Petty's wager

Introducing a spin-off to Pascal's wager about the frivolous, unexpected ramifications of believing in or rejecting the existence of an afterlife.

You’re probably already acquainted with Pascal’s wager, but here’s a new one you likely haven’t heard of before. Introducing its sillier cousin: Petty’s wager.

This one isn’t concerned with belief in God and thus atheism versus theism or deism per se, but rather the belief in the existence of an afterlife and its inherent implications. Although these types of positions generally tend to clump together, this is the only one we really need to consider for the needs of this post.

For the sake of simplicity, I’ll split the population into one of two broad groups that I’ll refer to as believers and disbelievers, respectively. Of course, pure agnostics represent a valid third group, but we don’t need to take them into consideration in this context, given they don’t have a horse in this race and consequently aren’t affected by this wager either way.

That being said, to avoid ambiguity, let me give you a more detailed example of the typical worldview associated with each group. It’s not statistically unreasonable to assume many disbelievers will happen to be atheists and physicalists who surmise consciousness is an emergent property of biological complexity that will thus be annihilated upon death. Conversely, a large portion of the believers will suppose the existence of some transcendental layer of reality or “higher power” (be it a monotheistic God, some polytheistic configuration, or some form of metaphysical monism: pantheism, panpsychism, or whichever other permutation) and the survival of consciousness (or “soul”) in spite of death.

With the required quibbling preamble out of the way, let’s get to the meat of the topic. In a nutshell, Petty’s wager is the observation that believers will experience vindication for their belief if they happen to be right but not embarrassment if they’re wrong, whereas the exact opposite is true for disbelievers. For the latter, there can be no vindication, only embarrassment.

Indeed, should the disbelievers have the right of it, their consciousness and personality will be annihilated as soon as they die, before they have any chance to decisively confirm their sneaking suspicion. They’ll never know they were right. The same applies to their counterparts, who will never get to realize they were mistaken.

On the flip side, if the afterlife happens to exist, both believers and disbelievers should have bountiful opportunities to confirm or infirm their hunch through direct evidence. If they so wish, the believers should even be able to go find or wait for some deceased acquaintances of the disbeliever persuasion and smugly rub it in their face: “I told you so! I was right. You were wrong. Neener, neener!”

Hence, Petty’s wager: you’ll only get a chance to gloat if you believe in the afterlife.

Admittedly, you could make the convincing argument that being gifted an afterlife when one expected none far outweighs the temporary displeasure of enduring the antics of some petulant sore winner (as long as said afterlife isn’t Hell). Thus, from a broader perspective, such a puny, short-term predicament can reasonably be framed as a worthy tradeoff in exchange for the boon of eternity.

While we’re momentarily back in the realm of quibbles and caveats, it is worth noting that, just like Pascal’s wager, Petty’s wager requires a few additional presuppositions to work properly. Indeed, Pascal’s wager bakes in a few more assumptions into the mere proposition “God exists”, namely that said belief and aligned actions will impact one’s access to and quality of afterlife. For Petty’s wager, “the afterlife exists” doesn’t quite cut it, and we also need to inject a few more qualifications about said afterlife.

First, to satisfy the personal vindication criteria, the awareness and at least temporary memorization of its existence must be possible. So, for instance, an immediate reincarnation system that would skip any recognition or recall of both past lives and the transition process wouldn’t do the trick. Second, to satisfy the gloating criteria, we must assume that passing beyond the veil doesn’t induce the instant transcendence of such small-minded human pettiness and that it is possible to meet and communicate with other souls.

That being said, the most “empirical” source of information we have about the might-be afterlife, namely NDE testimonials, seems to suggest that, aside from the arguable subsistence of pettiness, these conditions should be met.

At any rate, it is interesting to observe that even if belief in the afterlife is ultimately incorrect, it is a “punishment”-free mistake, while disbelief is a “rewardless” virtue.

If you think about it, in this specific instance disbelief is a thankless stance. It’s a position that doesn’t bring any particular solace, relief, or joy to hold during life, nor any confirmation or reward of any sort in the end. Meanwhile, the alternative can offer some measure of the former for no added risk, provided it doesn’t entail making steep sacrifices in one’s current life in the hopes of cashing them out in the afterlife.

Following this thought led me to question what would motivate someone to embrace this stance. What would be in it for them?

The only form of gratification I could think of was social belonging and validation during life. Getting to feel like you belong to an elite group of enlightened minds that embrace the cold, hard truth of life in contrast to the mindless, foolish sheeple.

But anyone can achieve a false sense of superiority by associating with a clique that’ll reinforce their preexisting beliefs. You can just as easily find a circle-jerk of sanctimonious believers who will pat themselves on the shoulder for their obviously superior discernment. And in either case, the brunt of the self-satisfaction garnered from one’s sense of communal certainty will be resting upon inbred consensus and a resounding lack of universally conclusive evidence.

However, I realized pretty quickly this was a misguided way to think about the whole thing. The point of a worldview or cosmology isn’t, and shouldn’t be, to serve as a cynical means to an end.

The investiture of belief in a perspective or lack thereof is a matter of personal integrity, not convenience. At the end of the day, the ultimate adjudication of whether to endorse or doubt a position ought to be based on your authentic ascertainment of what is most likely true according to your own discernment.

This is a pitfall of the original wager too. There’s something that feels off with inciting people to opt for a more “advantageous” belief that doesn’t ring true to them. Well, that, as well as some of its glossed-over assumptions. Namely, not only presuming that virtuous behavior and metaphysical beliefs need be intertwined but also that should God exist, it’s as an overbearing and shallow bureaucrat who would condemn authentic disbelief with everlasting punishment or annihilation but reward half-hearted, performative bootlicking.

In any case, it should be noted that if we elect authentic, personal discernment as the arbitration standard, it has to cut both ways. Everyone should be free to follow their own integrity of belief alignment, whether they end up leaning towards disbelief, belief, or agnosticism, as long as it’s the result of good faith deliberation.

As such, Petty’s wager isn’t meant to have any persuasive power, nor to change anyone’s mind. Like Pascal’s wager, it isn’t aiming to make any claim as to which theory is more plausible. It’s more concerned with the practical implications, rather than the validity, of the belief in question. However, unlike its cousin, it isn’t trying to adjudicate which choice between belief or disbelief is more rational either.

It’s merely attempting to be an interesting, amusing, and potentially somewhat infuriating realization.

With all that said, and if it’s any source of reassurance, in accordance with the flame theory principle of twit for twat, I pledge to save all my posthumous pettiness for people who acted like smug snoots in this life — should I ever get a chance to capitalize on it. Those who demonstrated epistemic open-mindedness, tolerance, humility, and caution have nothing to fear from me.