Astral Codex Ten

Pascal’s Wager

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Pascal’s Wager

Article

Pascal’s Wager is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 4 times across 4 issues between November 24, 2021 and June 28, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as “we’ll wish we’d stopped Pascal’s Wager-ing drug decisions at some earlier point”; “His daughter attributed her father’s “change of heart” to Pascal’s Wager”; “by reference to Pascal’s Wager”. It most often appears alongside Alexandros Marinos, America, COVID.

Metadata

  • Category: Concepts
  • Mention count: 4
  • Issue count: 4
  • First seen: November 24, 2021
  • Last seen: June 28, 2024

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Pascalian Medicine
November 24, 2021 · Original source
Another way of looking at this is that I must think there’s a 25% chance Vitamin D works, and a 10% chance ivermectin does. Both substances are generally safe with few side effects. So (as many commenters brought up) there’s a Pascal’s Wager like argument that someone with COVID should take both. The downside is some mild inconvenience and cost (both drugs together probably cost $20 for a week-long course). The upside is a well-below-50% but still pretty substantial probability that they could save my life.
Inline links: Pascal’s Wager
So if you’re an onion farmer, and you have a bunch of extra onions you can’t sell one year, all you have to do is ask some scientist friends to study whether onions cure cancer. There will be a bunch of studies, lots of them will be sloppy and say yes, people like me will see a bunch of positive studies and say “Can I really be more than 99% sure this is false? and if there’s even a 1% chance onions cure cancer, then - given how safe they are - isn’t it worth trying?” And then doctors will make every cancer patient take concentrated onion extract every day. Then eggplant farmers will want in on the money-printing-license, and then pumpkin farmers, and soon we’re up to 100 pills a day instead of just twenty. And then we’ll wish we’d stopped Pascal’s Wager-ing drug decisions at some earlier point. And maybe the right point to stop is now.
Book Review: The Man From The Future
July 13, 2022 · Original source
Still, he had the presence of mind to make a last request: after a lifetime of culturally-Jewish atheism, he wished to be baptized. His daughter attributed her father’s “change of heart” to Pascal’s Wager: the idea that even a very small probability of gaining a better afterlife is worth the relatively trivial cost of a deathbed conversion. Even as his powers deserted him, John von Neumann remained a game theorist to the end.
Response To Alexandros Contra Me On Ivermectin
February 01, 2023 · Original source
Alexandros has previously stressed that he doesn’t mean to express certainty that ivermectin works. He calls his style of reasoning Omura’s Wager, by reference to Pascal’s Wager. If you use ivermectin, and it doesn’t work, then you’ve wasted your time and maybe gotten a few minor side effects. If you don’t use ivermectin, and it does work, then you’ve missed out on a potentially life-saving medication. Therefore (he concludes) given even a little remaining uncertainty about whether ivermectin works, you should use it.
Your Book Review: Dominion
June 28, 2024 · Original source
As to whether God actually wants us to be kind to animals, we can never really know. But in a Pascal’s wager sort of way, it seems like a good bet to extend love to our furry, feathery, scaly, and even chitin-y friends just in case.