So, we're being advised to wear masks, finally.
I see plenty of people out and about wearing them, and I have to respect that.
I never thought it much effort, and after seeing the death toll in South Korea from Covid19 (a few hundred) compared to our few hundred thousand, I have to wonder how much difference their almost religious dedication to wearing them made. I'm guessing a lot.
Anyway I was reminded of Pascals wager. It multiplied the binary belief in god with the binary case of god's existence to give us four outcomes:
what if I believe and god exists,
vs
what if I don't believe and god exists
vs
what if I believe and god doesn't exist
vs
what if I don't believe and god doesn't exist
Pascal decided that the outcomes of 1 and 3 were a net positive against the outcomes of 2 and 4, so it was better to believe. But it made some extreme assumptions about god's existence, namely that it would lead to infinite reward or infinite punishment.
Anyway I'm a Taoist, and the first thing that the Tao Te Ching says is basically whatever you call Tao isn't the real Tao anyway, so as soon as you open your mouth, your belief is null and void.
Basically close your eyes, use the force and don't preach.
Anyway, back to masks.
Here's the same wager, only pitting wearing a mask vs whether or not they do any good, giving us four possible outcomes, two for wearing a mask and two for not doing so:
Choice A gives you the top two possible outcomes on the right.
The worst that can happen if you wear one is that you risk looking a little silly.
Choice B gives you the bottom two possible outcomes.
The worst that can happen if you don't is that someone could die.
Turning the choice into a diagram like this helps make a more rational decision, and it would seem that the top two outcomes are preferable to the bottom two.
Not that anybody is listening, we should have started wearing them the second the virus entered the country, like the South Koreans did.