Pascal's Wager - TOK

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Pascal's Wager - TOK

pascals wager

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adam

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TOK RESOURCE.

ORG

KNOWLEDGE AND THE KNOWER:

COGNITIVE DISSONANCE
PASCAL’S WAGER

Pascal's Triangle.
Blaise Pascal (1623-62) was a French mathematician
and theologian. Pascal's triangle is wonderful example
of why mathematics is often referred to as "the science
of pattern." Warm up the TOK class by putting a HL
math student on the spot. Ask them to:

a. Explain the pattern of the triangle

b. Remind the class how the rows the correspond the
coefficients of binomial expansions
c. Show that shallow diagonals sum to the Fibonacci
sequence (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34...)
d. Show that the 3rd diagonals are the Triangle
numbers (1, 3, 6, 10, 15, 21, 28...)

We will revisit Pascal's Triangle and Triangle numbers

in more detail in Pure mathematics: invented or
discovered?

Pascaline: 17th Century mechanical calculator built

by Blaise Pascal. Musée des Arts et Métiers, Paris

CLASS ACTIVITY: PASCAL'S

WAGER

Arguments resembling Pascal's wager appeared

in Chinese, Greek and other ancient
civilizations. Pascal is famous because he
framed his version in terms of probability
theory that lends itself to simple decision table.

Pascal's wager appears in the Pensées, Here is a

truncated extract from the relevant passage
translation from the very eloquent French.

If there is a God, He is infinitely

incomprehensible, since, having neither
parts nor limits, He has no affinity to
us. We are then incapable of knowing
either what He is or if He is....

"God is, or He is not." But to which

side shall we incline?...[Y]ou must
wager... Which will you choose then?
Let us see... Let us estimate these two
chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you
lose, you lose nothing.

Wager, then, without hesitation that He

is.

Students should work in groups of three. First

they should read the Pascal's wager text extract
and make sure that everyone in the group fully
understands how it relates to the table.

1. Now make your own decision table. We will

start with an easy one: whether or not to wear
a seat belt.

2. Next try the following. Read what linguist

and activist Noam Chomsky had to say about
man's capacity for self destruction in a June 14,
2013 Guardian comment editorial entitled
How to destroy the future.

For the first time in the history of the

human species, we have clearly
developed the capacity to destroy
ourselves. That's been true since 1945.
It's now being finally recognized that
there are more long-term processes like
environmental destruction leading in
the same direction, maybe not to total
destruction, but at least to the
destruction of the capacity for a decent
existence.

Chomsky is referring to nuclear weapons and

human-enhanced global warming. Make a fully
labeled decision table, patterned on Pascal's
wager, that summarizes the consequences of
acting or not acting to prevent catastrophic
global warming.