Debate was over at the 28th minute. 🙅🏼♂️
Decision theory is just a way to model decisions. There is plenty of mathematicians and probabilists (not to mention more applied fields) who use it. It’s not a subject that one has to or not have to be “into”. As a statistician I find it always a bit humorous when theists attempt to codify these arguments into rigorous mathematical arguments. Mathematicians, particularly statisticians, have difficulty within statistics and probability defining how to build up philosophies. This has led to several schools of statistics. Given that there is an “ orthodox” view of probability still leads to different schools of statistics.
Also there are plenty of issues with her “math”. In the first card she presents how does she arrive to either of those values for “God exists”? Further she is really playing fast and loss (sloppy) with infinity. The sense of God being represented by the infinite is not the same as a mathematical infinite. Finally, what is she talking about there is no such thing as negative infinite? You can approach infinite to the left of a scale and mathematicians often do. CS mentions the problem with her infinite usage but she seems she is confusing his objection with the issue of absorption property of infinity.
Get this man to the top comments!!!
So, your saying there's a few problems with her arguments? No, seriously enjoyed your take. Always good to hear from people who work with all the disciplines and aren't just hurling glop at the wall hoping something sticks
@@stevedriscoll2539 I keep meaning to post a review of her paper but other things keep getting in the way. I will say this. I find it more than a little telling that she published her article in a journal that has a record of trying to justify Christian doctrine via science. Why didn’t she publish in a more standard mathematical or scientific publication?
@@jlastre yup!🙂...thanks for the reply!🧡
Belief is not a choice. Pascal's Wager is that easily destroyed.
You can choose to believe something.
It's not about belief.
It's about the gravity of the issue, which leads to openness which can lead to belief.
@@EHMD11111 Try believing that you don't exist.
"belive is not a choice" Did you choose to believe that?
@@letters_from_paradise One can choose to believe that. I'm not sure why the claim is being made that one can't do that.
The "debate" ended at 36:00, she don't know what she's talking about.
Imagine paying for 8 years of schooling and wasting thousands of hours of time studying/researching to still have no idea what you're talking about lol
@Mike Just because she has a Ph. D doesn't make her beyond reproach or incapable of being wrong. Stop being a sycophant.
@Mike Yawn. Just because she's a woman doesn't make me a misogynist for criticizing her. You really are a special kind of simp.
I appreciate the discussion and have learned from it. Alex made every point that I thought of and more. Props to Liz as well for an honest take from her perspective.
Wow, the first comment I found that actually doesn't pick on only one micro fraction of the entire video
At the same time, Liz absolutely convinced me that Christian apologetics is intellectually bankrupt.
So, what I take from this is that Liz's intuition (or gut feeling, or just feeling) is so strong that actual evidence doesn't matter because she knows it's true? I find her singularly unconvincing. She needs to ask herself, if she's didn't have the *emotional* attachment to her view, would she still have it?
Depends if she is a evidentialist or presuppositionalist
No scientist trusts intuition over what they have observed. "the universe is under no obligation to make sense to you" Neil DeGrasse Tyson
I love Tyson.
She kept saying “that is a great point” then redefining a term or bearing her testimony of her work. She never really responded to any of his concerns, which was frustrating to watch.
I'm only 22 minutes in but Liz's argument(& Pascal's wager in general) assumes that belief is a choice, but that's not how it works.
It is the same problem with love. There is a subconscious part, but there is also the commitment part which is a choice. I didn't each the debt btw so I am not commenting about what she said.
@@truebomba
To use your love example; say you have a friend that is starting to have feelings for you, and you know that they are intelligent, caring, loving, etc, but you're just not sexually attracted to them. You can commit to the relationship all you want, but there's either chemistry there, or not.
So yes you can commit to trying, to exploring any and all possibilities, but in the end, you are either convinced or you're not, either in love, or not.
a more concrete example, I am a bisexual male, but growing up as a kid in the still very homophobic 90' I was very very committed to only having feelings for girls, but that hardly changed the reality of the situation, lol
They explicitly discuss this objection starting around 1:06:06
1:17:20 - Honestly seeking God..."I just want to find you if you're there"....yes...you do realise many atheists have gone through this, right??
Amen brother ;)
Amen brother
But are you truly interested in finding the true God, creator of the universe, and submit to a world the way He wishes it to be?
Or are you trying find a god that you "rub his belly" correctly and you get your three or tons of wishes to have life on your terms?
I think all of the atheists here miss these nuances in Liz's argument. Alex is more interested in "winning a debate argument" where as Liz was looking to find the truth. as in finding an absolute, infinite truth. One of my favorite questions in the Bible is Pilate asking "What is truth?" yet walks away without expecting an answer from the man who claimed to be Truth... Irony? But fascinating, especially when weighed besides the doubting Thomas story after the resurrection.
But, you do not have to find truth, because you can just do the normal thing, and ignore it.
Michelle Laudet lol yeah we do interested in finding the one true God at some point, of course. In fact, that is one of the phases required before we decided to walk away from religion, at least for me.
Actually, finding the truth is not the hardest part. Walking away from it, then being judged, secluded from friends, and family, with a burden to be burned in hell for eternity, that's even harder :)
So the point is, yes we have tasted worse than looking for which God is right or wrong, let alone try to submit our wills to Him. We have gone beyond that, and that is where the blindfold is starting to unfold. Everything looks so much clearer now. Peace :)
@@michellelaudet5363 - "Alex is more interested in "winning a debate argument" where as Liz was looking to find the truth. as in finding an absolute, infinite truth"
1. Maybe you should be a little more charitable.
2. Maybe you can try addressing some of the other objections posted on other comments.
3. Can you tell us what is an absolute, infinite truth?
4. Does it feel good when you think you have the truth already but if someone wants you to justify it, you cannot do so?
5. One other thing...if you think you have the truth already do you stop looking?
Just did a review of this debate with Liz where we discuss Alex's objections further. Check it out.
ruclips.net/video/B87RKDTGkbE/видео.html&lc=Ugw8xrJytUBgswr1HVt4AaABAg
Alex: "I don't know if what I'm saying makes much sense."
Me: "This is the first thing that has made sense to me in the whole debate."
It is an absolute dumpster fire. But a polite one.
Liz... you need to talk to a mathematician about infinity.. you don’t understand it and is using it wrongly.. Alex repeatedly told you not to treat infinity as a number and simply multiplying it.
Go read a book on infinity.. you can’t just multiply something by infinity. It’s a totally different concept compared to the basic math you use when you buy 3 cabbages in supermarket.
Which journal did you publish your paper in? Is it peer reviewed? Is there a mathematician in the reviewing process?
Liz Jackson I’m in the process of reading the paper so I hope you believe I will give it a chance but the paper was published by Philosophia Christi
“Philosophia Christi is a peer-reviewed journal published twice a year by the Evangelical Philosophical Society (EPS) with the support of Biola University as a vehicle for the scholarly discussion of philosophy and philosophical issues in the fields of apologetics, ethics, theology, and religion.”
I think many of us, myself included, would feel much more confident in you argument if the paper were presented in secular journal. I believe this is why another commenter asked where your article was published. I left a few criticisms in another post given my understanding of you position at first blush. But then my math is limited to having only a MS in statistics.
jlastre if you have criticism of the actual ideas in the paper, I’d be happy to talk
Liz Jackson Once things become infinite, decision theory breaks down because decision theory matrix only apply to finite countable number. You really need to understand infinity and MORE IMPORTANTLY, what is multiplication.
I can start you off with an example: there are 3 marbles in each cup. There are 5 cups. Total number of marbles is 3x5=15. What does multiplication means here? It means there are 5 cups and each cup has 3 marbles, so you add 3 marbles 5 times. In other words, 3+3+3+3+3=15. Basically, multiplication is just addition.
Now if I have infinite cups, it basically means 3+3+3+... = infinity number of marbles. If I add 1 more cup, it will still be infinity marbles. Ultimately, it will lead to infinity+3=infinity. Basically, it means x+3=x.
At this juncture, you feel INTUITIVELY wrong when staring at x+3=x and conveniently conclude that you will just choose the religion with higher probability. This is absurd. You should realize at this point that it’s not possible to apply addition and multiplication to infinity. Instead of admitting that, you choose to use INTUITION about buying 3 cabbages vs 5 cabbages in supermarket and apply it to infinity. If this is not absurdity, I don’t know what is.
Go talk to a pure math major. Once you understand what infinity is and its implication when multiplied. Then you will understand why decision making can’t be applied to Infinity. And then you can retract your paper..
Zihao Wu there is no need to be mean or degrading. In our paper we utilize ratios and limits to compare religions. We don’t multiply anything by infinity. Again, please read it before you make assumptions.
Liz Jackson I’m sorry that I’m too harsh on my previous point. I just read your paper and I want to discuss purely the content now.
Referring to section 4.2 ratio in the limit, you talked about 100 unit of utility for ecstasy, 1 unit of utility for moderate happiness and take the ratio, ending up with 100 divide by 1 = 100 and claim it’s better. I agree with you on this point. However, you forgot that this is only for each individual day, not over the whole period.
If you look at the overall eternal period, the amount of more happiness is absorbed by the eternal time period. So, even though you feel 100x happier each day, this 100x is so negligible over eternity that it doesn’t even matter.
Bro, imagine spending your whole life pretending that nonsense is a field of study and desperately shoehorning bits and pieces of legitimate academic study into for a shallow attempt at validation
Nice. Ignore all of the arguments given and disregard it all as nonsense. Now you can keep your preconceived notions and not have to trouble yourself with having to think things through. Yay for you!
What nonsense did you have in mind? Why is it nonsense? What bits and pieces are you thinking of?
The arguments are fallacious... - nonsensical
JTPS42017 Care to explain further or is that your whole argument?
@@eliper4823 no. Look up fallacies
Ok, I would be able to give Dr. Jackson more due credit in my head if everyone single one of Alex's well thought out objections wasn't met with "Yeah, good, good!". Funny attempt to frame his arguments (which clearly shred her theory) as objections she's *obviously* considered and has an in depth explanation for. Except, the rebuttal never comes...
Perhaps she’s not a quick thinker and is more comfortable writing papers and arguing or discussing in that form instead? I wonder if it’s her first live debate.
Good job on the debate everybody! Seems like you are changing gears on your channel..becoming more of the interviewer and not the antagonist. Kudos to you Cameron.
Alex is just a genius. What a brain!
How did he endure that annoying, scatter-brained woman for two hours?
@@hrh4961 How on earth did she get 'Dr.' in front of her name?
Streetsdisciple001 he is!
Agreed.
I had hopes of an interesting conversation, quickly dashed.
No you didn't.
@@correctchristian4255 YAWN
@@shakeysam True sociopath reaction. So ubiquitous in an atheist-secularist.
@@correctchristian4255 wow, 4 syllable words, I'm so impressed. You can go back to reading your bible now.
@@shakeysam Hate the truth? I'm not apologizing for presenting reality in its proper order.
I feel so sorry for her... I honestly don't know if when she listens to herself if she actually believes what she saying. Because the was down right sad...
Think of all the time & energy she wasted on this. And she has more papers coming? It's ridiculous.
@@utubepunk i mean, if she's got a research fellowship then she's clearly making more out of her degree than most x'D
How do you even get a doctorate when you try to do basic math on infinity?
@@nitehawk86 there's actually a very interesting things that you could do with maths and infinity. I remember you could use it and "inderterminate" to easily find the limit in a polynomy equation.
@@radred609 Sure & wasting it on Pascal's wager & avoiding inconvenient math.
Pascals wager is like saying that the probability of winning the lottery is 50% cause u either win or not win and therefore you should buy a lottery ticket
Except, you forget few thousand other gods. And then, if you buy the ticked because of chance to win, then god can withold your winning.
You must do it for the right reasons, preferably:
1) a demonstrated case of imaginary god actually exsisting
2) then which god - some are mutually exclusive - a problem you can not ignore
3) then a compelling case of why one would bother with praising, following and such - otherwise *an imposition by respective followers of their view point on the society is unwarranted and, essentially, evil.*
If there’s a 50 percent wining in the lottery you should buy it 😂, the average person to win a lottery is way lower than .1 percent
Great analogy but let's refine it. There are millions of lotteries and you have 50% chance of winning one of them. Which lottery out of the millions available do you choose?
@Paul Simon McCarthy Well, we would only be interested in God of all gods, wouldn't we? The first one, the all powerful supreme being. How many such Gods do you know of? Go ahead, name them. And there's only two possibilities, either such God exists or he doesn't. So the wager is valid, and it would be very unwise to take this lightly and not spend a lot of time investigating and thoroughly studying all possibilities (from all sides).
Btw, speaking of investigating. How many religions do you know of with a concept of eternal punishment? Cause if i am wrong, and i get punished for it after i die, but i get a chance to atone for my sins and eventually reach some blissful state, then that religion is not so bad to be wrong about.
@Paul Simon McCarthy "This statement assumes that there IS a 'God of all gods'"
Well, either there is or there isn't. There's only two possibilities. There cannot be two or more THE GREATEST beings at the same time, by definition.
"I can think of six different monotheistic god claims that fit your specific definition. More if you count Yahweh, Allah.." "Ahura Mazda, Waheguru, Bondye, Odin and HU. What is the point of this?"
Certainly not thousands, right? And which of them are spaceless, timeless, and immaterial, so that they actually can possibly be the creators of the universe - of time, space and matter, rather than themselves emerging from already existing matter? The point is that there are no thousands or millions other possibilities. What do i stand to loose if i don't believe in Odin?
"this is not a 50/50 proposition"
To me it is, given the reasons i stated above. Either the greatest imaginable being exists or doesn't. There can be only one. That in itself is a 50/50 proposition. Yes, there is an added difficulty to THEN have to figure out who that greatest being is. But there are only a handful to choose from, rather than thousands. And the existence of different denominations doesn't mean different versions of a God. Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox certainly disagree on things, but they basically have the same understanding of who God is. There's always a Westboro Baptist Church here and there, but basically Protestants would not fault Catholics for worshiping a different God, and neither Catholics would say such of Protestants. Jehovah's witnesses is a different case though. Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox all would say that is a different God.
"I hope you agree that eternal punishment is absolutely immoral. Especially eternal punishment for something as unimportant as believing a deity exists or not. Especially when said deity is invisible and chronically 'shy'?"
I disagree. And certainly if God wanted to be known then 2 billion believers is not being shy.
BTW, after studying, Cosmic Skeptic himself admitted that he may no longer say that eternal punishment is immoral, on Christian worldview ( ruclips.net/video/3C5z8SVzUb4/видео.html ).
My last sentence was basically tied to my question about how many religions have a concept of eternal punishment. You got it right. And i think it also works good with PW. So suppose i am a Christian, but turns out that i am wrong and Hinduism is true. What do i stand to loose if eventually i am merged with Brahma regardless? Hopefully as you can see, PW doesn't work equally for all religions. It makes valid points, especially when comparing believing in no gods vs christian God.
She couldn’t move beyond the infinity BS.
Its because infinite is needed to make Pascal wager work, because the idea is that- no matter how low the probability that the god you end up believing in exists, the chance of an infinite reward will always be the right choice. The problem being what Alex explains.
@@trybunt Except that is simply used to hide the fact that she doesn't allow negative infinity, which would nullify the overpowering effects of infinity into indeterminacy. She even admits why at the 1:28:55 mark: Using a model based on rational, natural numbers undermines her conclusion. This is utter lunacy.
@@trybunt But if any god besides your god exists, he'll only become angrier with you for believing and worshipping a non existent entity, and sentence you to a worse hell than an atheist, because atleast they weren't closed to the idea of him existing.
Cosmic is looking good lately, I hope he's feeling okay during Quaretine
what i've taken from this discussion is that you cant use decision theory for pascals wager
You can. You just can't use infinity in decision theory (at least here)
Pascal's wager is so peculiarly wrong that is seems like it came from the same thought era that was hunting witches and putting farm animals on trial.
Great as always Alex 👌
Thanks to all three for the debate 👍
What do you think of Alex's objection that we can't choose to believe?
Coming up with convoluted maths instead of just admitting the argument isn't that good...
Are you aware of a debate where the believer wins?? I haven't been able to find one so far.
By "winning" do you mean "made the best points" or "convinced the most people" or just "looked like the winner? Based on your answer I can provide you with a debate where the theist "wins". All they need is an atheist with poor debate skills vs a great theist debater.
@Anonna Jahan Hmmm, geez. I will need some time on that. The other two categories are the easy ones.
@Anonna Jahan Sure, here's Matt Powell using dishonesty and bravado to outmaneuver Raging Atheist. ruclips.net/video/ERrluITdYJs/видео.html Matt is a garbage human btw.
@Anonna Jahan Here is Aron Ra's worst debate sorry to say. Michael Jones AKA Inspiring Philosophy comes more prepared and thus seems more convincing in the end. ruclips.net/video/LA_B5cx_y30/видео.html Inspiring Philosophy always shows up with a ton of references that he claims supports his position. To argue against him you apparently need to read all of them. smh
@Anonna Jahan Matt Powell ended up looking like a winner by having more debate skills, while Michael Jones managed to trick the audience and convinced more people.
There is a reason we don't divide by 0, and the same thing should be applied to multiplying by infinity.
If for nothing else, you should watch this for the sake of Alex randomly swapping the air for flies🤣
That's actually a high point of the debate.
When Jack Nicholson yells "You're dam right I ordered the code red!" in A Few Good Men is similar to when Liz admits she would simply alter the math if she didn't like the answer it gave. It is a show stopper of an answer that exposes her deeply held biases and her lack of objectivity and honest search for the truth. Overall I really enjoyed the conversation though, thank you for sharing.
"people think infinity has this absorption property, where multiplying it by anything equals infinity"
In other words, she's using a concept that she doesn't understand, and criticizing everyone else for having a better understanding of it.
Thanks for hosting this "debate". It's nice to see the many ways in which this wager fails.
Thumbs up for Cosmic Skeptic.
Nice profile avatar :)
@@MathIguess thank you.
The wager is garbage
Lucky We don't need math to realise that
@@Phoenix-King-ozai Agreed.
That was a gentle annihilation of his opposition. Well done Alex. The ability to keep discussions at such a respectful level is a real gift. Liz seems lovely but Alex's logical argument revealed some serious flaws in her position.
What is her clear answer to (anything) x infinity = infinite utility, so it doesn't matter what choice you make if P > 0 and U(P) = infinite. It seems whatever she says undermines the argument as CS noted, and I could not hear a definite answer to that criticism.
Cliff Stamp Well stated friend, the “rational” conclusion Liz is referring to doesn’t exist in the confined of faith when discussing reality
her answer was to change the math.
I feel the big question missing here was "What do you mean by infinity?"(potential, actual, set-theoretic, aleph-naught, continuum...?). Too much of the discussion was about mathematics while lacking a definitive mathematician's input.
This video hurts. She says she isn’t very good at math, then bases her entire argument on it, then at 35:35 says she changes the math until the result it produces is exactly what she wants. Cosmic Skeptic, you are one patient man...
fr dude it was frustrating to me and i’m just a spectator
I purposefully didn't go into the technical details of the math to keep this accessible. If you're interested in the technical model we propose, you can download my paper for free here: philpapers.org/rec/JACSPW
She tried...
It requires some series contortions of logic to the level of a square cirlcle to actually accept pascal's wager
Exciting debate and great moderation! I only found it yesterday, so now I subscribed to your channel - even though I'd say I'm "firmly in the other camp" :) This is the kind of passionate and compassionate debate is what we need to inch closer to the truth as a whole.
I'm just jotting down some ideas while sipping my morning coffe, and I stayed up way too late yesterday to watch the debate, so forgive me if things don't make sense^^
I'd wholly agree with Alex' assessment that infinity shouldn't be used for the payoffs, because it simply breaks the system. To take the 2-doors scenario to the next level (so it no longer relies on probabilities and at the same time give it a bit of "religious flavor") consider a religion where devoted, good believers get "infinity" as a reward. Now, the god of this particular religion is very kind: he forgives sinners! They, too, get "infinity" as a reward - but only after spending 100 million years in hell suffering terrible torment. It's "intuitively obvious" that one outcome is better, yet calculating with infinites here tells us that "infinity = (infinity - 100 million) = infinity". Simply plugging in infinity into the payoffs doesn't work.
A simple first step to try and make it work might be to consider payoffs as DAYS spent either in bliss (positive, finite value), torment (negative, finite value) or not existing (0). This would make it possible to easily work with "negative infinity" in this context.
Furthermore it would allow to do the following: In game theory, we use the concept of "discounting" future payoffs. Put very simply: "1000$ today" is worth more to me than "1000$ in 100 years". With monetary values, this reflects interest rates, while with "infinitely repeated games" it reflects the chance that the game will end at some point in the future. We basically multiply any future payoff with a weight-factor of
... also, even the more complex version of the "many gods" argument outlined above becomes INFINITELY more complicated when considering the possibility that some or all of the potential deities are not exogenous forces that simply act in a predetermined way (e.g. always forgive, always punish, punish only non-believers....) but consider THEM as agents in a game theoretical sense. An explanation would be that they (or some of them) draw strength/power/pleasure from people believing in them, praying, making sacrifices etc. This would compell the DEITIES to act strategically and try to get as many people to believe in them as possible (by changing their strategies of when to reward/punish). Of course there is an obvious communication problem, because no deity seems to be very effective at convincing (all) people that they are the right one. Furthermore, speculating about how strategic deities would act in such a situation is - again - unhelpful because it is impossible to do accurately. Steven J Brams has written some interesting analyses of looking at the old-testament God as a strategic actor in game theoretical situatons (e.g. God-vs-Abraham in the requested butchering of Isaac). This would result in a multidimensional matrix or a very complex game tree, making it EVEN HARDER to get ANY result - though it would arguably be a more "realistic" model. But still, we'd have no ideas how to set the parameters, i.e. have no usable model at all...
Is it possible that a decision matrix, so useful for other tangible applications, is just not really suited to God belief which is based on a heap of conjecture and is uninvestigatable?
Liz Jackson: has PhD in philosophy from one of the top philosophy of religion universities
CosmicSkeptic: has an English accent
Clearly CosmicSkeptic has more credentials
He is studying philosophy and theology at Oxford
Someone's nominal credentials don't automatically make their arguments credible. Her arguments aren't credible regardless of her title.
I have an English accent, but my credentials are few ! Still a non-believer though !
@@ivory3975 Not for a PhD though, as far as I know. He certainly has fewer formal qualifications in terms of academic philosophical training.
"I have a Phd in philosophy..."
Ooo, respectable!
"from one of the top universities in philosophy..."
Cool!
"of religion"
...
*Nope*
It's not "negative infinity" if you pick the wrong "god" and get sent to the "right god's hell", it's an infinitely "bad" (i.e., "negative") outcome. Just look at the grammar. It's different.
eff Pascal, such a waste of time you made.
The best argument against this is to say belief isnt something you can simply choose, you are either convinced of something or you are not, at no point do you actively choose what you believe.
No one is saying that you can change your beliefs immediately. You can still take certain actions that will allow you to be more open to the idea of being convinced. As Pascal said, appealing to metaphysical arguments won’t get you anywhere because reason isn’t what’s holding atheists back, not entirely. It’s the “passions” of the individual that have to change.
@@thescapegoatmechanism8704 that is just useless platitudes. Evidence evidence evidence. My mind is open to anything and everything that the EVIDENCE supports.
Her whole argument assumes that belief is some kind of choice. It's not. You either believe in something or you don't. You don't get to choose.
For example: Try to believe that your phone doesn't exist. Is it possible?
You can assume that your phone doesn't exist but not believe that it doesn't.
Similarly you can't just believe in god if you are not convinced yourself. Although you can assume that god exists.
While I'm not on her side, she did address that in the video
@Zachary Stewart
>I must not tell lies.
Rowling 5 325:13
You must realize that quoting lines from a book no one here believes is like quoting lines from any other work of fiction and acting like they dictate the nature of reality. That's simply not how persuasion works. If you want to persuade someone, speaking in a foreign language carries no weight. You will only ever convince anyone of anything by speaking to them in their own language.
But of course, that's not what you're trying to do. Not really. You don't care to convince anyone of anything. Under the guise of conversion, what you're really doing is just showing off to the world how religious you are. You're stroking your own ego in an act of metaphysical masturbation. And that's fine. Get your Jesus rocks off, my dude.
@Zachary Stewart Christianity is actually contradictory on this point, like it is on so many others.
Ephesians 1:4 "For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight"
and also 2:8 "For it is by grace you are saved, through faith, and this not of yourselves, it is the gift of God."
And just the very nature of Omniscience contradicts free will entirely. If god is all-knowing, this means he knows what you are going to do before you do it. If he can predict the future in this way, that means the future is predetermined. If the future is predetermined, then you have no free will. It's a pretty simple logical contradiction. Either God is omniscient or you have free will. You can't have both.
@Zachary Stewart but I sincerely appreciate you actually making logical arguments instead of just spouting bible quotes at people who don't believe the bible. It's a much better way to discuss things and you make interesting points
@Zachary Stewart additionally, it seems that your point boils down to this: if you don't believe in christianity, then the wager doesn't work. If you believe in christianity, then the wager works.
This seems to presuppose a belief or disbelief in christianity before even approaching the wager. This is actually similar to one of the points made in the video which is to say: if you already believe in christianity enough to use the wager, then what do you need the wager for? Presumably the wager is meant as a tool to convert people who don't believe in christianity, but if your point is "if you already believe that christianity holds no water, then the tool won't work on you," then it seems like you're agreeing with CosmicSkeptic on this point.
"Should we wager on god?"
- Why would you? In fact, if you do, then your god will figure this out. What, then?
Well said
@@stubdo16 Thank You.
@Zachary Stewart But, then.. why so many believers use this *as an argument to convince other people?*
“And Allah would not punish them while they seek forgiveness” [Quran 8:33]
“He created the heavens and earth in truth and formed you and perfected your forms; and to Him is the [final] destination” [Quran 64:3]
“The truth is from your Lord, so do not be among the doubters” [Quran 3:60]
The true believers are those whose hearts tremble when GOD is mentioned, and when His revelations are recited to them, their faith is strengthened, and they trust in their Lord. [Quran 8:2]
...
You at your birth are Varuna, O Agni. When you are kindled, you are Mitra. In you, O son of strength, all gods are centered. You are Indra to the mortal who brings oblation. You are Aryaman, when you are regarded as having the mysterious names of maidens, O Self-sustainer.
- Rigveda 5.3.1-2
Yajur Veda - chapter- 32:~ God Supreme or Supreme Spirit has no ‘Pratima’ (idol) or material shape. He cannot be seen directly by anyone. He pervades all beings and all directions. Thus, Idolatry does not find any support from the Vedas.
...
#1. I'd Really Rather You Didn't Act Like a Sanctimonious Holier-Than-Thou Ass When Describing My Noodle Goodness. If Some People Don't Believe In Me, That's Okay. Really, I'm Not That Vain. Besides, This Isn't About Them So Don't Change The Subject
#2. I'd Really Rather You Didn't Use My Existence As A Means To Oppress, Subjugate, Punish, Eviscerate, And/Or, You Know, Be Mean To Others. I Don't Require Sacrifices, And Purity Is For Drinking Water, Not People.
#7. I'd Really Rather You Didn't Go Around Telling People I Talk To You. You're Not That Interesting. Get Over Yourself. And I Told You To Love Your Fellow Man, Can't You Take A Hint?
@Zachary Stewart you can receive eternal life only if you keep the commandments.... Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not testify falsely, honour your father and mother,love your neighbour as yourself.... Go and sell all you have and give the money to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me. (Matthew 19)..... Not all people who sound religious are really godly. They may refer to me as Lord but they won't enter the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 7:21)...... The gateway to life (god's kingdom) is small and the road is narrrow , and only a few ever find it. Matthew 7:13. Jesus' words.
This whole thing just seems fallacious to me. Infinity is infinite. It’s a concept we can’t really comprehend and it just doesn’t make sense to use it like this. But of course, I am not a mathematician and could just be too stupid to wrap my head around Dr. Liz’s argument. But from a philosophical, logical and rational view, it just seems fallacious from the get go.
Well, that’s because it is. If in this day and age you’re still trying to pretend that it’s “rational“ to pretend to believe in a God just in case there is some divine reward or punishment, you’ve completely missed the boat on what “rational“ actually means.
Basically this entire debate after about 45:00 was Alex whaling on Liz and Liz responding with "Yeah, that's an interesting way to think about it"
Absolutely.
Lol you can’t wager the probability of something that cannot be demonstrated to be possible - haven’t even watched yet
They’re only talking about logical possibility. As in, not shown to be logically impossible.
Exactly, without a demonstration of possibility we could be arguing for infinity x zero.
jwkivy yeah I saw after I continued
So...if you believe in god you should believe in god. If you don't then the wager doesn't matter.
The conclusion? : (insert)
Big Zed That was the conclusion.
The conclusion of the argument is that you ought not be an atheist or agnostic; instead, you should practice the religion to take to be most probable. That's pretty controversial, given the number of atheists and agnostics in the world.
Liz Jackson The problem with that is I don’t find any religion probable. Logical possibility does not equal an above zero probability.
Also, logical possibility just means concept hasn’t been shown to break any laws of logic. That doesn’t mean the idea doesn’t break laws of reality. It appears to be impossible for mind to exist absent a brain, irrespective of whether the laws of logic are broken or not.
The “wager” is also irrelevant since, I can’t choose what I’m convinced of.
Yeah that about wraps up all she said.
Good talk. Cheers.
And good job Alex.
Pascals wager is one of the most horrible and weak arguments for believing in a specific god....it can literally be debunked under 1 minute
Nik true especially depending on your zip code you might be betting on a different God in each time zone
I'm sometimes embarrassed to admit it, but pascal's wager was the last thing I held on to before becoming an atheist about 10 years ago. Luckily, after reading the chapter about this in Dawkin's God Delusion, I instantly declared myself an atheist.
60 seconds on the clock.... go! :)
@@BartvG88 "If you have infinite good coming from believing in a god that grants a infinitely good afterlife, then why not chose to believe in all gods that do not have contradicting beliefs and that promise some kind of reward in either this life, or the afterlife instead of just one?"
That should be 20 seconds.
One could also add: "This would maximize the chance (probability) of you going to some kind of pleasant afterlife, and all it requires is to not believe in any God that has the command 'thou shall not have any other gods than me' "
That should add another 15 seconds. It also follows the logic that Liz used.
What do you want to do with the 25 seconds we have left?
The whole concept of an infinitely powerful being dishing out infinite punishments and rewards feels very much like some not well thought through myth to begin with. No wonder it won't whyme with math. Props to Liz for being classy, but looking for ways to prove a bad hypothesis and keeping it up in the face of overwhelming evidence is NOT the definition of an "open mind", is it?
"What we need to do is we need to motify our math"
"So we need to modify the maths to fit our believes and not modify our believes to fit the maths"
"In this case definitely actually"
Really? Why this case? That's the definition of special pleading. I'm sorry to say, but for someone who wants to have intellectual honesty you 've failed miserably.
To be fair, if your maths tells you something absurd then you need to change your maths. But the problem here is that you can't get to pascals wager using ANY maths
@@belegcuthalion1600 change and modify are different things. If you need to change your maths, that would mean change the type of maths your using, not how they work. If I'm using real numbers for example and something doesn't make sense (which would mean I 've tested it through the scientific method), I might use imaginary numbers to see if it falls in that spectrum, but I 'm not justified to just change the meaning of addition for one equation so it can support my premise.
1. I don't understand the point of the two-door analogy. If you *know* that door 1 has a 99% chance of infinite utility and door 2 has a 0.1% change of infinite utility of course you're going to choose door 1, except that we have multiple doors and we *don't* know which one has 99% chance.
2. Remember there could also be a God that purposely created all of the world's religions as flawed and irrational and tests people's ability to choose reason and rationality, and will reward skeptics who come to the conclusion that it isn't reasonable to believe in a God.
Dont even start mate. Its just that at the end of the day they will always just presuppose their god over all others. So that thought dies not even enter their heads.
1. That's why you go for the door that gives you the highest chance at infinity utility.
2. We address the possibility of an atheist-loving God in our paper: philpapers.org/rec/JACSPW.
I think it is really important to look at the original intention of the argument by Pascal. If an unbeliever were to ask, "I am so made that I cannot believe. What would you have me do?" then appealing to intuition gets nowhere. The argument needs to be compelling to someone who dosent have an intuition of a divine being. Attempting to massage the math to arrive at an intuitive result only makes sense to people with an intuition to what the result should be. A failure to arrive at a conclusion because of a lack of intuition is what the argument is supposed to overcome.
I think you just have to the know the person that you’re talking in order to see which approach works best for you. If Christianity is already attractive to the nonbeliever, then perhaps you can just give the wager without having to spend a whole lot of time dealing with these theoretical objections. On the other hand, if you’re dealing with a full blown new atheist, then it’s going to take a lot more than just an argument to win them over. Winning someone on the fence is just as good as winning someone that hates Christianity.
@@thescapegoatmechanism8704 it might even take a "compelling" argument to get one of those bastards.
SavageHenry777 in my experience, reason never wins a person all by itself. Humans aren’t as rational as they like to think that they are.
@@thescapegoatmechanism8704 Case in point experimental game theory. People really suck at backwards induction and seem to value some kind of fair division of assets over optimal strategies.
Half an hour in I knew this would be nonsense Pascal's wager is a disgrace
I know right.
hew.... I didnt make it that far. I only went 15 mins before I said. Screwit. lets read the comments.
Her postulation of the wager and her understanding of probability are both ridiculous.
Stefan Urban good one
Shane Strickland I tried to be open minded lol
I would love to know why doctor Liz thinks atheists going to heaven is any less probable then theists.
Well, on some point she said that not believing in god is like having another god and basically that's a rule of god, to not worship other gods.
atheist will never enter into the kingdom of HEAVEN onLY HELL
This talk of infinity crashed the show
I disagree. It highlighted
the flaw in her argument.
I think Liz made a great point with "levels of heaven" or "levels of infinity". Alex's math is right - and it all adds to infinity, but here is the difference to me:
*Heaven 1* : You get one cup of coffee per day (for infinity) to do with as you please
*Heaven 2* : You get five cups of coffee per day (for infinity) to do with as you please
Yes - they both add up to infinite coffee... but I would pick Heaven 2, as I want to have the option for more than one cup a day.
Thomas Caulfield WTF is a “day” when there’s no Earth?
@@AsixA6 Awesome question. Do you think time is irrelevant in heaven (assuming it exists of course)? Assuming humans survive past the life of earth - do you think we will stop using "days" as a measurement of time? Maybe, maybe not. My point is - humans measure time to build routines. No reason to think we would stop doing that in heaven (or anywhere in space). Maybe we don't call them hours, or days, but it sounds like you are saying we couldn't measure time in heaven at all. If that is the case - then I disagree. Please let me know if I misunderstood.
Thomas Caulfield That’s not an answer to my question.
At 47:47 "We should not treat all infinities equally " .I think this is the point we should give up on the maths. Thus, also most of Dr Jackson's position.
“I don’t have all the answers, that takes a lot of research.” Shouldn’t god have made it obvious? Why would anyone have to do a lot of research?
Religion doesn't give any answers. Religion spews unproven assertions, and it requires no research, just a good bullshitter.
Obvious answers removes choice... nothing is obvious, that is Alex's favorite argument.
The genius of God is that he did not make it obvious