Pascal's Wager - Redux

History is littered with some very remarkable people. We still revere many of them as their accomplishments have made it into the popular consciousness. The rest, not so much. So much great thought has been largely forgotten. This allows, what I call, the arrogance of the now. The idea that somehow the thoughts that people are having now are new genius that no one ever considered before because you are typing them into a MacBook ( irony meter blips briefly off the scale ). This is why I prefer to read the old stuff. Sure, it lacks modern context but when you are interested in fundamentals that matters less. Almost always, I find something that I can relate to a ‘now’ problem. So, here we are.

Recently, I spent some time with the mind of Blaise Pascal. You know him, the programming language, the pressure unit, that one. I had a lecturer at University who tried to convince us that the world would be a better place if everything was written in Pascal. As a committed C programmer, I never agreed. Maybe if Pascal had invented it…

To say that Pascal had a remarkable mind would be a monumental understatement. A child prodigy, a true polymath, his contributions to many fields of science and mathematics are enormous. I won’t retell them all here as that is another essay/book in itself but, check it all out, incredible. Especially the mechanical calculator.

He was also a deeply religious person, not unsurprising for the time, so much of his philosophical thinking leaned towards the theological. Much of this was left unpublished at the time of his, early, death but was eventually brought together as Pensées, a collection of fragments. One of the main fragments form what is known is Pascal’s Wager. Pascal devised the wager as way of justifying the decision to believe in God. Now, not being a religious person myself, I would usually shy away from such discussions, but this is Pascal, so it’s a very interesting take on decision making with uncertainty.

First, let’s look at a basic summary of the wager itself:

If God exists and you believe in God, you’ll go to heaven, which is infinitely good. If God exists and you don’t believe in God, you may go to hell, which is infinitely bad. If God does not exist, then whether you believe in God or not, whatever you’d gain or lose would be finite. So, you should believe in God.

Decision making with uncertainty assigns a probability to the decision factors and a numerical representation of the outcome. Pascal is basically saying that you should believe in God because it provides a path to the best or least worst outcome. Applying probabilistic logic to matters of theology or faith seems a little odd to me but the method itself fascinated me and, if you look closely, you can find many non-religious examples where we are forced to make decisions in condition of uncertainty and that perhaps even involves variations on faith.

As a live example, let’s consider Sam Altman’s statement that he expects he’ll have an AGI in around five years. As things stand, believing in that is an act of faith with no certainty of the outcome. Let’s apply Pascal’s method it.

The AI crew want you believe in the ultimate power of 1 and if 2 or 3 happen, it won’t be their problem to solve. What this suggests to me is that, when a form of progress could have profound societal impact, then the progress must be accompanied by thinking around the underlying societal change. This has happened before and, as I’ve written before, progress happens in the direction of those that define what “better” is. In any period of change, there are winners and losers and new equilibrium forms. But, in this case, if you believe and don’t do the necessary preparations then a new equilibrium may be a lot harder to find this time round.

Pascal’s Wager is an arcane discussion from long ago but it echoes into today with a whole new wager. Do you dare to believe that AI won’t do everything that is promised? Or, based on that belief, do you act now to control the worst impacts on society? And if we don’t believe, what peril lies in ignoring it? As it has always been, only time will tell. I’ll leave the final words to our man Blaise.

This is our true state; this is what makes us incapable of certain knowledge and of absolute ignorance. We sail within a vast sphere, ever drifting in uncertainty, driven from end to end. When we think to attach ourselves to any point and to fasten to it, it wavers and leaves us; and if we follow it, it eludes our grasp, slips past us, and vanishes for ever. Nothing stays for us. This is our natural condition, and yet most contrary to our inclination; we burn with desire to find solid ground and an ultimate sure foundation whereon to build a tower reaching to the Infinite. But our whole groundwork cracks, and the earth opens to abysses.