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Revision as of 23:32, 24 August 2007 by Ahm2307 (talk | contribs)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)The Global Warming wager was a wager formulated by applying the principle of pascal's wager to the global warming debate. The wager stems out of the debate on whether or not governments should adopt the precautionary principal and act to reduce emissions whether global warming was true or not. The wage postulates that it is a better "bet" to believe that Global Warming exists than not to believe, because the expected value of believing - that is, the fact that the impending crises due to Global Warming will have been averted - is always greater than the expected value of not believing.
The very concept on which the 4 quadrants of the cube used to represent Pascal's Wager is based on Marxist ethics. This being a philosophical argument, some argued that the subjectivity of the matter doesn't resolve the dispute about whether or not we should believe in Global Warming. They argue the postulate that there in fact will be a massive loss as a result of acting according to Pascal's reasoning because two important factors are omitted:
- Government Expansion
- Erosion of Capitalism
The argument is that, if we adjust each quadrant by adding the aforementioned factors, it will seem as though we are back to square one. No matter what course of action governments take, there will be a tremendous loss, and the bet will be tricky. This is illustrated in fig 1.
References
- http://www.businessweek.com/mediacenter/podcasts/welchway/welchway_02_19_07.htm
- http://www.thepeoplescube.com/red/viewtopic.php?t=1140
- http://www.reason.com/blog/show/120256.html
- http://www.henrythornton.com/article.asp?article_id=4079