Sleep (too much)

On weekends, during the summer, and generally whenever there's been an ordinary day that I haven't had school or work in the morning, I have, for the past several years, had the strange habit of sleeping in rather late whenever I'm in my own bed and getting up early whenever I happen to be sleeping anywhere else. I forget when I first noticed this, but there have been points in the past when I found it irritating. Lately, I've been pretty accepting of it, generally staying up late. But I don't sleep in because I stay up late. No matter how early I go to bed, I stay there until at least 11 in the morning if there's nothing to motivate me not to. I've sort of rationalized that I'm not a "morning person" or that I was just weird: when I do have to get up at a certain time and I set an alarm, 95% of the time I wake up right before the alarm would go off and check the clock and I don't know anyone else who does that.

Today may have been bad enough to make me do something about this crap. I woke up around 7 and, because the clock indicated that it was too early to get up, I kept trying to fall back to sleep. I would wake up, see that it was still before 11, and actively try to go to sleep, even though I wasn't really that tired. I must have done this for at least two hours. Then I woke up at about 11:30 and felt miserable. I didn't need that much sleep. It was a waste of time and I felt worse than I would have if I got up earlier. So I say enough is enough.

I've been spending most of my free time playing computer games or doing nothing of importance on the internet or whatever. Starting today (tomorrow, but whatever) I am going to get up earlier and use that extra time to do something productive. Maybe I'll update the chemistry blog or something cool like that. The point is, I am totally doing this. I resolve to, so that means I will.

What if you're wrong?

This is something that's been bugging me for a while, so I'm going to try to be thorough, meaning that this post might get longwinded. We'll see. Bear with me, anyway...

Some time ago, my father asked me what if I was wrong, in the context of not believing that there is a god, I guess. I forget what his exact words were. At the time, I immediately made a connection to Pascal's wager, and he later added to his question in a way that essentially turned it into Pascal's wager. However, I do have to admit now that "What if you're wrong?" is not necessarily the same thing as Pascal's wager. I think it's more like Pascal's wager is a specific subcategory of that more general question.

For those who don't know, Pascal's wager goes something like this...

• If the Christian god is real and you believe in him, the reward is infinite.
• If the Christian god is not real and you believe in him, the cost is negligible.
• If the Christian god is real and you don't believe in him, the punishment is infinite.
• If the Christian god is not real and you don't believe in him, the reward is nonexistent.
• Believing in the Christian god is clearly the best bet, so you might as well go with it.

Some people take this very seriously, although it seems from what I've read that Pascal himself was just using it to try to spark discussion. I guess that plan worked? Anyway, the argument has lots of flaws. Of the top of my head...

• Believing something isn't usually a conscious decision. I cannot, for example, choose to believe that there is an anteater sitting on my bed right now. I can pretend that there is. I can lie and tell other people that there is. But I can't believe it just because I want to. Even if you held a gun to my head and were going to shoot me if I didn't believe it, the best I could do is pretend.
• Most Christian groups do not contend that merely believing is sufficient for attaining salvation and escaping damnation. Many of them even stipulate that one must follow the exact teachings of their particular sect, and there are lots of sects that profess this. Just going by Pascal's wager, it's most likely that one would arbitrarily guess the wrong sect, as there are so many choices. Perhaps all of the extant sects of Christianity have it wrong.
• Similarly, there are lots of other religions with their own gods and this wager is falsely limiting the possibilities to "our particular god" and "no god at all."
• Wagers require some basis for predicting how likely the intended outcome is, not just how big the reward is. Raising the reward/punishment to infinity doesn't cancel out the need for evidence.

But that's Pascal's wager. Just asking a general question about potential wrongness isn't subject to any of these criticisms. I think in the past, I failed to appreciate that. So I'm appreciating it now. However, this was not my biggest error. Rather, my problem was that I took "What if you're wrong?" to mean what the words literally suggest. What thing happens in the even that I am wrong? Well, my retort to that would be, "Wrong about what? Wrong in what way?" Pretty sure I said those exact words to someone at some point. And it would be fair if the person were actually trying to ask what would happen in the event that I was wrong, as I can potentially be wrong about a lot of things and I can be wrong about many of those things in more ways than one. But I saw later that such is not the case: people don't mean something so mundane as the literal combination of those four words (five if you count the contraction as two).

So for a time I went with the assumption that the question was shorthand for "What if you are wrong and I am right about the topic of discussion (in this case, religion)?" I once saw a debate between atheists and apologists in which an audience member asked the atheists, "What if you're wrong?" One of the atheists said, "Then we go to hell." Both sides were rather poor debaters, actually, but until recently, I considered that answer to be succinct, perhaps the perfect answer to the question. It's painfully obvious now how wrong I was.

"What if you're wrong" in that context can't mean something so mundane as "What happens if you are wrong and I am right about religion?" It's obvious that the questioner knows the answer to that and that the questioner knows that both parties know it. So it becomes a rhetorical question, in which case my question becomes, "What is the person asking this trying to get at? What point is he or she trying to raise?"

"What if you're wrong?" isn't a simple inquiry into the consequences of one's error. It's a request to consider the possibility of error. It's a plea for self-evaluation of one's position. I don't know if that sort of thing counts as a question, despite linguistically appearing to be one. But it's a good question if it is one and if not, it's a good whatever-other-thing-it-should-be-considered.

I think I can confidently at least say that to my father and anyone else asking me that the question: "Good question." But what follows? What's my answer? What if I'm wrong? Not just that, but what if I'm wrong and Young-Earth-Creationist Christians are right. Well, here's my answer. Here's what it means...

If I'm wrong, then it's not by a little bit. It's not due to one slight miscalculation. I'm way, way wrong. And there's some reason for it. Something I don't see. If I'm wrong, it means my understanding of the world is compromised. I have a flaw in some of my fundamental models through which I attempt to comprehend reality, and everything that's built on those models is probably useless. How did this happen? What started the process? Where do I look to find the error of my ways? I'm wrong, so where did I first go wrong? Was I wrong on my own or was I consciously manipulated by others into being this wrong?

If I'm wrong, it means the scientific method itself is going wrong somewhere. If I'm wrong, we're all doomed in some sense. Our greatest tools have gone to waste. If I'm wrong, the world is still a strange place, but it's strange in different ways from all the ways I thought it was strange in my own experience, so in short, if I'm wrong, I've been living some sort of lie. If I'm wrong, chemistry is wrong. Biology, geology, astronomy, physics? Is mathematics wrong too? If I'm wrong, I wasn't standing on the shoulders of giants. We'd all fallen into some sinkhole. Me and the giants. If I'm wrong, all bets are off. The greatest treasures of knowledge I thought I'd encountered were false, and I had a chance to see that, to search for the real gems, but I failed.

And finally, if I'm wrong and you're right, I'll know. I'll be surprised. I'll be baffled. Confused. Overwhelmed. But it will be a sure thing. And apparently I'll have all eternity to wonder. I'll have forever to agonize over my own wrongness. I'll be able to endlessly guess at the truth, however few hints of it I receive. And maybe I'll never ascertain it. Maybe, somewhere in eternity I'll happen upon a conjecture that perfectly captures the truth, but with no means of testing it, I won't know it from any of my other thoughts. But whatever I never know, one thing I will know is that I was wrong. That's what if I'm wrong. Damnation. Fire and brimstone. Unimaginable torture. Fine. I'm sure that's all very important, but to me, having my consciousness somehow preserved to discover my own wrongness about virtually everything is the greatest mercy. A privilege. There are so many ways for me to be wrong and not to know it. I'm an optimist about some things, but if you're right, my greatest hopes will have been exceeded. And my worst fears will have been exceeded too. Both at the same time, that's what if I'm wrong. It's bizarre and paradoxical to think about, sort of dizzying. But I think about it. I think about it a lot.

So there it is. My answer. I've given it some thought, but I think it's a good question and deserves thought. What if I'm wrong? I think about it all the time. Do you? Do Young-Earth-Creationist Christians ever try to answer that question? Do they ever ponder their own error or the possibility of it? Do any religious apologists? I'd think some do, but I don't really know. One thing I do know is that Pascal's wager certainly doesn't tell the story here either. Oh no, it's not, "If I'm wrong then I die and cease to be and that's it so the exact same thing that happens to you." No, no, no. If you're wrong, you've wasted your wonderful mental faculties on delusion and emptiness. If you're wrong, you exchanged truth for lies. If you're wrong, you know nothing about anything. Not the world. Not people. Not gods. Not life. Not even yourself. And if that doesn't bother you, then I think you aren't even capable of answering the question. You fail to address the prompt correctly. You can ask me what if I'm wrong, but at least it means something to me. You either have no imagination or you refuse to use your imagination. And in that case, well, I just feel sorry for you.