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Comment by maest | Hacker News Reader

Similar to Pascal's wager, which pretty much amounts to "yeah, God is probably not real, _but what if it is_? The utility of getting into heaven is infinite (and hell is infinitely negative), so any non-zero probability that God is real should make you be religious, just in case."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_wager#Analysis_with...

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This is explicitly not the conclusion Pascal drew with the wager, as described in the next section of the Wikipedia article: "Pascal's intent was not to provide an argument to convince atheists to believe, but (a) to show the fallacy of attempting to use logical reasoning to prove or disprove God..."

Did he say Pascal drew that conclusion and remove it with an edit or something? As it's written now it seems like you're correcting him for something he didn't post.

I am convinced!

Which god should I believe in, though? There are so many.

And what if I pick the wrong god?

You should believe in all of them. Just spray and pray!

You have to filter out all the religions where you can't worship other gods or be in other religions.

Ah, so all of them. Oh well!

Might as well skip the one that don't punish you for not believing as well.

Any God, as long as it's not a being/creature. Thankfully there's only one of those! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_theism

See also Pascal's mugging, from Eliezer Yudkowsky. Some would say AI Safety research is a form of Pascal's mugging.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_mugging

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