@@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.
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.
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.
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
@@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.
@@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.
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!
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...
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
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
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.
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.
I just realized what is bugging me so much about the wager: they do not consider the opportunity cost! The time spent (lost) to devoting your life to a possibly non-existent God. Or basing your morality on a wrong holy book, which in some cases still entails objectifying and abusing others, especially women. In that case the entire wager might have to be split up into two...
@Zachary Stewart You assume about atheists what you cannot know. I'm not sure what studies you're referring to, maybe atheists in the US? That's gotta suck, yeah. Honestly, I'm glad that I can follow a humanistic moral code without having to do mind gymnastics to reconcile that with an ancient book written by some men. I used to believe, but I don't miss anything about it one bit.
Neither do they question wether it should be used in moral questions? If I believe the most probable God wants me to 'kill all infidels...' But it can gain me 'infinite' utility the afterlife. I should go for it?
I only watched about 25 minutes of this video, so maybe my point will be brought up, but I usually don't see people considering this: how do we know, even assuming that christian God exists, that he is telling the truth about heaven and so on? What if he is just fooling us to worship him, but after death he sends everyone to hell anyway? I mean we know that there are things in the Bible that are not true, (for example the flood). The response to that is "yeah, but it was just a metaphor, it was not a lie on God's part" but what if heaven is just a metaphor as well? So to honestly consider Pascal's wager we have to take into account not only all the existing religions, all the religions that died out and all the religions that may be created in the future, but also all the different variations of those religions depending on what parts of every religion may just be God's lie (or a metaphor).
If we simplify “infinity utility” by calling it “1”: if there’s a 9.9 chance of Christianity “1 expected value” being true and a 0.1 percent chance of aithism “1 expected value” being true, we should go with Christianity. The reason this works is Alex is thinking in two dimensional realities, while Liz is thinking in three dimensional realities. The time is one dimension, the place you will spend that time is another, and the final one is I likely a place is real. In other words, Alex is only focusing on the nature of the place. Liz is focusing on the nature of the place and how likely it is that the place is real.
This discussion was over before it began and Alex demonstrated why over and over again, but one could rely on the laws of logic and occam's razor to get there before ever even mentioning infinities and mathematics.
Ah yes believing or not believing in God is all about the mathematics of 'utility'! This is very silly. Alex is right that tables such as these are absurd. We simply don't believe in things as personal as God/Religion because of logical deduction - we start to believe or disbelieve for unconscious reasons, and the logic comes after the fact. This is why people don't usually lose or gain faith through argument but quite often do when a marriage breaks down, or they become sick.
Guess it doesn't take anything to get a Ph.D these days. She said the word 'limit' and then completely ignored the entirety of differential calculus and L'Hopital's rule...yeah that's gonna be a 'no' for me.
So if I trick myself into believing in God enough that I actually believe I believe in God, and so believe that I actually believe I believe in God, and raise that to infinity, then God will believe I believe in God and I win? Really, I think it's all butter.
I'm not even sure... I could be wrong but it sounded more like she was trying to say you should live like you believe because... god will respect your... commitment? It's odd for sure
Not seeing why so many people are having an issue with her saying "modify the math to fit our intuitions". (Tbf most haven't said much more than quoting her on it lol) If you have an expected outcome and get the wrong answer, you always "modify the math". This doesn't necessarily have the effect CS mentioned of being confirmation bias because the answer still depends on something in the math that isn't up for grabs - that being which religion actually has more going for it than the other, something independent of the one doing the math, a constant if you will. (And Liz states that and CS agree's with the intuition that motivated her) How all of that plays out in decision theory and dealing with infinites isn't what I'm emphasizing here, just the logic behind her statement. And to be fair we do this a lot, think the evidential problem of evil vs. the logical problem or whatever new version is the favorite; a part of argumentation is creating new/better arguments, something that was agreed to be discussed in this dialogue so it shouldn't have been such a surprise.
Leo Savage Yeah I see the worry with running into confirmation bias but I thought she evaded it. I don’t believe I heard them discuss that issue you brought up, could you explain a bit more?
So every attempt made to fix the math ends up creating a separate problem that destroys the wager. Every attempt to resolve things theologically requires throwing away pretty much all doctrine. I love Lisa's overall demeanor and attempt at openness, but it's very apparent she's neither a mathematician nor theologian. If the wager can't work mathematically, or requires ignoring theology, the philosophy doesn't matter.
Ugh she misconstrues belief completely as if it's either belief for or against. No, it's not like that. It's either with belief or without belief and without belief is not the same as belief in the contrary. Take God, as an atheist, I am without belief. That doesnt mean I believe there isn't a God. It simply means I haven't been sufficiently convinced there is one. And until such time I will continue to lack belief. Beliefs are informed by evidence, they are never chosen, true one person's evidential requirement will differ to that of the next person, but it is never a choice.
Consider this thought experiment: You have two Doors, Behind Door A there is a 100% chance of receiving a hundred billion dollars Behind Door B there is a 1% chance of receiving infinity dollars Which door do you choose? If we subscribe to this kind use of infinity you must think that it is rational to choose Door B
Contrary to others in the comments, I enjoyed this talk. However, it would have been better if they spent more time actually talking about pascals wager than aruging over math. Yes the infinities have some issues, but i dont think she was thinking of infinity in a pure mathematical sense. But rather it would be more helpful to think of infinity as just an abstraction/concept.
As an amateur philosopher i often ponder about the existence of God(like most do)(im an atheist). One of th thoights i find most interesting is Pascal's Wager. It is wager which has its flaws as it commits a false dichotomy. If we apply Pascal's wager you should techincally pray the 'cruelest' God. Yesterday night while sleeping I had a terrifying thought. What if the Abhrahamic God exists? Now let me clarify the following is only for God's who will send me to hell if i dont believe in them. I thought as unlikely it is that an abhrahamic God exists (as im quite convinced all of their 'evidence' is extremely circumstancial and have many errors in their texts) it's existence isnt infinitesminally possible. It has a finite value (a very small one granted) but still. Considering the horrible punishement of infinite punishment even the smallest of possibilities must be considered due to the existence of infinity. Now this thought scared to so much. I was like should i start praying 'X'(had to censor cause i didnt want to offend people(cause cancel culture)). Then a thought came to me. What if there is a God who sends rational people to heaven,what if there is a God who only sends agnostics/athiests to heaven,etc We can create hundreds if not thousands of such cases. And i would argue that the existence of these God's is is just as probable as the ones who'll send me to hell. Now i know this might seem absurd to many but i dont think its unreasonable to assign them similar probabilities considering the contradictions in the texts claiming that their God's gonna send me to hell and the limited 'evidence' that exists. Also if i picked the wrong 'cruel' God i think it is way more likely (based on scripture) that the actual 'cruel' God(if he exists) would be more angry with me for praying the wrong god than with me not believeing in any. So i realized its not worth being anti lgbtq,irrational,etc in a life which im quite confident exists(related to descartes' arguments). From this i would like to conclude that an updated Pascal's wager tells you to be agnostic/atheist. If you found any fallatious reasoning in the above argument do let me know. *By cruel im referring to God's wholl send me to he if i don't believe in them and by abhrahamic i mean the God in their scriptures* Edit:- im now much more of an agnostic
I think the Pascal's Wager in every form is basically fallacious for one reason: God knows if you follow Him because you genuinely believe in Him or if you are desperately convincing yourself or even pretending to believe because you are afraid of ending up in hell. Then He knows if you follow Him because you trust Him and you really think what He says is true and good or you follow Him but inside you don't believe. Your life becomes basically defined by fear. My way of sorting things out is: you should carefully reason the arguments for God and for religions, search, be honest in the process and then follow your best outcomes. Not because you are afraid of being burned in hell, but because you are looking for Truth. That is my stand point. And, if God exists then He will surely appreciate your pursue for Truth and your genuinely hard work in your journey for it. I don't think He would like the lack of sincerity... What we can do is to look for the Truth and follow it when we are convinced we found it. Being honest and struggling for virtue is the most important think we can do, I guess. I don't know if I have answered your question though :)
Ok I surprised myself and listened to the whole thing and the weird thing to me is that even though Liz's arguments are systematically and successfully refuted by CS at every turn she still doesn't budge. I can't imagine what it would take to change her mind apart from God himself coming down and telling her she's being silly. Also loved the infinity plus $10 remark at the end, reminds me of the arguments as a child which started with a back and forth and ended with "infinity + 1" - so ridiculous 😂
You should commit your entire life to practicing and adhering to the principles of a religion even if you don't believe in it because the expected utility of its supposed afterlife is supposedly infinite. Super strong argument.
When she argued that it's always better to pick the infinite utility over the finite: Only because we accept that the probability of a god existing is not 0, does not mean it may not be infinitely small. At which point we would have to consider if it is better to have a finite utility at a finite propability or an infinite utility at an infinitely small propabilty, at which point we'd be dividing infinity by infinity, the result of which is in fact mathematically undefined (unlike negative infinity).
Well... It's not that simple, I'm afraid. If you are talking about real numbers, which they do, 0 is 'infinitely small'. But I think I know what you're thinking. Let me see. I don't know what level of mathematics you are familiar with, but I'll try to make this as simple as possible, so others can hopefully understand, too. Warning: long post incoming and math is simplified, so non-mathematicians can understand. tl;dr: infinitely small is 0, something possible can have probability 0, but it doesn't help the Pascal's wager Consider this: Let's say you need to pick a random number between 0 and 1 and that every number has the same random chance to be picked. What is the chance you pick 1/2? Answer is 0%. In fact, every number has 0% to be picked. Why? Well, let's assume that it has x chance to be picked, where x isn't 0. Then we just take 2/x numbers, let's say 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, ... until we have 2/x of them (rounded up to a higher number). Then, what are the chances we are going to pick one of those numbers? It's 2/x * x = 2 = 200%, which cannot happen. So the chance of picking any number must be 0. But one number is going to be picked. What did we get. We effectively have a sum of infinitely many zeroes and we got 1. Ok, but why does that matter? Well, it matters because we can see that you can take the sum of infinite zeroes and get pretty much anything you want, so basically 0*infinity can be anything (that's why it's undefined, like infinity/infinity, like you said). This all matters because by agreeing that any certain god has a chance higher than 0, automatically has infinite expected utility under their model. That was their error, they wanted to assume that christian god is possible and assumed that his existence has probability higher than 0, which is not the same. Assuming he is possible, his probability might be 0, and then your expected utility can be anything (note that now infinity/infinity is one particular case, and not general undefined case, so it might have some value (like limit n/2n, where n goes to infinity, it's inf/inf, but it has a value 1/2)). And now our choice depends on that value and all other values of all other gods. So basically, to find the best choice, you need to know the probability of every possible god and we can have 3 cases: 1) There is a possible god with probability of existing greater than 0. Then you pick him. 2) All possible gods have probability of existing 0. Then you have to calculate how much utility you expect from each one by some other means, since 0*infinity won't help you here. And then pick the highest one. 3) There are no possible gods. Then you already know they don't exist, so the only reasonable position is antitheism. So, basically, Pascal's wager gives us nothing since we can't determine probabilities of gods existing, since there are at least infinitely many gods you can think of, and you need to find out probability of every single one of the existing, which you can never do in a finite amount of time. So, at least under model from the video, it's useless.
@@ZiseGzu Yes, the limit of 1/x when x approaches infinity becomes 0. So you're right, 1/inf as such technically doesn't exist and becomes 0; I kept it that way as a more intuitive option. As someone with a moderately academic mathematical background, I wouldn't say your 2/x numbers paragraph was very intuitive, but that may have been a language thing on my side. So let me try to rephrase it (correct me if I misrepresented anything): You have a set of numbers between 0 and 1. They are uniformly distributed, meaning the odds of picking any one of them are the same. Those odds have to be 0. Why? For any propability 1/x you choose for your numbers, you can easily show that the (infinite) set of numbers between 0 and 1 contains at least x+1 numbers. Therefore, the total odds for any finite number you choose for x adds up to (x+1) * 1/x = (x+1)/x, which is greater than 1 and therefore not possible. The only valid solution for this is for your probability to be lim(x->inf) of 1/x = 0. (Read that as: The Limit of 1/x, where x approaches infinity.) This is, as Alex has mentioned a few times, very unintuitive, since despite each individual propability being technically 0, the sum of all those infinite 0s still adds up to 1 (because at the end of the day, a number will be chosen).
@@Suthek Yea, that's basically what I'm saying. I used 2/x instinctively only because a concrete example is marginally easier to understand than slapping on inequalities like (x+1)/x > 1. But yea, that way of doing it is kinda 'religious', if I dare say it. It's basically: "trust me on this, we can make a sum of infinitely many zeroes". Proper mathematical way would be that for any given number x, 0
How many engineers cringed at "Negative infinity is not mathematically defined"? Indefinite integral anybody? Arctangent function? Hell, negative one times infinity? If infinity is defined then we are in the extended real plane, in which negative infinity is also mathematically defined. We can choose not to, but there must be a reason other than to satisfy a conclusion we want to be true. Also, L'Hopital's Rule for those not mathematically inclined: Solving an infinite problem almost always uses Limits, which are ways to get real numbers out of infinites or zeroes in math. If you have a fraction (say X/Y) and you are trying to find the Limit of an indeterminate solution (0/0, infinity/infinity, negative infinity/infinity, etc.), you can take the derivative (aka slope) of X and Y to obtain a new fraction you can take the Limit of. For example, the limit as x approaches zero for sin(x)/x is 0/0, or indeterminate. L'Hopital's Rule gives us cos(x)/1, or simply cos(x). The limit of cos(x) as x approaches 0 is 1. Therefore, we can determine that the limit of sin(x)/(x) as x approaches 0 is 1.
Amazing how few people in this comment section can grasp the difference between Liz thinking her intuitions make her think the claim of a math theory is wrong vs their strawman accusations that she just wants to throw out math itself.
Assuming that we have the right god and are worshiping in the manner that god requires, why would this god accept a lie? No one can force themselves to believe something they don't genuinely think is true. Try forcing yourself to honestly believe that gravity is a myth and that you can float off your seat any time you wish. Simply claiming belief isn't the same as believing. If this god is willing to accept such a lie, how does that make it worthy of worship? If it's capable of being lied to, how does it qualify as a god at all? One should not believe in vampires in the fear that I might get bitten one day. It is irrational to believe something based on fear. Pascal's Wager is an appeal to emotion and says nothing about the validity of the claim. Pascal's wager assumes that if there is an existing god, that it rewards faith and punishes skepticism. There is no way of knowing that skepticism is the virtue being rewarded and that god does not punish faith and irrationality. Religion takes away time and effort as well as money. If the chances of god are exceedingly low, you have wasted your life. Atheism has a lack of religious restrictions, so in a sense, atheists are being rewarded. Religion as a whole does monstrous things to society, so even if there isn't a god, you still have a lot to lose. Atheism is the intellectually honest approach to the topic.
If this women rec’d her doctorate in this subject, we are in trouble. She was so incoherent and rambled so much it was PAINFUL to listen to. Good job to CS for holding it together and presenting a simple counter to SO MUCH nonsense.
White Fang Talks simply because I am fan of cosmic skeptic. Was hoping to see if there was any sound argument from Dr. Liz, but nope. I was wrong. And I wasted 2 hrs. My hope of an interesting debate got the best of me and now I do feel like an idiot for watching.
Alex uses tactical Misdirection saying infinity can't be used, however, by definition, infinity is the concept used to manipulate sets "used everywhere in mathematics, even in areas such as combinatorics that seem to have nothing to do with them. "
My understanding was that by her timesing everything by infinity she essentially equalises everything (everything becomes infinite) and so there is no way of telling which option is better, ie if believing in god has potential for infinite reward but so does disbelief and they are both infinitely likely then we are no closer to a useful answer. The argument just doesn't lead anywhere as far as I can tell but if I've misunderstood then I'd be glad to corrected.
@@barrybarry7159 Hi Barry. I'm not concerned about this discussion. In my understanding, Jesus fulfilled a 1000yr old prophecy by dying in a way that had his hands and feet subjected to cruelty. On the cross, Jesus cried out "my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" to quote the Psalmist exact message about the way the prophesied Christ would die subject to cruelty upon his hands and feet. Obviously, the Psalmist had no way to know about the Roman method of the crucifixion that would happen 1000 yrs later, and Jesus had no way to influence the process of which he died. This for me is a confirmed supernatural prophecy that also explains the supernatural connection of both the Psalmist and Jesus with the God that they both spoke about.
@@PicoGirl Thank you for the reply, I simply wanted to hear Liz's point from someone else's view and whether i'd misunderstood. But very few comments seemed to take her side and you seemed hopeful :)
Hmm. 40:00 in so far, it seems strange that Dr. Jackson insisted on decision theory at the start as an axiom, then (now) is arguing that infinities *break* it. I don't think "rejecting math" that tells you 1+1=0 is irrational (look up proofs of this equation!), and I _equally_ don't think "rejecting math" that says both gameshow outcomes are as good as the other is irrational. The surprising Monty Hall result can be cross-checked for truth by a Monte Carlo simulation; I don't see how to validate the absurd "result" that a small chance of heaven is supposedly "no worse than" a guarantee of heaven. Smells more like "absorption" is in the same bin as 1/0 to me…
I recently heard an amusing "angle" on how to think about Pacal's Wager. The speaker was talking about vampires and should we all consider hanging garlic outside our doors and windows (better to give yourself some insurance/take some precautions - so that the vampires don't come into your house at night...Right?? ). Now - most people don't really feel compelled to worry about the garlic - to protect them against the vampires - but according to Pascal's Wager - of course you should protect yourself against vampires...if the only cost/the only downside is having to buy lots of garlic and make necklaces with it - and hang it on doors and windows. Needless to say - I don't buy a lot of garlic and I also don't feel a necessity to "wager on God's existence". The probability of both is about the same.
If I don't believe and find out God is real after I die, is it my fault? A god should know what evidence would have convinced me and didn't provide it. If it exists, it gave me a brain and I assume, wanted me to use it; not just accept it's existence without evidence.
Wow a lot of hate in the comments. Thank you Cam B for shedding a bit of light of the debacle of re-arranging maths to fit your beliefs as it made Dr. Liz J sound super dishonest. Please could you clarify that in another video as I believe Christians don't hold to this thinking.
What you saying is this;the horse is going to win or loose,personally i would "Lay "the bet,meaning betting agaist the horse winning.There is not enough "Information" for this horse to win.
I think Alex's objection against "using infinity as a number" is confused. How I understand the Wager, infinity is being used in a _qualitative_ sense in the Wager, not a _quantitative_ sense.
I'm not sure you understood Alex's point. His objection is exactly the same as your objection, Liz is using infinity in the quantitative sense. She uses it in calculus, Alex just objects to that. On a different note: how did you get italics in your comment?
@@MartialNico Perhaps the argument needs work then. I would say that the utility gained from an afterlife would be qualitative. To get italics just put an underscore on each side of the word, like this _ hello _ except don't put spaces :)
There is a UNESCO Convention on safeguard of intangible cultural heritage, 2003. There is a kind of discussion whether the religious rituals should be included into the general humanity heritage to be protected on the international level.. would be interesting to know your point if any on the case..
Can someone help, I think I am missing something, why can't a lack of a belief in a god lead to infinite utility? And also, if probability is not absorbed by infinity because it it not intuitive, how do you assign probability that a belief in a specific God is more likely to get you to an afterlife than a lack of belief? Thanks.
Overthinking is like overcooking . It is like me trying to get the girl and i always think of it . Trying to score and always think of it . Thinking is good , overthinking is not .
Virtually infinite conceivable beliefs with infinite positive and or negative consequences inevitably equals the infinite improbability of selecting the correct one. Under this assumption, every single action, belief, etc could be vital or detrimental to achieving a conceivable end. And thus, using infinity mathematically to validate the wager, instead, invalidates it. Side note, as Alex rightly pointed out: selectively adjusting the table to fit ones beliefs is backwards and/or a special pleading fallacy.
Dr LJ could never legitimately get past the 'infinity is not a real number' problem in her reasoning. And changing the math is just looking for a way to prove your supposition rather than accepting the results of the math. If this were a debate (instead of a discussion) it would be Alex for the win.
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.
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.
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!
@@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.
@@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.
@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.
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”.
@@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
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.
@@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.
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.
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.
@@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
@@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 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.
@@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?
4 года назад
@@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.*
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.
@@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.
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.
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....
@@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.
@@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 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.
@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.
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!
@@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.
@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).
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.
@@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?
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 💪
@@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.
@@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.
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.
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?
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.
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. :)
@@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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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
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
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...
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.
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?
