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Comment by mensetmanusman | Hacker News Reader

With all the sociological data we have now, it’s almost certain that Pascal’s wager has never been more true for those looking to lead a meaningful life.

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I like to think of the wager as an accidental heresy, laying bare the threat being made by the humans doing the teaching.

"Believe me or suffer for eternity!"

Which deity do you pick in that case? There are many of them.

I think you will find most theological traditions aka religions have a lot of common ground. So much so that you can actually abstract out lot of the ancient wisdom from the religion itself.

The book "Happiness Hypothesis" by Johnathon Haidt examines this in detail if you wish to purse it further.

My understanding was that Pascal's wager implies the prospect of eternal damnation or some infinitely negative consequence. Therefore the choice of religion is probably of great import if we enter the logic of the wager.

If you strip away the dogma and cultural "decorations" of most religions the foundations are all mostly the same.

That doesn't have much to do with the wager itself as it is concerned with a potentially infinitely negative or positive outcome seen through the lens of belief in an afterlife of some sort.

If we are merely concerned with life in itself, then religious belief is redundant: you can indeed strip its useful aspects through careful study but leave the actual belief aside

Agreed. My only point is that your wager need not be limited to dogmatic adherence of existing religions. You can create your own God in a sense.

The one that is the most international if your meaningful life were to include travel.

I would suggest paying attention to the ones that speak to you.

In my case, that would be Mammon

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