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A Man from the Future: Why Johnny Can't Stop Abstracting

http://muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2026/10/the-man-from-future-why-johnny-cant.html
31•aray07•1h ago

Comments

FLeXMurphy•58m ago
> Johnny remained a game theorist to the end. After a lifetime of culturally Jewish atheism, he asked to be baptized. His daughter attributed it to Pascal's Wager: a small probability of a much better afterlife, against a trivial cost.

The house always wins.

roarcher•52m ago
I've always thought that surely an all-knowing god would consider Pascal's Wager to be rather mercenary and insincere, and it wouldn't count.
jrochkind1•37m ago
Or maybe he'd even penalize you for it.

It's important to recall that an all-knowing God isn't necessarily very compassionate, or even rational. Some of the people I've known who knew the most have been the biggest assholes. Or insane.

What if there's a god, but he punishes humans for believing he exists, just for fun? Where's your wager now?

TimTheTinker•23m ago
> What if there's a god, but he punishes humans for believing he exists, just for fun? Where's your wager now?

That's the equivalent of Russell's teapot - an imagined, unfalsifiable proposition.

But Pascal's wager was anchored to specific attested propositions: specifically, the gospel of Jesus (repent of sin and call to him, he's paid for it and will save you from judgment and eternal separation from God if you do) rooted in the historical events of his verbal claim to be the son of God, followed by his death and resurrection, witnessed by many. You may agree or disagree, but what you are affirming or denying is at least concrete and specific.

roarcher•17m ago
> But Pascal's wager was anchored to specific attested propositions: specifically, the gospel of Jesus

Right, but that's the problem with it. It assumes that there are only two possibilities: no god, or the god of the New Testament.

Betting that Pascal's god exists isn't the safe choice that the wager makes it out to be, because it's equally possible that some other god exists (or just some other version of the Abrahamic god, say Allah or the pre-messiah god of Israel) and your faith in Jesus is just going to piss him off.

Believe in Jesus all you want, but Pascal's Wager is a pretty terrible reason to do so.

Edit to add: Your description is also not even the only possible New Testament god. Some would argue that that particular image of god was painted more by Paul than by Jesus.

Maxatar•16m ago
Pascal's wager was not at all anchored to any specific attestations, you are taking his wager and reinterpreting it to give it some kind of legitimacy that it never originally held. The entire point of the wager was to justify belief in the absence of sufficient evidence, by appealing to the asymmetry between infinite reward and finite cost. If your now arguing that Christianity is more credible because of historical evidence, so be it and stick to it but you've abandoned Pascal's wager and moved on to an entirely different argument.
lazyasciiart•9m ago
A god who didn't like rules lawyering would ruin a lot of people's plans https://www.npr.org/2019/05/13/721551785/a-fishing-line-enci...
TFNA•5m ago
Judaism has, outside some mystical currents, less of an emphasis on "well, do you really believe?" than in Christianity, and more of an emphasis on rule-following (and studying how to navigate those rules) as the basic bargain between God and man.
willguest•44m ago
I recently read 'Maniac' by Benjamin Labatut, which also tracks the life of Johnny von Neumann. It is a wonderful read - very eloquently put together, giving accounts of the man from the perspectives of several people in his life.

Not only does it capture the alien-like genius of the protagonist, but also described his particular emotional and social character in a way that I have not seen written elsewhere. Highly recommended.

henrik_w•14m ago
I read The man From the Future a few years ago, and I highly recommend it! John von Neumann was such a fascinating and influential character. If you are interested in the modern history of mathematics, computers, game theory and more, pick up a copy.

I also wrote about why I liked the book so much:

https://henrikwarne.com/2024/07/07/john-von-neumann-the-man-...

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A Man from the Future: Why Johnny Can't Stop Abstracting

http://muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2026/10/the-man-from-future-why-johnny-cant.html
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