Thursday, July 9, 2009

Global Climate Change: Pascal's Wager




The above video is a guy using the argumentative style of Pascal's Wager to explain Global Climate Change. I suggest watching the video.

The question I have, though, is that while the video seems to be compelling it follows the same argumentative structure of Pascal's Wager. So if one finds the above argument compelling for action with regard to Global Climate Change would it not follow that one must also find Pascal's Wager a compelling argument for action with regard to belief in God?

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Fuck Pascal's wager in Pascal's fucking triangle.

Ok I take that back, I thank Pascal for his triangle and other mathematical advances, but definitely fuck his wager.

Caleb said...

The problem with Pascal's wager versus this guy's wager is that global climate change is a rather specific thing the nature of which we have a pretty good guess at whereas the nature of God is harder to pin down -- why this could be the god of pink-eye, torrential rainstorms, or bad party music. And some certain gods mantain that there can be only one.

Caleb said...

Kids in the Hall

_J_ said...

In the video's argument, though, we're ignoring what we do / do not know about the environmental impact humans have and are simply looking at the consequences.

This, I think, is a gigantic fucking flaw in the video; it puts global climate change as a hypothetical in the same sense as Pascal's Wager puts god's existence as a hypothetical.

_J_ said...

I had never seen that Kids In The Hall sketch.

Brilliant.