What's future like?

Wiki says Pascal's Wager is an argument in apologetic philosophy. I didn't know there was a field of study by that name. Anyways, read on and maybe you too can appreciate the brilliance of it.

The wager uses the following logic (excerpts from Pensées, part III, §233):

1. God is, or God is not. Reason cannot decide between the two alternatives.
2. A Game is being played... where heads or tails will turn up.
3. You must wager (it is not optional).
4. Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing.
5. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is. (...) There is here an infinity of an infinitely happy life to gain, a chance of gain against a finite number of chances of loss, and what you stake is finite. And so our proposition is of infinite force, when there is the finite to stake in a game where there are equal risks of gain and of loss, and the infinite to gain.
6. But some cannot believe. They should then 'at least learn your inability to believe...' and 'Endeavour then to convince' themselves.

Sums up much of life in a nutshell, doesn't it? Point 6. All those rants your loved ones make seem more understandable now, doesn't it? And he's the very same Blaise Pascal we read about at school.

Ending it with a perfectly complementary thought by Noam Chomsky, my man!

Optimism is a strategy for making a better future. Because unless you believe that the future can be better, you are unlikely to step up and take responsibility for making it so.