Doubtful observance of Halacha

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asked 7 years ago

Hello Rabbi Michi,
I wanted to ask, if a person believes 99% that the Torah is true. Why should he keep the commandments 100% of the time? Doesn’t the rabbi think it’s logical that 1% of the time (about 14 minutes) he can do whatever he wants? I mean, the accepted understanding that after a person has overcome the ‘doubt’ in the religious direction, the attitude towards reality is as ‘certain’? But why?
It’s more convenient for me to ask this question via email, it feels like an inciting and repulsive prohibition to the Jewish People to post it on your wonderful website. 🙂

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מיכי Staff answered 7 years ago

First, I don’t accept the consideration of inciting and ostracizing. On the contrary, this is a question that may also bother others and is important to discuss. That’s why I’m moving it to the website. To the point of the question, I don’t understand how you deduce from the probability that a theory is correct the percentage of the time we should act according to it. For example, let’s say the probability that aerodynamics is correct is 97%. Is that why you think that 3% of the time we should avoid using airplanes? In my opinion, if there is a high probability that X is true, then X should be acted upon all the time. And the calculation is that every moment you are debating whether to do X or not, the decision is repeatedly in favor of X.

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y replied 7 years ago

This is reminiscent of the words of Prof. Uman, quoted from Wikipedia:
“Uman disagrees with the theory of value, developed by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman (the latter received the Nobel Prize for it), according to which human behavior in probabilistic situations is not rational. He explains the researchers' mistake by saying that there is a difference between a person's behavior in a familiar situation and a situation that is not part of his usual experience. Even if in unfamiliar situations a person acts irrationally, in familiar situations he will behave differently. Thus, for example, subjects who were asked to guess the color of the light that would be lit in front of them, when the probability of green light is 75% and red is 25%, guessed green three times and red once (a rational decision, assuming that these are independent events, is to always guess green). However, if those interrogated are faced with the daily question of which way to return home, they will always take the route that is most often the fastest.

זאב replied 7 years ago

It seems to me that in practice what happens in such a situation is that 100% of the time the mitzvot is observed with 99% intensity.

תוהה replied 7 years ago

“Power”?