If the belief itself is what makes AA work then it seems that that in this case that the act of adopting an irrational belief is a rational action.

If we must determine how we believe regarding the program before we can determine its effectiveness, its effectiveness is undefined until we reach a conclusion. Given the assumption that we can choose our beliefs, the ‘effectiveness’ is a cipher, a null and empty variable. What matters is the choice – that leads directly to probable outcomes.

If choosing A leads to a greater probable outcome than ~A, we simply choose A.

The commonality between Pascal’s wager and the calculation by the subject, Allen, is that both appear to make their beliefs about individual future wellbeing dependent upon *imagined* consequences of presently formulated beliefs, rather than upon rational analysis of evidence.

Pascal reaches his conclusions through deductive logic as well as intuition, while Allen consciously submits to one of a cluster of social constructions calculated to reinforce desired future outcomes. If doing so runs counter to his intuition, then his case is already distinguishable from that of Pascal.

At a less abstract level, Pascal’s purpose was to dissuade contemporary nonbelievers from shrinking from religion out of fear of its truth, and rather to have them approach it out of hope that it is so. Nowhere does he portray himself as an unbiased observer. He concludes his wager section by observing to the effect that he would be more worried about being in error and then discovering [his theistic beliefs] to be true after all, than not being in error while believing them true. So, for Pascal and Allen, their underlying purposive action appears to be to generate beliefs which serve as emotional markers toward something else, rather than to discover truths.

Seen another way, may not a central belief such as the one under discussion, formed through conscious will, be viewed metaphorically as a compass? While a compass does not in a physical sense steer a ship, a series of successive moves of the rudder can be made by reference to readings of the compass. Is the activity of Pascal and Allen much different from fashioning compasses by which to steer? I don’t know.

It seems to me that

.7*(no puppies saved) < .3(1 puppy saved)

and hence that we should opt for the latter, regardless of any silliness about what the “truth” is. The rational decision is the one that maximizes the number of (puppies saved), not the one that is most likely to be “true”.

When I read “Newcomb’s problem..” my first thought was actually, “Doesn’t this justify Pascal’s wager?” Now you seem to be contradicting yourself and I’m not entirely sure why.

Nancy: thanks for the footnote — nothing I say here should be taken to imply anything about AA, it’s merely a convenient placeholder for a hypothetical case (if only because I don’t KNOW anything about AA in general — beyond reading the twelve steps online, I’m completely ignorant of how AA functions).

As EY has pointed out several times, Pascal’s consequences are a stab in the dark and a hypothesis before evidence. It’s hard to take Pascal’s proposal seriously. The argument requires that we give the hypothetical infinite weight, but there’s still zero empirical evidence for it. Allen may be making the right choice, but Pascal was clearly wrong.

Many statements about ethics, values or agency become nonsense when we talk in terms of the actual laws of physics. But things make sense again when we talk about approximations to the laws of physics; in the usual approximate language that we use everyday, my thoughts only affect reality through my actions, because the minute changes that occur in my brain when I think are too small to see at the “everyday” level of approximation.