Pascal’s wager and climate change
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Pascal’s wager was deeply flawed as it either assumed that you could choose to believe or conflated belief with action. However, it has a useful application to climate change.
The wager is probably best explained with a simple table:
| Believe (1) | Don’t Believe (2) | |
| God exists (1) | Heaven | Hell |
| God doesn’t exist (2) | Nothing | Nothing |
This excludes temporal considerations such as ‘looking worthy’ or ‘looking like a pillock’; of those, more later.
If we substitute climate change for God and amend accordingly, we would get, on a simplistic level, something like this:
| Do something about climate change (1) | Don’t do something about climate change (2) | |
| Climate change is happening (1) | Nothing | Flooding |
| Climate change isn’t happening (2) | Nothing | Nothing |
Note that the result for X11 in the first decision matrix is positive (go to Heaven) while in the second it is neutral, assuming that either what efforts we take perfectly and exactly cancel out the effects of climate change or that what efforts we take perfectly and exactly prevent climate change.
There is, IMHO, a big problem with Pascal’s Wager; it assumes belief is a choice. The wager would have been better written as ‘choose to act in accordance…’ and ‘choose not to act in accordance…’ while assuming belief or while not assuming belief. You would then have, for the afterlife:
| Believe + | Don’t believe + | |||
| Act in accordance (1) | Don’t act in accordance (2) | Act in accordance (3) | Don ‘t act in accordance (4) | |
| God exists (1) | Heaven | Hell | Hell | Heaven |
| God doesn’t exist (2) | Nothing | Nothing | Nothing | Nothing |
I would hazard that it was Pascal’s intention to convince people to behave in a ‘Christian’ way, and so he was well aware of that objection and wanted to avoid some of the temporal ramifications of belief impacting on people.
If we revisit the original matrix but this ignore the supernatural and just focus on the temporal, we might see something like this:
| Believe (1) | Don’t Believe (2) | |
| God exists (1) | Look holy to some but foolish to others | Look cynical to some but rational to others |
| God doesn’t exist (2) | Look holy to some but foolish to others | Look cynical to some but rational to others |
Of course, the attributes ‘holy’, ‘foolish, ‘rational’ and ‘cynical’ can be changed according to your mores. The point is that belief (assuming that most people consider belief in a deity to be good) makes you look ‘holy’1, regardless of the actual existence of a deity. Given that we cannot know for certain2 whether there is a deity, it makes sense to consider the temporal implication of professing one’s beliefs.
If we then return to climate change, we can similarly add the equivalent certainties to the matrix, to give
| Do something about climate change (1) | Don’t do something about climate change (2) | |
| Climate change is happening (1) | Reduced dependence on imports of fossil fuels; promotion of new technologies; less energy poverty; less polluted air; costs of change in economy | Flooding |
| Climate change isn’t happening (2) | Reduced dependence on imports of fossil fuels; promotion of new technologies; less energy poverty; less polluted air; costs of change in economy | Nothing |
In this matrix, I have not included null entires, and so ‘flooding not happening’ doesn’t appear in X11 or X12. I wasn’t short how to add in opportunity costs in a meaningful way, so they don’t appear, but they are real.
That the climate is changing is, to all intents and purposes, not in doubt. Much of the criticism of the efforts to reduce carbon emissions has been because agreements such as Kyoto do not include the rapidly industrialising economies of China, India and the rest. However, when the benefits are expressed in more local terms, people become more interested. In California, cleaner air was particularly attractive. I think energy security is particularly attractive. Everyone finds not spending as much money attractive, hence why SUVs are becoming less and less popular in the USA as gasoline prices rise.
We could argue, like Pascal, that the risks of hell-fire or inundation are such that belief and action respectively are the best choice. We don’t all accept the fiats needed for the wagers to work (the possibility of the existence of God and the possibility of the existence of climate change). We can change the game by adding information that seems less apocalyptic (and so less important) but that is accepted by many more people.
In other words, the best way to stop climate change (if you accept it exists) is to talk about cost savings and energy security and stop baiting the ‘anti-’ camp.
xD.
PS: By chance, Chris Dillow writes about Pascal’s wager.
1 - I may well have been reading too much about the current US presidential elections…
2 – Fiat.
January 18th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
I think you’re missing a vital part of Pascal’s theology, which is that it is the action of Christianity which comes first - the belief comes about as a result of the action, and in fact imbues the action with its meaning as a genuinely pious act. However, the point about climate change is very valid.
January 18th, 2008 at 9:32 pm
By the sounds of things, I am. I would say, based on what you say, that it still doesn’t make sense as Christianity requires purity of motive
The application to climate change, though, isn’t dependent on that part of the argument.
January 19th, 2008 at 10:46 am
Interesting logic in this, Dave.
January 19th, 2008 at 10:12 pm
Thanks, James. It was a roundabout way of saying something quite simple, but it holds true. People care more about their wallet than the environment.
January 21st, 2008 at 2:41 pm
Interesting. Apparently a psychological test for children involves offering them the choice of one chocolate now or 4 in 20 minutes. 80% take the chocolate now.
November 6th, 2008 at 3:09 am
And I liked, will be looking at your site.