Proof of Immortality II

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Toontown said:
Is that what you think? You think Jabba is saying that if an event is sufficiently unlikely it is guaranteed to happen again? And that's how you're justifying calling me crazy?

If that's what you still think after all these years, then I'm not the one who is crazy here. Little wonder this argument has been going on for years.

What Jabba is saying is very nearly the opposite of what you're saying he's saying. He's saying that if hypothesis A gives a ridiculously low probability for the occurrence of specific event x, and yet the first thing you observe is specific event x, when according to hypothesis A you should not be observing anything at all with a certainly converging on 1, then it might be prudent to consider the possibility that event x is not actually as improbable as hypothesis A implies, which of course would mean you might want to consider ruling out hypothesis A.

Which of course you will never, ever consider until hell freezes over. Even if you have to go on for years pretending Jabba is saying things he isn't saying. Which you don't even need to do, BTW.

Jabba has one point. It's only one point. Acknowledging that one point does not mean the Jabba entity is immortal. Nor does it mean you will have to go on being that same old "you" forever. So relax and acknowledge Jabba's one and only point, and get it over with already. After...how many years has it been?
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I'm not talking about Jabba, I was referring to your characterisation of Agatha's position. You know, the bit I quoted.
 
JayUtah said:
Here and in other threads he's trying a bastardization of Bayesian analysis to show that what he believes as a matter of faith must also somehow follow as a matter of mathematics. And to make the numbers come out the way he wants them, he's just making up prior probabilities. One of those is the notion that the probability of "having one life" is 1 in 7 billion.
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That is factually incorrect on your part. Jabba's most recent claim is "7 billion divided by some unimaginable number". That's quite a bit different than 1 in 7 billion. I don't know why he used 7 billion. He should have used (1), but it doesn't matter. The resulting probability is vanishingly small either way.

In the earlier incarnation of the neverending argument, several of Jabba's inquisitors agreed to accept odds of (10 to the power of 80) to 1 against a particular life. And a couple of us considered the real odds to be far higher than that.

As to the pulling of numbers out of his keester: The exact probability need not be calculable. It need only be acknowledged that the probability is vanishingly small. Any vanishingly small probability will serve equally well in Jabba's formula. Mainly because the difference between two vanishingly small probabilities is...vanishingly small.

Disclaimer: I think the basic point Jabba is using is valid, but I do not think it proves or even implies what Jabba is tryng to use it to prove. What I do think is sufficiently paradigm-threatening (and that especially includes Jabba's paradigm) to require me to keep it to myself.

JayUtah said:
Others such as Agatha have argued that such a number, even if correct, could not be used to argue that a particular life didn't happen when it is observed to happen.
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There is only one problem with that argument: Jabba has done everything but argue that his particular moments of sentience did not happen. In fact, Jabba has used the existence of his particular moments of sentience as updating evidence in his formula, which relies on the conditional perspective of his particular existence to rule out what he has previously called "hypothesis A", if I recall correctly.
 
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Toontown said:
That is factually incorrect on your part.
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Indeed, I realize I got that number from someone responding to Jabba, not from him.

As to the pulling of numbers out of his keester: The exact probability need not be calculable.
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In this case perhaps not, but in the various other cases where he's misused Bayes' theorem it matters a great deal because the probabilities he kiester-plucks there are wrong, but within numerical magnitudes that vastly affect the outcomes. There is the specific argument here regarding immortality, and then there is a larger context in which I and others, across several threads, are trying to show Jabba how he cannot use Bayes to prove that his various beliefs have objective validity.

As an aside, Bayes does do some funny things to numbers. So while in the larger sense of statistical models the difference between different vanishingly small probabilities would be inconsequential, it's often worth running the numbers anyway to see how they work. Especially since Bayes works best over several iterations. The reason we use Bayes were appropriate is precisely because the results are frequently counterintuitive, and the prevalence of computation over intuition is why we science things at all.

Disclaimer: I think the basic point Jabba is using is valid, but I do not think it proves or even implies what Jabba is tryng to use it to prove.
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Agreed. I'm sure you'll notice Jabba's critics have a certain understandable reluctance to give him credit even where it may be due, because he has a long established history of taking that credit and running with it to the exclusion of all else. It's usually more productive to focus on what he does wrong.
 
JayUtah said:
Agreed. I'm sure you'll notice Jabba's critics have a certain understandable reluctance to give him credit even where it may be due, because he has a long established history of taking that credit and running with it to the exclusion of all else. It's usually more productive to focus on what he does wrong.
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Case in point : the shroud thread.
 
Aepervius said:
Case in point : the shroud thread.
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And the circumstantial evidence thread, wherein he tried to argue the same conditional probability nonsense. Phiwum and I differed on the interpretation of one of the early premises in Jabba's argument. Phiwum's interpretation made Jabba's argument logically tenable in part, whereupon Jabba tenaciously tried to recruit Phiwum into helping him argue.

We often see this sort of thing in fringe argumentation, where some model, tool, or technique is being dubiously employed. The debate generally equivocates between using the tool correctly and applying the tool appropriately. When the rebuttal is that the tool is not suitable to the problem, the rejoinder is often simply to ask the critic how he would use the tool differently.
 
Toontown said:
What I've talked about is factual. So why did I still need to ask that question?
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Because instead of keeping your "speculation" to yourself, you hinted at it, vaguely described its likely impact, and then snapped at anyone who expressed further interest. You didn't keep it to yourself. You revealed just enough about it to play this game.
 
JayUtah said:
Because instead of keeping your "speculation" to yourself, you hinted at it, vaguely described its likely impact, and then snapped at anyone who expressed further interest. You didn't keep it to yourself. You revealed just enough about it to play this game.
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Solely to avoid the misunderstanding that I agree with Jabba's conclusion. After all, I don't need to agree with Jabba to inherit his enemies. I need only disagree with his enemies.

And the only "further interest" they expressed was of a nature I intend to avoid by keeping said personal speculation to myself.

As for the "likely impact" of the speculation, that would be zero, as is typically the case with paradigm-offending speculations, and all the more reason to keep it to myself. I wasn't bragging. Anyone can offend a paradigm. It isn't difficult at all. Apparently I've already offended some paradigms by the mere suggestion that I think paradigm-offending thoughts.
 
Toontown said:
Solely to avoid the misunderstanding that I agree with Jabba's conclusion.
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Nonsense.

We all disagree regularly with Jabba, and we all manage to do it without having to say what, if anything, we may believe instead. You volunteered that you had a specific belief, and you volunteered the characterization that it was "paradigm-shifting." None of that was necessary to express your disagreement with Jabba.

You haven't offended anyone with the notion of "paradigm-shifting" thoughts. You've offended them by being combative and secretive over your having opened the door to a topic that generated legitimate further interest. If you didn't wanted it discussed or questioned, you should have actually kept it to yourself. But you didn't. You can waffle all you want about your reasons for having done it, but you did and now you have to bear the consequences.
 
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I for one am NOT offended in my private paradigm by Toontown. I am NOT angry either-- really I am not.

But I am very, very hurt. Jabba, do offer me some comfort! I know strong you are.

I -- I thnk I'm going to cry. Please look away, everyone.
 
Toontown said:
Tell yourself. You have the same information I have. If it doesn't mean anything to you, then nothing I could say is going to mean anything to you either.
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Well, obviously I'm unable to think outside the old paradigm. If someone with insight found a better way of viewing things, it would be beneficial to all if they would share that.
 
Toontown,
- I claim that if the likelihood of X given A is vanishingly small, and the prior probability of ~A is not (is an actual number), I win. You seem to disagree?
 
JayUtah said:
Nonsense.

We all disagree regularly with Jabba, and we all manage to do it without having to say what, if anything, we may believe instead.
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So? I didn't state what I believe instead either. The difficulty you're having seems to stem from my saying I have a belief without revealing it's details. You might consider examining why that's a difficulty for you.

JayUtah said:
You volunteered that you had a specific belief, and you volunteered the characterization that it was "paradigm-shifting."
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But I didn't volunteer to explain what it is.

JayUtah said:
None of that was necessary to express your disagreement with Jabba.
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None of this little lecture of yours is necessary either. But here we are. Good nazi thought cop, bad thought confesser.

JayUtah said:
You haven't offended anyone with the notion of "paradigm-shifting" thoughts. You've offended them by being combative and secretive over your having opened the door to a topic that generated legitimate further interest.
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They have no one to blame but themselves.

JayUtah said:
If you didn't wanted it discussed or questioned, you should have actually kept it to yourself. But you didn't.
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Discuss and question all you want, on your own dime. If not discussing it draws this much bombastic lecturing, I'm happy to forego the results of discussing it.

JayUtah said:
You can waffle all you want about your reasons for having done it, but you did and now you have to bear the consequences.
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There are consequences for stating I have a belief?

Beginning to look a bit controlling now...
 
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