Proof of Immortality II

[Toontown]

• The point is 9, and the shooter is a guy wearing a hat.
• I bet $10 on 54 hopping, so now I have $150.
• I take the whole $150 and put it on snake eyes. Now I have $4800.
• After I tip the dealers, that's $4500 in my pocket.
• The odds of rolling a 2 remain 36:1, and the house edge is still around 8% on silly prop bets like snake eyes.

Now, do you have any evidence for "souls" and that they are immortal?

Dude, if you had any practical understanding at all of probability, you would never have bet $150 on snake eyes. Your best shot at turning $150 into $4800 (if you're too lazy to walk over to a blackjack or baccarat table), is to put the $150 on "don't pass" or "don't come" and let it ride until you lose it or it grows to $4800. That way, you avoid the 8% house edge on prop bets.

Frankly, I doubt your story, for much the same reason I doubt the unique brain assumption. I find it unlikely that you actually bet $150 on snake eyes and hit it, unless you tried it a bunch of times, and if you tried it a bunch of times, you'd likely go broke before you hit it.

You wouldn't be lying to old Toontown, would you?

 

[Toontown]

No.

"No", what? Kneejerk "No", or you think there was a group of possible Jabba-brains?

 

[Akhenaten]

Yeah, I know. I didn't exist before I was born.

Correct.

When I die I won't exist again.

Nope.

Therefore no immortality.

I think a few people have already mentioned this.

Yeah, I know. As I'm sure several are already gearing up to smugly inform me, There are no "I"'s that don't exist. There are only "I"'s that exist.

Seems unlikely. It's been pointed out hundreds of times over the last couple of years and your finally coming on board with the idea isn't that big a deal.

So, Let's see if I can summarize what you're getting at here:

There is no nothingness. There is only sentient experience.

Nah, there's lots of other stuff. Beer, sand, volkswagens, box girder bridges.

Nothingness can never be experienced. Sentience is always experienced.

Correct again!

Well. That doesn't leave a lot of alternatives, does it.

Not really. That's why Jabba's argument has been dead in the water since he first presented it.

 

[Akhenaten]

"No", what? Kneejerk "No", or you think there was a group of possible Jabba-brains?

No.

 

[Toontown]

When I die I won't exist again.

Nope.

Therefore no immortality.

Odd. That's not what happened the last time I didn't exist.

Nah, there's lots of other stuff. Beer, sand, volkswagens, box girder bridges.

So what's it like to be sand?

Not really. That's why Jabba's argument has been dead in the water since he first presented it.

Look up! Too late, you missed it.

"There is no nothingness", saith the Godless Dave.

"So what's left?", asketh the Toon.

 

[Toontown]

No.

Kind of in a corner there, aren't you?

Let's try it this way. See if we can get you unstuck from the "No" response:

Do you, or do you not think there was a group of potential Jabba-brains, all summing to 1, and Jabba drew a target around the one that presumably inevitably came up?

Do not offer another acontextual non-sequitur response, or you will force me to reconstruct the entire context of this discussion (which originated between myself and Giordano), as I've done before, and again demonstrate the non-sequitur nature of your response.

 

[AdMan]

Kind of in a corner there, aren't you?

Let's try it this way. See if we can get you unstuck from the "No" response:

Do you, or do you not think there was a group of potential Jabba-brains, all summing to 1, and Jabba drew a target around the one that presumably inevitably came up?

You still don't really understand the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy, do you?

And please don't come back with your obfuscation and tiringly condescending holier-and-smarter-than-thou non-arguments. Tell me straight-forward why this is not what you're arguing and why it's not a fallacy.

 

[Toontown]

You still don't really understand the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy, do you?
And please don't come back with your obfuscation and tiring holier-and-smarter-than-thou non-arguments. Tell me straight-forward why this is not what you're arguing and why it's not a fallacy.

<hypocrisy highlighted>

So, you want me to say "No, I don't really understand the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy." Because that's the answer you want, demand, and will accept.

Well, I'm not going to say that, solely for your gratification. What I am saying, and have said, is this:

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=10165356#post10165356

 

[AdMan]

<hypocrisy highlighted>

So, you want me to say "No, I don't really understand the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy." Because that's the answer you want, demand, and will accept.

Well, I'm not going to say that, solely for your gratification. What I am saying, and have said, is this:

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=10165356#post10165356

I'm glad you didn't come back with your regular "you're an idiot" answer.

So "The target was predetermined," huh?

I haven't seen in any of your posts any evidence to support this.

Perhaps you are waiting to present it.

 

[Toontown]

It's not the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy. It is simple conditional probability. That brains exist is to be expected. You should not expect to be among them, if eternal nothingness is the only alternative to your specific brain.

I can't expect anything until I already exist.

Well, you are now experiencing sentience, so now you can proceed to be suspicious of any hypothesis which gives said sentient experience a 1 in 4 quadrillion+ expectation.

 

[Akhenaten]

Kind of in a corner there, aren't you?

No, just standing off to one side waiting for Jabba's evidence of immortal souls.

Let's try it this way. See if we can get you unstuck from the "No" response:

Do you, or do you not think there was a group of potential Jabba-brains, all summing to 1, and Jabba drew a target around the one that presumably inevitably came up?

As long as you keep concatenating questions like that you're depriving yourself of a straight answer.

Do not offer another acontextual non-sequitur response, or you will force me to reconstruct the entire context of this discussion (which originated between myself and Giordano), as I've done before, and again demonstrate the non-sequitur nature of your response.

Knock yourself out.

 

[Toontown]

I'm glad you didn't come back with your regular "you're an idiot" answer.

So "The target was predetermined," huh?

I haven't seen in any of your posts any evidence to support this.

Perhaps you are waiting to present it.

Should be obvious.

Was there some other potential brain that could have interrupted your eternal nonexistence? Or is that one the only possible one?

Keep in mind what's actually going on here. I'm not saying one way or the other. I'm testing a hypothesis, the one that assumes your currently existing unique brain is the only thing standing between you and eternal oblivion.

It's not that big a deal. All you have to do is be reasonable enough to admit that, given the above hypothesis, you have beaten odds in excess of 4 quadrillion : 1, instead of irrationally insisting that probability somehow does not apply to you because you didn't exist until you existed.

 

[Akhenaten]

Well, you are now experiencing sentience, so now you can proceed to be suspicious of any hypothesis which gives said sentient experience a 1 in 4 quadrillion+ expectation.

Why would we be suspicious when there are 7 billion living evidences that the odds can be beaten?

 

[Akhenaten]

Well, you are now experiencing sentience, so now you can proceed to be suspicious of any hypothesis which gives said sentient experience a 1 in 4 quadrillion+ expectation.

Why would we be suspicious when there are 7 billion living evidences that the odds can be beaten?

 

[Pixel42]

Well, you are now experiencing sentience, so now you can proceed to be suspicious of any hypothesis which gives said sentient experience a 1 in 4 quadrillion+ expectation.

How is this not just the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy? It seems to be a textbook example of it to me.

You seem to think that it makes a difference when it's sentiences rather than, say, lottery numbers, but I don't see why it would.

 

[Toontown]

Why would we be suspicious when there are 7 billion living evidences that the odds can be beaten?

That's a lesson perhaps best learned at the gaming tables, or maybe by buying lottery tickets until you're broke.

Plus, the 4 quadrillion : 1 odds already told you they can be beaten. The (1) is your chance. The (4 quadrillion) is what you're up against. All you have to do is dodge the equivalent of 4 quadrillion bullets. It could happen.

Plus...and this is the part you all so stubbornly refuse to understand, or acknowledge, or whatever it is you're doing...you already know you've beaten whatever the odds were. That's not even the question, and never was. The question is whether it makes sense to believe a hypothesis which stacks such immense odds against you in the first place.

 

[Toontown]

How is this not just the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy? It seems to be a textbook example of it to me.

You seem to think that it makes a difference when it's sentiences rather than, say, lottery numbers, but I don't see why it would.

Seems to me that you are committing the TS fallacy by focusing on one sentence to the exclusion of all others. That sentence is part of a larger discussion.

What form of the fallacy do you think I'm committing? I know you can't think I formed a hypothesis after looking at the data and then used the same data to test it. The hypothesis I'm testing already existed, and I didn't formulate it.

 

[Akhenaten]

That's a lesson perhaps best learned at the gaming tables, or maybe by buying lottery tickets until you're broke.

Better to learn the lesson first, I've found, and not gamble at all.

Plus, the 4 quadrillion : 1 odds already told you they can be beaten. The (1) is your chance. The (4 quadrillion) is what you're up against. All you have to do is dodge the equivalent of 4 quadrillion bullets. It could happen.

It has happened and here I am. You seem to be stuck on restating the obvious in every post.

Plus...and this is the part you all so stubbornly refuse to understand, or acknowledge, or whatever it is you're doing...you already know you've beaten whatever the odds were. That's not even the question, and never was. The question is whether it makes sense to believe a hypothesis which stacks such immense odds against you in the first place.

No, the question is whether souls exist. This needs to be answered before we even consider the question of the likelyhood of their immortality.

The whole odds thing is just a red herring.

 

[zooterkin]

Seems to me that you are committing the TS fallacy by focusing on one sentence to the exclusion of all others. That sentence is part of a larger discussion.

Sentience, not sentence.

 

[Mojo]

How is this not just the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy?

Because, according to Toontown, Jabba's existence was a predetermined target. I expect it's all part of God's plan, or something. Maybe it was the mice, and all the business with the cheese and the squeaking really is just a front.

Now, if he can just produce some evidence for his predeterminer...