Pascal's Wager is only valid in the situation actually proposed by Pascal: Determining whether one should believe on faith in the existence of a God who cannot be apprehended or accessed through reason. While the example matrix could be reapplied, it can
only be reapplied in circumstances where faith alone can inform probability.
In other words, if the means exists to determine the truth of Beatrice's statements as well as her nature as an individual and the scenario which presents evidence for or against her existence in the first place, Pascal's Wager is inapplicable because
external information which can be accessed and processed by reason informs our possible decisions.
Additionally, a presupposition of Pascal's "proof" is that God either exists or does not exist. This is overly simplistic even for Pascal's purposes, but it can at least be boiled down to "either there is some transcendent force or there is not, and this force is more inclined to benevolence toward those who acknowledge it." Which is, I should note, itself a presupposition; Pascal could be flat wrong and God exists but does not care whether or not you believe or is not capable of granting you any benefit or penalty for believing/disbelieving, in which case the matrix is pointless because all outcomes are zero.
In the case of Beatrice, however, we have a non-binary continuum of outcomes we can believe she is being truthful or untruthful about. For example, we can doubt her claim of being a witch outright, but we can also choose to partially doubt and partially believe by choosing to believe that she speaks
metaphorically about her status as a witch, and assume from there that what she is conveying to us has a meaning in the context of that half-truth which we need to understand
is a half-truth to apprehend the truth she's communicating.
Basically, if you alter the premises or available information, Pascal's Wager explodes. It's a childishly oversimplified example to begin with, because truth is independent of calculations in uncontrolled situations. You might still learn the truth even if you don't believe
anything, simply by accidentally finding a videotape of the entire crime or being told the truth out of the blue by somebody credible who discovered it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by LyricalAura
Krauss gets into a fistfight with a goat demon in EP4, but we don't label him as delusional. We understand that because there was no external observer to that scene, it was painted over with a parallel fantasy narrative by the Reader. So, understanding that EP4 Ange is fictional, why do you conclude that she's delusional when the parts of her narrative without external observers are also painted over with fantasy?
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The scene with Ange talking to the Stakes in the classroom did have external observers. Even if we conclude the matter is a fantasy, it suggests something about the Ange shown to us: That she would prefer to retreat mentally into herself (if not to "delusions," then to a more comforting imagination state) rather than confront or even acknowledge the reality of her situation as presented to us.
When Krauss is punching the goat, we don't get the sense that Krauss is believing the goat exists and struggling with it as an internal mental process. Ange's interactions with her magical characters do exactly that, in stark contrast to magic scenes involving any other characters... except Maria, Natsuhi, and Yasu. You can quibble over whether any of those characters are in fact delusional in a psychological sense, but there's clearly something about them which makes you suspect that each, in the words of famed child psychologist Hank Hill, ain't right. But nothing ever suggests that Krauss is having a similar mental development.
Ange's fragile psychology is central to her character. Whether it's actually
true is another matter, and "Yukari" or Ange-Prime may indeed not be as fragile as, perhaps, the individual who imagined ANGE thinks she is. But it's very clear that he thinks she is, because he treats her like she is.