X-Message-Number: 15824
From: 
Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2001 12:23:15 EST
Subject: Pascal

Rafi Haftka mentioned Pascal's wager (that's Blaise, not David)--You should 
have [the] faith, since being wrong carries no penalty and being right 
bestows an infinite reward.

Of course, there are several things wrong with that logic. For one thing, it 
isn't easy to have faith by an act of will, and pretense won't fool God. For 
another, you might believe in the wrong god (wrong religion) and incur the 
wrath of the true god. Not to mention the fact that some versions of "God" 
say on the one hand that He is merciful, and on the other that He inflicts 
infinite punishment just for an honest mistake or for  being indoctrinated in 
the wrong church. Also, being wrong does carry a possible penalty--the shame 
of dishonesty and cowardice.

But a version of that Wager does apply to cryonics and is basically correct. 
For many people, the cost is negligible, while the potential reward is 
enormous. Traders in the markets would kill for that kind of ratio. 

Robert Ettinger
Cryonics Institute
Immortalist Society
http://www.cryonics.org

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