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by heavenlyblue 2113 days ago
Sound just like the argument for the worship of god.
2 comments

Please don't take HN threads on generic tangents, especially generic flamewar tangents.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

It's not a generic tangent - it's a direct reference to Pascal's wager [1]. Unfortunately the parent doesn't make their argument any more generic that Pascal's wager itself.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_wager

Ah I see. But then you should have said "Sounds just like Pascal's Wager". That's a great point and not generic at all.

The trouble with what you did post is that it landed with readers as generic religious flamewar whether you meant it that way or not. I realize it's not always possible to predict how things will land, but the burden is on the commenter to disambiguate intent. Here are some previous explanations on this theme if interested:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

God wants your exclusive devotion. The freezer doesn't care what else you're doing to help you to cheat death, so you can spread your faith around more and hedge your bets.