Monday 27 April 2009

Pascal's Wager, meet Moon...


Well, there was an Earthshine last night and this morning It's raining!! It's gorgeous, it even smells gorgeous. I thought about going out and dancing about in it, but then Lunchista is British, and really that would be a bit OTT. Perhaps I'll just have a nice cup of tea instead.

Anyway, it means Lunchista can finally put in all those seeds that have been hanging about waiting for the right time. Which is where the moon (again), and Pascal's Wager, come in.

Now Lunchista has not, historically, been very lucky with seeds. I put them in, I water them, and then I really don't know what happens to most of them, and very probably neither do they. Chances are it is some permutation of: thirst, drowning, birds, mice, cats, slugs, wrong kind of soil, weedkiller courtesy of the Council (it has happened!) wrong phase of the moon, abduction by aliens.

This year, however, we are taking no chances. This year, we have a Strategy.

First, the seeds are going in in the rain. This waters the soil much better than Lunchista ever can. Then, nets will be stretched over them to keep off the birds (and hopefully the mice and cats, and if I'm really lucky one of the aliens will get its foot caught and I shall be famous). Slugs will be hunted down ruthlessly at night-time with a torch and a brick. The soil has been enhanced with compost (lovingly made of old garden detritus and kitchen stuff of the non-meat variety: we have even been known to collect old seaweed). The council are now too skint to stretch to weedkiller. And finally the whole kerfuffle will take place at the correct time: afternoon, as near as possible to new moon. You are doubtless now entertaining the possibility that Lunchista has finally lost it. However...

There exists a school of thought known as Biodynamics. It has a noble, and very interesting, pedigree, including all sorts of characters ranging from Mr Steiner (of Steiner School fame) to the Soil Association. Lunchista is a fan of the Soil Association and in fact everything in the garden here that has already started to grow, seems to do very well by it. So let's put the moon-phase bit to the test, Pascal's-Wager-style, because we have nothing to lose.

Pascal's Wager applies to those kind of risks for which you have no idea of the odds, but you'd like a favourable outcome. Picture, if you will, a slice of Battenburg cake:


Thank you, ForTheLoveOfBritishFood (who also have the recipe), don't mind if I do.

Imagine the four squares represent a set of the four possible outcomes. Taking these in order row-by-row:
1. You take precautions, it turns out you were right to do so. Yellow smiley square.
2. You didn't take precautions, but you should have done. Pink girlie disaster!
3. You took precautions but you didn't need to. Pink embarrassment or perhaps wasted time or cash.
4. You didn't take precautions, it turns out you didn't need to. Yellow smiley square again.

Now what most people do is compare the two pink squares, then make their choice about precautions. It turns out this is an easy decision in the Biodynamics case because if Mr Steiner turned out to have been right, and Lunchista ignored him, we get pink disaster (no seeds come up). However if we follow his idea and it turns out that the moon phase is an irrelevance we end up with square no. 3, but no time or cash has been wasted and really, do you think Lunchista cares all that much about embarrassment? So, pink square no. 3 it is, please.

Pascal's Wager has been used as an argument in favour of religious practice: you may not know whether or not God exists but you may as well sing along with the choir because spending a bit of time on Sundays (pink square no. 3) is better than spending eternity on the cosmic bonfire (pink square no. 2).

But there's a twist in the tale. Going back to Mr Steiner, supposing that he got it wrong, not in the sense that it turned out that the moon phase didn't matter, but in the sense that the phase mattered but was the opposite of what he said??

Multi-dimensional Battenburg slice, anyone?

1 comment:

  1. "Multi-dimensional Battenburg slice, anyone?"

    Only if I can wash it down with a pan galactic gargle blaster...

    ReplyDelete