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- In 1661 a Mathematician Blaise Pascal articulated “ Pascal’s Wager” designed to determine whether or not to believe in God. If you must choose it is best to use science and “ decision theory”. It is an effective way to reason whether it is to believe in God or believe in Climate Change.
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- We never need to be 100% sure in order to act , or to make a decision. Simply weigh the odds and the consequences of being wrong. What is the worst that can happen?
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- We make major investment s in renewable energy knowing estimates that peak oil availability will happen by 2020.
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- We have invested in new jobs and new technologies.
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- We have improved national security with less oil dependence from unstable regions of the world.
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- We have lessened pollution.
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- We have lessened subsidizing fossil fuels. We put environmental costs on the economic and business profit and loss statements. We begin measuring the true long term costs of stuff.
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- We separate the costs of protecting old industries and the costs in investing in new technologies and new industries.
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- For example:
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- If climate change skeptics are wrong, we face displacement of millions of people, droughts , floods and economic harm.
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- On the reverse side we have built a more robust economy. So, we are better to believe in climate change and still be better off if we are wrong.
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- That is “Pascal’s Wager” It is a useful tool in thinking through to a decision. What is the best and worst that can happen with any two alternatives.
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- How does you brain work in making decisions?
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- Our brain’s decision process is relatively slow especially compared to a computer’s calculations. Our decisions take nearly half a second, then, our response time is from 300 to 800 milliseconds after that And, even then we make errors.
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- Our brain makes decisions by “accumulating the available statistical evidence and committing to a decision whenever the total exceeds a threshold.”
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- The brain faces the problem of sifting the signal from the noise. Photons hit our retinas at random times. Neurons transmit signals with partial reliability. Thee are neural discharges emitted by the brain as random noise.
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- The brain uses “ Bayes’ Law” with statistics noisy inputs sum up and down. Wait until the accumulated statistics exceeds a threshold probability value. The higher the probability threshold the longer we have to wait for a decision. We also set a speed to accuracy tradeoff.
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- The brain accumulates evidence at each of several successive levels of processing. It makes massively parallel inferences and micro-decision a t every stage.
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- On top of strict mathematically optimality we have a-priors, biases, time pressures, and value judgments that are weighed in the mix. Maybe we also had too much to drink. Regardless, the human brain is a near - optimal statistician and parallel processing computer as we accumulate evidence up to our threshold
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- Pascal was only 39 years old when he died ( 1623 - 1662). He was a sickly child and his mother died when he was 3. When he was 9 on his own he discovered the first 32 theorems in Euclid’s geometry. At 16 he published a book on Geometry. At 19 he invented a calculator with goggled wheels. He founded the modern theory of Probabilities. He did the math for building a hydraulic press. Today we use Pascal’s Wager to make good decisions.
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- Thomas Bayes ( 1701 - 1761) devised the theory of Probabilities :
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------------------------------ p ( A/B) = P(B/A) * P(A) / P(B)
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- Probability of an event based on conditions related to the event giving probability interpretations for statistical inferences.
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----- 707-536-3272 ---------------- Thursday, March 24, 2016 -----
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