This is the part that Jabba -- knowingly or unknowingly -- refuses to get. He is arguing by numbers that feel right to him, so he assumes we argue the same. He has not grasped (again, knowingly or unknowingly) that the skeptics here are not working on what feels right but on what is shown to be right.
Proof of Immortality II
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Aepervius
Non credunt, semper verificare
If you ask me, he starts with his conclusion and work the number back to get the right "answer"
John Jones
Penultimate Amazing
If you ask me, he starts with his conclusion and work the number back to get the right "answer"
That is exactly what he does.
A mix of both. I don't think the two tactics are necessarily exclusive.If you ask me, he starts with his conclusion and work the number back to get the right "answer"
Mojo
Mostly harmless
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
Jabba's approach is no different than the dozens of other fringe claimants who turn to "Bayesian analysis" to dress up arguments that amount to nothing more than handwaving and begged questions. Having read on Wikipedia or elsewhere that some Bayesian methods allow the practitioner to quantify belief as probability or likelihood, they wrongly believe that this allows subsequent analysis to transform belief into fact. Having found what they believe is a legitimate treatment of quantified beliefs, they apply it to what are no more than wild guesses and rely upon pseudo-mathematics borrowed from Bayes to dazzle an unsuspecting reader into thinking something has been proved.
Real Bayesian analysis has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with what Jabba is attempting here or elsewhere. Absolutely nothing. In fact, one of the most important concepts drummed into practitioners who hope to apply Bayesian methods to their work is that their priors must have rigorous underpinnings. Jabba wrongly thinks he can pull priors out of his darkest orifice. That's actually not where the quantified beliefs apply in the predictive and inferential models.
Real Bayesian analysis has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with what Jabba is attempting here or elsewhere. Absolutely nothing. In fact, one of the most important concepts drummed into practitioners who hope to apply Bayesian methods to their work is that their priors must have rigorous underpinnings. Jabba wrongly thinks he can pull priors out of his darkest orifice. That's actually not where the quantified beliefs apply in the predictive and inferential models.
ComfySlippers
Banned
We live in hope that one day this will be said about all your threads.
Nice to see the blog gone though.
John Jones
Penultimate Amazing
Jabba'
Did you really delete that abomination of a website?
Did you really delete that abomination of a website?
Maurice Ledifficile
Lost in translation
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It'll be back.
John Jones
Penultimate Amazing
That is a most excellent rejoinder, and probably true.
Filippo Lippi
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Effective debate? Did you accidentally acknowledge that you pulled your guestimates out of your nethers?
Weird accident, all those words just appearing in a post. Will you be posting it again?
Jabba
Philosopher
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Agatha,
- I didn't really "calculate" it...
- In my opinion, it is quite possible that OFL is wrong. Personally, I think that the prior probability that it is wrong is significantly higher than .01 -- but I was thinking that most everyone would accept at least a .01 prior probability. And actually, I still think that's the case -- it's just not the case on this forum...
- But anyway, I should start trying to support my belief that the OFL opinion is (more than) possibly wrong.
- That you have no memory of any past lifetimes is not proof that you didn't have any. It's quite possible that you just forgot them.
- The same is true for your friends that don't.
- And, there are all sorts of people who do claim to remember at least one past life, and many of them seem credible.
Interestingly, for most of history this great question was not even regarded as an open one. Rather, it was held to have an obvious answer. Across the cultures of the world, both East and West, and right through the long march of history, people have affirmed that this life is one chapter in a larger story of existence, and that there is life after death. We think of this attitude as religious, fostered by the clergy, and for the most part it was. Many of the world’s greatest scientists and philosophers, however, from Socrates to Cicero to Galileo to John Locke to Isaac Newton, also affirmed their belief in the afterlife. Even skeptical Enlightenment figures such as Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin professed similar views. Europe is the only continent where a bare majority of people believe in the afterlife. By contrast, nearly 80 percent of Americans today affirm life after death, and the percentage is even higher, in fact close to 100 percent, in non-Western cultures.
D'Souza, Dinesh (2009-11-02). Life After Death: The Evidence (pp. 6-7). Regnery Publishing. Kindle Edition.
- I'll be back with more reasons for keeping an open mind about life after death. And, an open mind about the issue is all you need in order to make the math work.
abaddon
Penultimate Amazing
You are citing the convicted felon and proven liar D'Sousa?
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John Jones
Penultimate Amazing
Did you actually read D'Souza's work before citing him? You have this history . . .
Maths is maths whether your mind is open to D'Souza's utter nonsense or not. This is garbage in, garbage out. Or fantasy in, fantasy out.
There's no maths here, Jabba. You chose a number that 'felt right' to you with no supporting evidence whatsoever. You put it into a mathematical equation to try to give it an air of scientific legitimacy which it doesn't have.
It's dishonest, IMO, to take something (the probability of an afterlife or reincarnation) which has a complete lack of science or evidence, make up a number for the likelihood of it (that coincidentally works to 'prove it' when you misuse Bayes' theorem) and say that you have somehow shown evidence for it.
It doesn't matter whether every single person in the world believes in your ideas of an afterlife - and it is clear that D'Souza's ideas are very different from yours - appealing to popular belief is not evidence.
Kid Eager
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I think you might be extremely confused on that point. Math doesn't care how open your mind is, unless that's a euphemism for ignoring mathematical conventions for the sake of your foregone conclusion?
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
Then no amount of handwaving in the general direction of Bayes will turn it into a prior probability. You don't understand what a prior probability is, how it factors into a Bayesian analysis, or where in such a model a quantified belief might be appropriate. Do not assume you are competent, and do not assume your critics cannot discover your incompetence.
No, your critics here are not intractably biased. Stop blaming them for repeatedly showing your ignorance of this sort of analysis. They are asking the right questions, and their unwillingness to let you blatantly beg the question is entirely appropriate. If you are unhappy dealing with a logical analysis of your claims, you should ply them elsewhere. Pulling a number out of your nether regions and trying to beg your critics to accept it as a valid measurement is laughable.
No, your critics are not intractably closed minded. By "open minded" you (and every other fringe theorist) seems to mean accepting a claim without proof. Open mindedness is nothing more than giving a theory a hearing and not dismissing it out of hand. Your theory has been heard and it has been rejected, not out of hand but on the grounds that you cannot support it with anything stronger than made-up "probability" and speculative attributions. There is nothing the least closed-minded about rejecting a theory whose proponent is unable to muster evidence in favor of it and whose misuse of mathematics is blatantly apparent.
Imagine a world where error-filled maths works if your mind is open to it.
Obviously in normal maths world, Lewis Hamilton's lap time of 1 minute 29.943 seconds was the fastest in the Bahrain F1 qualifying last weekend (and a track record), but if your mind is sufficiently open, Felipe Nasr's 1:34.388 is faster.
In normal maths world, x= (-b±√(b2-4ac))/2a is the quadratic formula, but if your mind is sufficiently open, we could solve quadratics using something quite different - maybe adapt e=mc2 to be a=bc2.
My mind is completely open to the possibility that I have a million pounds in my bank account. In fact, when I logged in to my online banking this morning I'm almost sure that's what it said, but to be on the safe side I'll only give it a probability of 0.01.
Now we use Jabba's idea of Bayes, keeping our minds thoroughly open to the possibility that I do have a million pounds, and voilà! Now it is true, and I am just about to go out to buy a Veyron and some Louboutin shoes. I will explain to my bank manager that she/he just needs to keep an open mind, and follow the Bayes' theorem.
Obviously in normal maths world, Lewis Hamilton's lap time of 1 minute 29.943 seconds was the fastest in the Bahrain F1 qualifying last weekend (and a track record), but if your mind is sufficiently open, Felipe Nasr's 1:34.388 is faster.
In normal maths world, x= (-b±√(b2-4ac))/2a is the quadratic formula, but if your mind is sufficiently open, we could solve quadratics using something quite different - maybe adapt e=mc2 to be a=bc2.
My mind is completely open to the possibility that I have a million pounds in my bank account. In fact, when I logged in to my online banking this morning I'm almost sure that's what it said, but to be on the safe side I'll only give it a probability of 0.01.
Now we use Jabba's idea of Bayes, keeping our minds thoroughly open to the possibility that I do have a million pounds, and voilà! Now it is true, and I am just about to go out to buy a Veyron and some Louboutin shoes. I will explain to my bank manager that she/he just needs to keep an open mind, and follow the Bayes' theorem.
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