Simply reducing yourself to the major religions is a difficult one.
I think it's reasonable not to count any religions that don't have a single head God. And it's reasonable not to count religions that have lost - if God really was the god of the Aboriginal dream-time, It would have quit or restarted by now.
I'm also worried that every single part of the argument is completely and utterly isomorphic if one simply swapped Islam and Christianity and made the appropriate mapping.
This isn't a problem for the argument unless you want to promote Christianity over Islam. It comes up with about the same expected utility for Islam and Christianity. The point of interest to us on LW is that both will be higher than the expected utility for atheism.
But BQP lies in PP and therefore lies in fact in PSPACE.
You totally lost me.
So if quantum mechanics as we understand it is correct, simulating should be really tough. This cannot rule out simulations from universes with other laws of physics but I see no reasonable way to go about even starting to quantify that probability.
Quantum mechanics can be construed as a way to limit computation and avoid arithmetic overflows for a simulation done in a Newtonian universe.
Also given that none of these religions claim that the deity is something like a simulator that should be a serious strike against the claims.
No one plays computer games in which their avatar claims to be the God running the simulation. That wouldn't be fun - it would break God's suspension of disbelief.
You'll forgive me if these numbers look just slightly too convenient.
I find them decidedly inconvenient.
I think it's reasonable not to count any religions that don't have a single head God.
That adds a lot more religions. And then one has to treat the different forms of the major religions separately. The extremist Catholic and Jack Chick fanatic both think the other is going to hell. As to being restricted to religions where there is a single head God, have you heard of MMPORGs?
And it's reasonable not to count religions that have lost - if God really was the god of the Aboriginal dream-time, It would have quit or restarted by now.
Or it is really ann...
Let P(chr) = the probability that the statements attributed to Jesus of Nazareth and Paul of Tarsus regarding salvation and the afterlife are factually mostly correct; and let U(C) be the utility of action C, where C is in {Christianity, Islam, Judaism, atheism}.
Two of the key criticisms of Pascal's wager are that
If, however, P(chr) is not infinitessimal, and U(Christianity) is merely very large, these counter-arguments fail.
Many poor arguments have been made that P(chr) > .1. But as far as I know, no one has ever made the best argument in favor of Christianity:
If you accept the simulation argument, then P(sim) > .99.
If you look at the fraction of computing power used for entertainment, I don't know what it is, but the top 100 supercomputer list for June 2011 lists a total of 4,531,940 cores in the top 100 supercomputers in the world; versus (rough guess) a billion personal computers and video game consoles, and a similar number of ordinary computers used at work. It would be reasonable to set p(ent|sim) = .5.
If you set P(ego|ent, sim) according to the fraction of entertainment simulations in which the person playing the game has an avatar in the game, then P(ego|ent, sim) is large. I originally set this at p > .99, but am now setting it to p = .5 in response to Jack's comment below.
We notice there are no obviously immortal world leaders on Earth (but see vi21maobk9vp's comment below). If we therefore limit the possible avatars that our simulator God is using on Earth to the major monotheistic religions of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, and consider them all equiprobable; plus a 25% chance that this God is jumping from one avatar to another, or chose to reveal Himself via Jesus but then Paul screwed everything up, or some other minority position; then p(chr0|ego, ent, sim, Earth) = .25.
P(follow-thru) is difficult to estimate; I will set it somewhat arbitrarily as .1. Given our observations of game-players here on Earth, it is not independent of p(ego), as players of self-glorifying games are likely to be young adolescent males, and so are people who enjoy burning insects with magnifying glasses.
We now have p(chr) > .99 x .5 x .5 x .25 x .1 = .0061875. As stipulated, your afterlife accounts for at least 99% of your utility if follow-thru (and hence chr) is true. If we suppose that the length of time for which God rewards us in Heaven or torments us in Hell has an exponential distribution, and we are considering only the part of that distribution where >= 99% of your utility is in the afterlife, then almost certainly p(chr) * U(Christianity | chr) > (1-p(chr)) * U(atheism | not(chr)). It now appears we should accept Pascal's wager.
(The expected utilities for Christianity and Islam are similar, and this argument gives no reason for favoring one over the other. That is of only minor interest to me unless I accept the wager. The important point is that they both will have expected utilities similar to, and possibly exceeding, that of atheism.)
You can argue with any of the individual numbers above. But you would have to make pretty big changes to make p(chr)(U(Christianity|chr)) negligible in your utility calculation.
(IMHO, voting this article up should indicate it passed the threshold, "That's an interesting observation that contributes to the discussion", not, "Omigod you're right, I am going out to get baptized RIGHT NOW!".)