Post by burt on Aug 20, 2013 12:20:37 GMT -8
For example, if someone tells you that you are insincere, and you don't at least consider the possibility, then at best you've passed up an opportunity for self-reflection, and at worst you're actually wrong, they're actually right, and you go on lying to yourself.
If you look and see that you are true to yourself, and you know it, you know it. The depth of the search, or conversely, the level of temporary confusion during the exploration seems to be related to the level of trust that you place in the source of the challenge.
The way it was posed by Pascal, yes, "belief poker" ... nice. Now replace the conception of a God outside of yourself and separate from you with the idea that I'm not anything that appears to me but I'm not separate from that either.
Then the wager becomes applicable to each and every of our perceptions in any given instant.
The wager as an idea is just a model like any other, and to attempt to live it would of course be a disaster, but it seems to me to come close to describing a subjective in which the polarity of certainty/uncertainty is no longer a concern. It also seems as if it would be a useful shorthand in some specific circumstances to catch someone's attention if it appears they've gone off on autopilot.