Perhaps you have heard of Pascal's Wager, second only to if we came from monkeys why are there still monkeys in the pantheon of flawed arguments my relatives roll out each Thanksgiving dinner in hopes of saving my soul from eternal damnation wrought by a sinful life of fancy book lernin. In return, I attempt steer the conversation back to less contentious topics like 'nana pudding and sweet tea. I resist the urge to ask why Jonah didn't get digested, why they say Jesus rose after three days since (Good) Friday to (Easter) Sunday is only two, and why the First Commandment mentions other gods if there aren't any. Checkmate atheists.
For you heathenskins tuning in today in need of a refresher, Pascal's Wager goes as follows: If there is a God and I don't believe in Him, then I go to hell, whereas if there is no God and I believe in Him then I have lost nothing. The take home is you may as well believe, for there is nothing to lose.
What nobody seems to have noticed in the 500 years since Blaise put forth his wager is it's not a wager at all. A wager requires risk -- that's the very definition of the thing. And in Pascal's "wager" there is none. There is nothing ventured, nothing proffered. No outcome results in loss. Ergo, it's not a wager. (Technically, it's a Nash Equilibrium. Pascal's Nash Equilibrium sounds like the house band at a Poetry Slam.)
The good news is to fix Pascal's ecclesiastical solecism we need simply add a penalty clause: If there isn't a God and you believe in Him, then you go to hell. Lest you think my corrigendum unsensical, we can frame the penalty as believing in the wrong god -- a lifelong devotion to Vishnu, say, counting for naught when you reach the afterlife only to find Odin rather cross about the paucity of ice giants you have vanquished. Now we got ourselves a ballgame; a turn of the Figured Wheel now has real consequence.
Which brings us to climate change.
A pathological denial of climate change is so deeply engrained in the GOP mindset that it's easy to forget how it got there. When, exactly, did the Heritage Foundation declare differential equations an enemy of the state? What in the Republican three G's do they possibly offend? Is it only PDE that are a problem, or are all forms of analysis verboten? And what of numerical solutions? Can't we all appreciate the aesthetics of a well-proportioned finite element mesh no matter which side of the aisle we root for?
To be clear, I grok why the Republican leadership rails against renewable energy and what all else the hippies are pitching to address the problem. In the tragic kingdom our once-proud republic has become, Congressmen are bought and sold by lobbyists, none more-so than those of the the fossil fuel industry. We can't fault Exxon for protecting their bottom line. However, Exxon ain't paying bribe dollars to the regular joes pulling the R levers in the voting booths. What do they get out of it? Do Real Americans really hate the Navier Stokes equation? (I do, but that's only because it once tried to kill my GPA.) Do they pine for another Valdeez or Deepwater Horizon, or the days (plural) when the Cuyahoga river caught fire? Do they think black lung is a hoot?
No, of course not. As such, James Inhofe and his ilk needed some kind of bile to tap. Something that could make large swaths of the country vote against their long-term self-interest. Make them certain they are right in the face of all credible evidence, even when being wrong means their children may die. Something down in the reptile part of the brain, something sufficiently powerful to rebuke computational models and ice core samples and weepy images of polar bears drifting o'er the horizon on broken ice floes.
That something was Al Gore.
You gotta admit, it's genius how the Right hung climate change around Gore's neck. It made questioning an utterly indefensible position unthinkable. I doubt the rank-and-file even recognized the brainwashing: Remember the guy whose best friend made you explain [sex act] to your kids? Global warming is his idea.
With An Inconvenient Truth, Gore attached his name and face to climate change. That was the "in" Republicans needed. Climate change will forever be a cause célèbre of the Left. The liberals, the elitists, the ivory tower academics who hate everything about hardworking guys like you (a unfair characterization, I would point out. The academics I know care more about good beer than avocado toast. Also, they all work pretty hard. But I digress).
It doesn't matter if it's untrue. It doesn't matter if it's unhelpful. It's been decreed, and 50% of voters will happily lock arms and march into the sea -- or simply wait on the beach for the sea to come to them -- and never give it a second thought.
Which brings us to today.
The end of the world as we know it fast approaches and Republicans have convinced their base: row harder. Believe me (to use the parlance of these times), their masters will be whisked to safety from atop the crow's nest when the time comes while the rest of us make a Kansas album cover. Do not doubt that for an instant. If there's any constant in the world, it's that wealth protects those with it from their abuse of it. The Rapture, like taxes, is for little people.
And sorry to disabuse you rugged survivalists, but nothing about the end times will be fun or exciting. Just decade after decade of infrastructure repair, bad crops, and worse weather. Lines for gas and empty supermarket shelves. Disease and unemployment. Rolling blackouts. Water shortages. Mass migrations. Less like the road in Fury Road and more like the road in The Road. It will continue until Nature has decided we have been punished enough.
Yes, today's enablers will suffer. Some would say that is justice. Unfortunately, the coming unpleasantness won't care about which box is checked on your voter registration card. As it says in Number 2 Corinthians, the rain falls on Red States and Blue States alike. And although I have $20 riding on Fox pivoting to why didn't the liberals try to warn us about this? after things go sideways, I would rather Burnt Face Jake keep his Jackson if it means I'm not living under an overpass and foraging for squirrel.
So is there some way we might talk some sense into half of America at this late hour, they who are blocking our petition of the government for redress? Probably not. But I'll offer what the jocks call a Hail Mary pass and what DnD jocks call a saving throw. One last plea for sanity, one last chance for romance. Failing that, it's one last call for alcohol.
What is my crazy idea? It probably has something to do with Pascal's Wager (cf. post title). If you are currently in the grips of the Republican mass hypnosis, and by some miracle you have stumbled across my pinko commie liberal bedwetting website blog, and by larger miracle are still reading, I beseech thee: read on.
Let me begin by stating plainly: Hey, Al Gore. STFU. You think you understand climate change models? Seriously? Pop quiz: What's the Laplace transform of the Dirac delta function? Yeah, that's what I thought. So STFU. You don't speak for my people. (You too, Hillary. You're not helping).
Now that we're all friends, allow me to recast climate change in unassailable dialectic (as Pascal would have called it). Logic so flawless and tight that Spock himself could make sense of a JJ Abrams script. The idea is not mine -- it's been floating around for years -- although labeling it as a Pascal's Nash Equilibrium is novel. Kind of like the dealer throwing a new coat of paint on your Sportster before the local Harley plant moved to Beijing (topical humor!).
Fear not -- the dialectic is quite simple. It goes like this: Climate change can be 1) true or 2) false, and we can a) ignore it or b) address it.
That's it. That's all there is to it. However, by framing climate change thusly, we have reduced the entire complexity of the issue down to four possibilities:
Combo #1 is where things stand currently. It's half of America standing on a window sill of the high rise pondering your maker, pondering your will. I'm trying to talk you down. Except it's not just you on the ledge; the rest of us are on belay. If you jump, we're all splashing with you.
Combo #2 is the current Republican platform. I will not have much to say about it except, lo, that it were true! I realize there exist glass-half-empty sorts who would be downright disappointed if climate change did not come to pass. To that I say two words: Hemi. Cuda. That's a kind of car if you don't know, and if you've never driven one then you have missed one of life's great experiences, right up there with witnessing the birth of your child or someone leaving a comment on your website blog. If only there were no consequences to us all getting 40 feet to the gallon and leaded gasoline were still a thing. Alas, it is not so. I accept that, but it doesn't mean I'm happy about it. And if you prefer brow furrowing to a hemi cuda, I don't even want to know you.
Combo #3 is what the opposition is pitching: It's true, it's coming, and we best do whatever we can to lessen the impact.
What does "do whatever" look like? As I understand it, the big picture goes: carbon bad, less carbon good. Ergo we attempt to remove what there is now and make less in the future.
Lots of tricks have been proposed to remove carbon, from tearing up concrete and planting trees which eat it to tearing up trees and planting concrete which eats it (not kidding). Long story short: If you doubt there exists helpful technology, simply consider the amazing technology you see and use everyday. From artificial limbs to dune buggies on Mars to every variety of pornography imaginable delivered right to your phone, all manner of wonders are possible when people put their mind to it. Such inventions are not a cure, not a get-out-of-jail free card. But they're more cylinders we can hit on, at a time when we should be trying to hit on all of them.
What about making less in the future? By and large, that means new power generation. Whether it's solar or wind or ginormous fields of hamsters running in tiny generator wheels, making less carbon means moving away from fossil fuels and toward renewables. Exxon lobbyists notwithstanding, that's a good thing, and for reasons beyond carbon. I shall return to this point in a moment.
Which brings us to the most interesting Combo #4. Restated: What if we work to lessen the effects of climate change for nothing?
"For nothing." Suppose that is true. What does that mean?
Putting a carbon scrubber on a smokestack or planting a tree won't hurt you. Even if it turns out to be unnecessary. If your lights are lit by a wind farm rather than natural gas, what difference does it make? if you drive an electric car, what harm is done (hemi cuda aside)? Does it not transport you to the Piggly Wiggly or gun range all the same? If you are employed installing solar panels in a job that comes with dental and a 401k, would you give it all up to once again be unemployed by the local coal mine?
Indeed, renewable energy and just about everything else in Combo #4 translates to jobs. Every proposed climate mitigation requires assembly, installation, calibration, and repair. It all has to be built and maintained. If you strap a solar panel to your living space, the energy is free. The sun just dumps it right on your head. But first, somebody has to put the thing up there. That somebody could be you. Lots of you. If you're staring down the barrel of nowhere, working a dead-end job, the new power generation offers job possibilities like no other. Like Eisenhower building the interstates. Like the Peace Corps without the patchouli. A 21st-century common good for Americans to rally around.
Here we have Pascal's Wager reborn. What if we work to lessen the effects of climate change for nothing? Good jobs. Cleaner air. Better infrastructure. Less reliance on regions of the world that go berserk every time the moon changes shape. What do we lose? Answer: We lose nothing.
Not to mention the wee bonus of possibly sparing future generations some bad juju. Don't kid yourself -- the juju will be bad. Your kids and grandkids are in for a rough ride. But juju can always be worse. Sucks, but that's the endgame we are now playing. It's the difference between a controlled burn and a conflagration. Between Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Vesuvius. Between the siege at Dunkirk and the siege at Leningrad. Between USAir 1549 and United 232.
We can't stop what's coming. But there are still ways to lessen the blow. If we act.
Epilogue
I know what you're thinking: But if climate change is true, then Al Gore wins.
The people who sold you that idea are not your friends. They smile. They wave. They pretend to be one of you. But they are not one of you. James Inhofe once received $446,900 from the oil and gas lobby in a single year. They pay a few Democrats too, but oil money goes overwhelmingly to Republicans: $506,665 to Paul Ryan, $265,159 to John Cornyn, and $154,528 to Ted Cruz, to name but three. And that was just in 2018. Look it up if you don't believe me; the information is publicly available. Why wouldn't it be? Such payments are free speech. It's all perfectly legal.
Republicans constantly block efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change. Doesn't that seem a little suspicious? Do you think that much money has no influence? How much did Exxon pay you?
But if climate change is true, then Al Gore wins.
You don't have to believe that anymore. Look around, and believe what you see with your own eyes. Everyday. Everywhere. The years are getting hotter. The sea is rising, the ice is melting. Islands are disappearing. The weather is getting more ferocious. There are more hurricanes and more tornadoes. Insect populations are rising and their coverage is expanding. New diseases are emerging. All of this is predicted by climate change models. The same models point a finger at humans. Does that sound like a coincidence?
But if climate change is true, then Al Gore wins.
You. must. get. past. this. If climate change is true, Al Gore doesn't win.
If climate change is true, nobody wins.
Our children least of all.
For you heathenskins tuning in today in need of a refresher, Pascal's Wager goes as follows: If there is a God and I don't believe in Him, then I go to hell, whereas if there is no God and I believe in Him then I have lost nothing. The take home is you may as well believe, for there is nothing to lose.
What nobody seems to have noticed in the 500 years since Blaise put forth his wager is it's not a wager at all. A wager requires risk -- that's the very definition of the thing. And in Pascal's "wager" there is none. There is nothing ventured, nothing proffered. No outcome results in loss. Ergo, it's not a wager. (Technically, it's a Nash Equilibrium. Pascal's Nash Equilibrium sounds like the house band at a Poetry Slam.)
The good news is to fix Pascal's ecclesiastical solecism we need simply add a penalty clause: If there isn't a God and you believe in Him, then you go to hell. Lest you think my corrigendum unsensical, we can frame the penalty as believing in the wrong god -- a lifelong devotion to Vishnu, say, counting for naught when you reach the afterlife only to find Odin rather cross about the paucity of ice giants you have vanquished. Now we got ourselves a ballgame; a turn of the Figured Wheel now has real consequence.
Which brings us to climate change.
A pathological denial of climate change is so deeply engrained in the GOP mindset that it's easy to forget how it got there. When, exactly, did the Heritage Foundation declare differential equations an enemy of the state? What in the Republican three G's do they possibly offend? Is it only PDE that are a problem, or are all forms of analysis verboten? And what of numerical solutions? Can't we all appreciate the aesthetics of a well-proportioned finite element mesh no matter which side of the aisle we root for?
To be clear, I grok why the Republican leadership rails against renewable energy and what all else the hippies are pitching to address the problem. In the tragic kingdom our once-proud republic has become, Congressmen are bought and sold by lobbyists, none more-so than those of the the fossil fuel industry. We can't fault Exxon for protecting their bottom line. However, Exxon ain't paying bribe dollars to the regular joes pulling the R levers in the voting booths. What do they get out of it? Do Real Americans really hate the Navier Stokes equation? (I do, but that's only because it once tried to kill my GPA.) Do they pine for another Valdeez or Deepwater Horizon, or the days (plural) when the Cuyahoga river caught fire? Do they think black lung is a hoot?
No, of course not. As such, James Inhofe and his ilk needed some kind of bile to tap. Something that could make large swaths of the country vote against their long-term self-interest. Make them certain they are right in the face of all credible evidence, even when being wrong means their children may die. Something down in the reptile part of the brain, something sufficiently powerful to rebuke computational models and ice core samples and weepy images of polar bears drifting o'er the horizon on broken ice floes.
That something was Al Gore.
You gotta admit, it's genius how the Right hung climate change around Gore's neck. It made questioning an utterly indefensible position unthinkable. I doubt the rank-and-file even recognized the brainwashing: Remember the guy whose best friend made you explain [sex act] to your kids? Global warming is his idea.
With An Inconvenient Truth, Gore attached his name and face to climate change. That was the "in" Republicans needed. Climate change will forever be a cause célèbre of the Left. The liberals, the elitists, the ivory tower academics who hate everything about hardworking guys like you (a unfair characterization, I would point out. The academics I know care more about good beer than avocado toast. Also, they all work pretty hard. But I digress).
It doesn't matter if it's untrue. It doesn't matter if it's unhelpful. It's been decreed, and 50% of voters will happily lock arms and march into the sea -- or simply wait on the beach for the sea to come to them -- and never give it a second thought.
Which brings us to today.
The end of the world as we know it fast approaches and Republicans have convinced their base: row harder. Believe me (to use the parlance of these times), their masters will be whisked to safety from atop the crow's nest when the time comes while the rest of us make a Kansas album cover. Do not doubt that for an instant. If there's any constant in the world, it's that wealth protects those with it from their abuse of it. The Rapture, like taxes, is for little people.
And sorry to disabuse you rugged survivalists, but nothing about the end times will be fun or exciting. Just decade after decade of infrastructure repair, bad crops, and worse weather. Lines for gas and empty supermarket shelves. Disease and unemployment. Rolling blackouts. Water shortages. Mass migrations. Less like the road in Fury Road and more like the road in The Road. It will continue until Nature has decided we have been punished enough.
Yes, today's enablers will suffer. Some would say that is justice. Unfortunately, the coming unpleasantness won't care about which box is checked on your voter registration card. As it says in Number 2 Corinthians, the rain falls on Red States and Blue States alike. And although I have $20 riding on Fox pivoting to why didn't the liberals try to warn us about this? after things go sideways, I would rather Burnt Face Jake keep his Jackson if it means I'm not living under an overpass and foraging for squirrel.
So is there some way we might talk some sense into half of America at this late hour, they who are blocking our petition of the government for redress? Probably not. But I'll offer what the jocks call a Hail Mary pass and what DnD jocks call a saving throw. One last plea for sanity, one last chance for romance. Failing that, it's one last call for alcohol.
What is my crazy idea? It probably has something to do with Pascal's Wager (cf. post title). If you are currently in the grips of the Republican mass hypnosis, and by some miracle you have stumbled across my pinko commie liberal bedwetting website blog, and by larger miracle are still reading, I beseech thee: read on.
Let me begin by stating plainly: Hey, Al Gore. STFU. You think you understand climate change models? Seriously? Pop quiz: What's the Laplace transform of the Dirac delta function? Yeah, that's what I thought. So STFU. You don't speak for my people. (You too, Hillary. You're not helping).
Now that we're all friends, allow me to recast climate change in unassailable dialectic (as Pascal would have called it). Logic so flawless and tight that Spock himself could make sense of a JJ Abrams script. The idea is not mine -- it's been floating around for years -- although labeling it as a Pascal's Nash Equilibrium is novel. Kind of like the dealer throwing a new coat of paint on your Sportster before the local Harley plant moved to Beijing (topical humor!).
Fear not -- the dialectic is quite simple. It goes like this: Climate change can be 1) true or 2) false, and we can a) ignore it or b) address it.
That's it. That's all there is to it. However, by framing climate change thusly, we have reduced the entire complexity of the issue down to four possibilities:
- climate change is true and we can ignore it.
- climate change is false and we can ignore it.
- climate change is true and we can address it.
- climate change is false and we can address it.
Combo #1 is where things stand currently. It's half of America standing on a window sill of the high rise pondering your maker, pondering your will. I'm trying to talk you down. Except it's not just you on the ledge; the rest of us are on belay. If you jump, we're all splashing with you.
Combo #2 is the current Republican platform. I will not have much to say about it except, lo, that it were true! I realize there exist glass-half-empty sorts who would be downright disappointed if climate change did not come to pass. To that I say two words: Hemi. Cuda. That's a kind of car if you don't know, and if you've never driven one then you have missed one of life's great experiences, right up there with witnessing the birth of your child or someone leaving a comment on your website blog. If only there were no consequences to us all getting 40 feet to the gallon and leaded gasoline were still a thing. Alas, it is not so. I accept that, but it doesn't mean I'm happy about it. And if you prefer brow furrowing to a hemi cuda, I don't even want to know you.
Combo #3 is what the opposition is pitching: It's true, it's coming, and we best do whatever we can to lessen the impact.
What does "do whatever" look like? As I understand it, the big picture goes: carbon bad, less carbon good. Ergo we attempt to remove what there is now and make less in the future.
Lots of tricks have been proposed to remove carbon, from tearing up concrete and planting trees which eat it to tearing up trees and planting concrete which eats it (not kidding). Long story short: If you doubt there exists helpful technology, simply consider the amazing technology you see and use everyday. From artificial limbs to dune buggies on Mars to every variety of pornography imaginable delivered right to your phone, all manner of wonders are possible when people put their mind to it. Such inventions are not a cure, not a get-out-of-jail free card. But they're more cylinders we can hit on, at a time when we should be trying to hit on all of them.
What about making less in the future? By and large, that means new power generation. Whether it's solar or wind or ginormous fields of hamsters running in tiny generator wheels, making less carbon means moving away from fossil fuels and toward renewables. Exxon lobbyists notwithstanding, that's a good thing, and for reasons beyond carbon. I shall return to this point in a moment.
Which brings us to the most interesting Combo #4. Restated: What if we work to lessen the effects of climate change for nothing?
"For nothing." Suppose that is true. What does that mean?
Putting a carbon scrubber on a smokestack or planting a tree won't hurt you. Even if it turns out to be unnecessary. If your lights are lit by a wind farm rather than natural gas, what difference does it make? if you drive an electric car, what harm is done (hemi cuda aside)? Does it not transport you to the Piggly Wiggly or gun range all the same? If you are employed installing solar panels in a job that comes with dental and a 401k, would you give it all up to once again be unemployed by the local coal mine?
Indeed, renewable energy and just about everything else in Combo #4 translates to jobs. Every proposed climate mitigation requires assembly, installation, calibration, and repair. It all has to be built and maintained. If you strap a solar panel to your living space, the energy is free. The sun just dumps it right on your head. But first, somebody has to put the thing up there. That somebody could be you. Lots of you. If you're staring down the barrel of nowhere, working a dead-end job, the new power generation offers job possibilities like no other. Like Eisenhower building the interstates. Like the Peace Corps without the patchouli. A 21st-century common good for Americans to rally around.
Here we have Pascal's Wager reborn. What if we work to lessen the effects of climate change for nothing? Good jobs. Cleaner air. Better infrastructure. Less reliance on regions of the world that go berserk every time the moon changes shape. What do we lose? Answer: We lose nothing.
Not to mention the wee bonus of possibly sparing future generations some bad juju. Don't kid yourself -- the juju will be bad. Your kids and grandkids are in for a rough ride. But juju can always be worse. Sucks, but that's the endgame we are now playing. It's the difference between a controlled burn and a conflagration. Between Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Vesuvius. Between the siege at Dunkirk and the siege at Leningrad. Between USAir 1549 and United 232.
We can't stop what's coming. But there are still ways to lessen the blow. If we act.
Epilogue
I know what you're thinking: But if climate change is true, then Al Gore wins.
The people who sold you that idea are not your friends. They smile. They wave. They pretend to be one of you. But they are not one of you. James Inhofe once received $446,900 from the oil and gas lobby in a single year. They pay a few Democrats too, but oil money goes overwhelmingly to Republicans: $506,665 to Paul Ryan, $265,159 to John Cornyn, and $154,528 to Ted Cruz, to name but three. And that was just in 2018. Look it up if you don't believe me; the information is publicly available. Why wouldn't it be? Such payments are free speech. It's all perfectly legal.
Republicans constantly block efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change. Doesn't that seem a little suspicious? Do you think that much money has no influence? How much did Exxon pay you?
But if climate change is true, then Al Gore wins.
You don't have to believe that anymore. Look around, and believe what you see with your own eyes. Everyday. Everywhere. The years are getting hotter. The sea is rising, the ice is melting. Islands are disappearing. The weather is getting more ferocious. There are more hurricanes and more tornadoes. Insect populations are rising and their coverage is expanding. New diseases are emerging. All of this is predicted by climate change models. The same models point a finger at humans. Does that sound like a coincidence?
But if climate change is true, then Al Gore wins.
You. must. get. past. this. If climate change is true, Al Gore doesn't win.
If climate change is true, nobody wins.
Our children least of all.
Footnote: Pascal did much more than philosophize about god. He did important work in probability and physics, particularly in fluid mechanics. He constructed some of the very first mechanical calculators. The SI unit of pressure is named after him, as is a theorem on conic sections. There is also a Pascal's triangle and a Pascal programming language, the latter a kind of COBOL with training wheels that's universally loathed by people who do real actual programming for a living (listing "Pascal" on your resume is the software industry equivalent of informing your DI you are good at Call of Duty). Pascal also died young, succumbing to what may have been TB or stomach cancer when he was 39. The light that burns twice as bright, etc.
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