I’ve been meditating on the vulnerabilities unique to religious folks, and sort of deciding not to follow that thought too far, when I ran across something from centuries ago. In NewScientist (23 September 2017, paywall) Michael Brooks has published an extract from his book about Jerome Cardano, who in 1526 was working in the nascent field of probability. I thought this passage was telling:
It was as a student, during one of many nights in the local tavern playing dice and cards, that Cardano realised his time could be spent much more lucratively if he thought about stakes and the likelihood of certain numbers coming up when rolling several dice at once. Especially since everyone else was working under the assumption that dice rolls were determined by the Almighty and thus couldn’t be predicted.
It’s a lovely summing up of how belief in a supernatural being can unexpectedly leave the believer vulnerable, not only to those with a better view of reality, but even scam artists.
