Proof of Immortality II

[John Jones]

Dave,
- I disagree. And, I especially disagree when it comes to Bayesian statistics. It just isn't the kind of evidence you're looking for.
- I'll try to get back in touch with the Union Stat Professor to see what he says about this...

He failed to support you the first time you bothered him. This time is going to be different?

I wish I had a job where I could debunk crackpot ideas from internet kooks at my leisure, and get paid to do so.

I guess I'm half-way there.

 

[Loss Leader]

Some interesting questions if you are maintaining that only conscious things are special (I presume from this that Dung beetles and I are both special, but Dung beetles less so). What of non-conscious things?

See, you need to have a soul to be counted ... among the things that have a soul.

 

[Jabba]

Some interesting questions if you are maintaining that only conscious things are special (I presume from this that Dung beetles and I are both special, but Dung beetles less so). What of non-conscious things? I have a fern in my house: is it not special? It can photosynthesize, and I can not; isn't that pretty special? When looked at in detail, my fern is different in appearance from any other fern; isn't that special? What are the chances of that particular fern existing?

Even unliving things: I have a meteorite at home. It flew through space for 100s of millions of years, and made supersonic noises when it finally entered our atmosphere. I have done neither; isn't my meteorite special? To my knowledge, there are a lot more people on Earth than identified meteorites.

Giordano,

- Let's see where your TE (thought experiment) leads me. Coincidentally, and fortunately, that was the TE I had been planning as I arrived this morning.

- Until recently, I hadn't really followed the implications of us all being "special" -- those implications quickly lead off into a wonderland, or perhaps, a never-never land... where I was reluctant to go...
- First, it wasn't just us humans that I figured must be conscious -- all living brains must be conscious. What about nervous systems in general? What about amoebas? What about vegetation? What about any life-form at all? What about non-life-forms? What about space?
- Anyway, I realized that I didn't really know where to stop, and that whatever was conscious was part of my paradigm...

- So, starting at the bottom, if everything -- including space -- is conscious, we've got a whole new ballgame, and any concern about immortality would seem to be misplaced. So, for now, I'll simply eliminate anything (whatever that is) that is not conscious, and argue that anything else is "special" -- and a pre-selected target, rather than a post-selected target.
- Back up to the top, if I am an actual self now, I must have been a potential self before. In other words, I was a pre-selected target -- I was a target before the shooting. I was one of NUMEROUS tiny targets on an unimaginably large wall where the vast majority of space was taken up by non-conscious things, processes or emptiness.

- To boldly go where no man has gone before...

 

[godless dave]

- Back up to the top, if I am an actual self now, I must have been a potential self before.

You could look at it that way. You were one of the potential outcomes of humans evolving, producing offspring, etc.

In other words, I was a pre-selected target -- I was a target before the shooting.

If you were pre-selected, then we would have to consider all potential selves pre-selected, even the ones that were never actualized. This is not the kind of pre-selection we were talking about with the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy.

 

[Akhenaten]

Giordano,

- Let's see where your TE (thought experiment) leads me. Coincidentally, and fortunately, that was the TE I had been planning as I arrived this morning.

This mess is proceeding according to a plan???

That's scary.

- Until recently, I hadn't really followed the implications of us all being "special" -- those implications quickly lead off into a wonderland, or perhaps, a never-never land...

You don't say.

. . . where I was reluctant to go...

The evidence says otherwise.

- First, it wasn't just us humans that I figured must be conscious -- all living brains must be conscious. What about nervous systems in general? What about amoebas?

Perhaps now you'll try to come up with a better answer to my question about immortal tyrannosauruses than that "they're out there somewhere".

What about vegetation? What about any life-form at all? What about non-life-forms? What about space?

No, none of these things has been demonstrated to be conscious.

- Anyway, I realized that I didn't really know where to stop, and that whatever was conscious was part of my paradigm...

You realised no such thing. The best you might claim here is that you finally forced yourself to acknowledge that which has been told to you scores of times.

- So, starting at the bottom, if everything -- including space -- is conscious, we've got a whole new ballgame, and any concern about immortality would seem to be misplaced.

And yet another shark is jumped.

Space is not conscious Jabba.

So, for now, I'll simply eliminate anything (whatever that is) that is not conscious, and argue that anything else is "special" -- and a pre-selected target, rather than a post-selected target.

You still haven't looked up 'special' in the dictionary, have you?

- Back up to the top, if I am an actual self now, I must have been a potential self before.

Obvious and trivial. Everything that's ever existed was a potential thing before it came into existence. So what?

In other words, I was a pre-selected target -- I was a target before the shooting.

No.

I was one of NUMEROUS tiny targets on an unimaginably large wall where the vast majority of space was taken up by non-conscious things, processes or emptiness.

Any chance of you returning to the topic of immortality?

- To boldly go where no man has gone before...

Except for the 103 billion people who came before you and who no longer exist.

 

[jond]

- Back up to the top, if I am an actual self now, I must have been a potential self before. In other words, I was a pre-selected target -- I was a target before the shooting. I was one of NUMEROUS tiny targets on an unimaginably large wall where the vast majority of space was taken up by non-conscious things, processes or emptiness.

- To boldly go where no man has gone before...

Jabba, this is where you keep going wrong, and the point that refuse to understand is this: the SELF is NOT a THING, it is a PROCESS. There are no
"potential selves". It is merely an emergent property of a functioning neuro system. Like running is an emergent property of a functioning VW engine. Is there "potential running" that gets inserted into the engine? The neurons do their thing and the resulting process we call consciousness emerges. The sense of self is an illusion that emerges from consciousness. Which means it doesn't actually exist as a "thing" which is separate. Which means it has no possibly of existing outside of the processing neurons.

 

[Giordano]

.

- So, starting at the bottom, if everything -- including space -- is conscious, we've got a whole new ballgame, and any concern about immortality would seem to be misplaced. So, for now, I'll simply eliminate anything (whatever that is) that is not conscious, and argue that anything else is "special" -- and a pre-selected target, rather than a post-selected target.

Oh: because these things would clearly lead to a realization of the absurdity of the Jabba argument, you will just ignore them. Standard, but you forgot to say that you will cover these points in your next post. Which of course you would not.

By the way: you also appear to have an unusual view of the word "argue." Usually people mean that they will present evidence to support their position. Simple restatement of a position doesn't appear to fit under the proper use of the term "argue."

 

[Giordano]

- Back up to the top, if I am an actual self now, I must have been a potential self before. In other words, I was a pre-selected target -- I was a target before the shooting. I was one of NUMEROUS tiny targets on an unimaginably large wall where the vast majority of space was taken up by non-conscious things, processes or emptiness.

Not at all. Remember, consciousness is a process, not a thing. So your particular "self" or consciousness didn't exist until your brain existed. So your particular self was not a specific target that was chosen before you were conceived. Your probability calculation depends entirely on this: that you in particular were pre-chosen and represents a pre-chosen hit hit of all the people that you might have been.

In terms of potential: a lot of things are"potential" things (although not infinitely potential as you have posted previously), and this has nothing to do with conscious or not: a particular piece of volcanic rock is a "potential" piece of rock before it is thrown up by the volcano, just like your brain (and its creation of a particular consciousness) is a "potential" brain before you were fertilized.

Both were limited as to what their potential was: the potential rock was unlikely to become a brain and the potential brain was unlikely to become a rock. So you being a human being, some sort of human being, was indeed pre-determined before your birth by the fact you came from your parents human gametes. You being the particular Jabba human being that you are was not pre-determined: you could have been any one of many potential human beings (lot at your siblings for ideas of who you might have been). It is very important that your math reflects this, and it doesn't. It assumes that you being Jabba in particular was predetermined; your were not.

 

[Giordano]

In other words, I was a pre-selected target -- I was a target before the shooting. I was one of NUMEROUS tiny targets on an unimaginably large wall where the vast majority of space was taken up by non-conscious things, processes or emptiness.

Yes, you as a human being in general were a tiny target based only on all of the things in the universe. But you as a human being in general were quite likely given that you came from human gametes. Your math is based on a calculation that you might have been a rock, or a beetle, or a fern. But you were already likely to be a human being based on having come from human gametes, so your numbers are inappropriate and absurd.

If you intend to argue that the creation of any human being (or ferns or the particular rock on a desk for that matter) was unlikely given the many possibilities that might have occurred from the big bang on, then I can only say that we don't really know how many other possibilities there were starting at that time. Is the gravitational constant predetermined, how often do solar systems form, how many solar systems have planets at the right distance from the Sun, etc. Even so, you have two big problems: this is completely irrelevant as an argument for reincarnation, and although some people use it as a justification for the existence of a god directing all this with us as a goal, it only suggests that such a god must be extraordinarily incompetent, and couldn't just wish people into existence without the prior billions of years of prior crap. I would also note that it too is a Texas Sharpshooter fallacy, in that we believe humans are are special and unusually unlikely because we are already here and can think such thoughts; if the universe formed blue thinking jellyfish on a Jupiter-like planet instead, they would probably think that they were unusually special and unlikely in the same way.

 

[Giordano]

if everything -- including space -- is conscious, we've got a whole new ballgame, and any concern about immortality would seem to be misplaced.

I will use a technique that you originated: did you really intend to write this, or did you mean to write "if everything--including space--- is immortal?" Because my question to you never suggested in any way that space was conscious.

But yes, your concern about immortality (meaning your belief in it) is misplaced for other reasons.

 

[Loss Leader]

So, for now, I'll simply eliminate anything (whatever that is) that is not conscious, and argue that anything else is "special" -- and a pre-selected target, rather than a post-selected target.

That was exactly my argument on my chemistry final: If all of these elements exist and can be combined in all these different ways, it's way too hard for me to think about. So, I'll simply eliminate anything that isn't hydgrogen.

Guess my grade.

 

[Mojo]

So, for now, I'll simply eliminate anything (whatever that is) that is not conscious, and argue that anything else is "special" -- and a pre-selected target, rather than a post-selected target.
- Back up to the top, if I am an actual self now, I must have been a potential self before. In other words, I was a pre-selected target -- I was a target before the shooting. I was one of NUMEROUS tiny targets on an unimaginably large wall where the vast majority of space was taken up by non-conscious things, processes or emptiness.

It still doesn't make you any more special than any other one of the infinite number of potential conscious beings that your argument has been relying on for the last couple of years. And it doesn't make your particular outcome any more special than any of the potential outcomes that doesn't involve another consciousness in your place. We've had one throw of the die; it had to land somewhere.

 

[John Jones]

Giordano,

[...]So, for now, I'll simply eliminate anything (whatever that is) that is not conscious, and argue that anything else is "special" -- and a pre-selected target, rather than a post-selected target.

Are you going to argue this in our lifetime? Please do so at once, and refrain from telling us what you will argue in the future. You have ruined your rhetorical credibility a hundred times over by doing this.

- Back up to the top, if I am an actual self now, I must have been a potential self before. In other words, I was a pre-selected target

Nonsense. That does not follow.

 

[Giordano]

Jabba,

You have failed to explain the startling revelation that you recently noted here that changed your world view as to the very question we are discussing. And yet you post the same old thing as you posted two years ago. If this realization did change your views about your theory of "self" and reincarnation, are you just ignoring these insights?

Oh, what again is immortal about your "self" (your "soul") the reincarnation of which eliminates your fear of death? Your preferences, appearance, bank account, emotions? What exactly?

 

[Giordano]

Are you going to argue this in our lifetime? Please do so at once, and refrain from telling us what you will argue in the future. You have ruined your rhetorical credibility a hundred times over by doing this.

He will be back, I'm sure.

 

[Slowvehicle]

<snip>
- Back up to the top, if I am an actual self now, I must have been a potential self before. In other words, I was a pre-selected target -- I was a target before the shooting. I was one of NUMEROUS tiny targets on an unimaginably large wall where the vast majority of space was taken up by non-conscious things, processes or emptiness.

- To boldly go where no man has gone before...

Haven't you done the TSS to death, while denying that you were doing it?

Why not just post your evidence that the "soul" exists, and is "immortal"?

 

[xtifr]

- Back up to the top, if I am an actual self now, I must have been a potential self before. In other words, I was a pre-selected target [...]

HOLD IT RIGHT THERE! You were fine until that last. But that last is not "other words" for the same thing. It's a completely separate concept, and one that doesn't begin to follow.

Yes, you were a potential self, but so were all the other selves that never did (or will) end up existing, even though they might have. There is absolutely nothing preselected in the fact that you happen to be the consciousness that did end up coming about.

If you want to prove you were preselected, you have to offer actual evidence for it. Not just a bald claim. Your train of logic just totally derailed right here.

- To boldly go where no man has gone before...

Actually, most of this stuff is covered in a Philosophy 101 class. This is where many, many men have gone before.

 

[Slowvehicle]

Mr. Savage:

Now that we have crossed our Rubicon, might you consider presenting your evidence that the "soul" exists, and is "immortal"?

 

[zooterkin]

Are you going to argue this in our lifetime?

What's the rush? If we're immortal, we have plenty of time.

 

[carlitos]

- To boldly go where no man has gone before...

Literally millions of preachers, buddhists and stoned college students have expressed your vapid, pseudo-intellectual mumbo-jumbo about souls, consciousness and reincarnation. It must take a king-sized ego to think that you are special in this regard. Hell, stoned college kids express it much more clearly and eloquently, since they use standard English words and definitions for the most part.