Oh Mdyar... Pascal's Wager.
If I follow my hunch, I have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
If i don't follow my hunch, I have everything to lose, and nothing to gain.
The failure in the logic of all this, is the assumption that following one's hunch, and moreover becoming reliant on following one's hunches, is costless.
Just like the original use of Pascal's wager for Christianity, Blaise Pascal failed to recognize that following the Christian doctrine was NOT costless.
Neither is true.
In your wager, sometimes the cost may even be lower in following your hunch than ignoring it... but the real cost accrues when you become reliant upon following those hunches and don't think first about the pros/cons of the decision.
The problem is you cannot KNOW the cost of following/ignoring the hunch, at least not the WHOLE cost of it, because you did not observe the results that followed by living out the other alternative. All you can do is use available data to estimate them.
I'll admit there are many times i follow my hunches, and will continue to do so, but I question everyone of them.
There are just as many times that i don't follow them. The key is not to just go one way or the other. We evolved a brain, it would be wasteful not to use it to it's full potential.
The hunch is part of it's potential. But the analysis of the hunch is the rest.
