Proof of Immortality II

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Jabba said:
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?
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I disagree that ~A means Jabba forever. But that doesn't mean nothing forever.

I have to go now. I'm being tailed by the thought police.
 
Toontown said:
But I didn't volunteer to explain what it is.
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Exactly. You volunteered just enough to pique interest, and now you seem to want to play games with that interest. You didn't keep it to yourself; you selectively revealed it and selectively described it.

Discuss and question all you want, on your own dime.
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Be butthurt on your own time. If you didn't want the subject discussed, you shouldn't have brought it up at all. Now that it's being discussed you can either be talked with or talked about. Your choice.
 
Toontown said:
I have to go now. I'm being tailed by the thought police.
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If "thought police" are simply anyone who asks you questions about a topic you brought up, then my advice is that you find a cave quickly. I'm curious why you seem so very eager to characterize the other people in this thread for doing nothing more than following up on one of your statements.
 
Jabba said:
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?
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There are several points of contention. First is that any form of statistical analysis does not substitute for evidence and hence does not address this problem. Lately you seem to have nothing more than a Bayesian hammer at your disposal and you seem very eager to find some probabilistic nails to hammer with it. To be fair, you said you could prove immortality mathematically, but Bayes is not a way to do that. The way you're using it, it simply shows the effect of information upon a belief. It does not address at all whether the belief is true or supported by evidence.

Second is that the qualitative nature of your hypothesis seems to be either ill-defined or not what you original meant. Changing horses in the middle of a debate is not effective debate. Without specifically explaining that this is what you're doing and why, it comes across as having shifted the goalposts.

And finally, as with all your other attempts at quantitative analysis of belief, you can't simply make up numbers. Whether they are priors or estimates of false positives or false negatives, there must be fact and rigor behind them. Bayesian inference is not about proving beliefs true, or even testing beliefs. It's about various ways of evaluating fact. You can't simply invent "fact" and then say that Bayesian analysis lets you reason rigorously in a way that justifies the invention.
 
Toontown said:
I disagree that ~A means Jabba forever. But that doesn't mean nothing forever.

I have to go now. I'm being tailed by the thought police.
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Toontown,
- I didn't name the current chapter. I would have called it "Disproof of One, Finite, Life," or something like that. ~H, in this case, involves several possibilities. See below.

Jabba said:
- And then,

11.3. Re P(E|~H):
11.3.1. The probability (“likelihood”) of E given ~H, involves several specific hypothetical possibilities.
11.3.1.1. That only some of us have but one finite life.
11.3.1.2. That we each have numerous finite lives.
11.3.1.3. That only some of us have numerous finite lives.
11.3.1.4. That we each have an infinity of finite lives.
11.3.1.5. That only some of us have an infinity of finite lives.
11.3.1.6. That we each have an infinite life.
11.3.1.7. That only some of us have an infinite life.
11.3.1.8. That time isn’t what we think it is (to be explained).
11.3.1.9. Some other explanation.
11.3.2. Now I must estimate (roughly) the prior probability (rounded off to three decimal places) of each more specific possibility (hypothesis), given ~H.
11.3.2.1. That only some of us have but one finite life: .000
11.3.2.2. That we each have numerous finite lives: .002.
11.3.2.3. That only some of us have numerous finite lives: .000.
11.3.2.4. That we each have an infinity of finite lives; .002
11.3.2.5. That only some of us have an infinity of finite lives: 000.
11.3.2.6. That we each have an infinite life: .002
11.3.2.7. That only some of us have an infinite life: .000
11.3.2.8. That time isn’t what we think it is (to be explained): .002
11.3.2.9. Some other explanation: .002
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Jabba said:
I didn't name the current chapter. I would have called it "Disproof of One, Finite, Life," or something like that.
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Then that would be both changing horses and shifting the burden of proof. Lest you forget yourself, here's your opening salvo in chapter I of this thread

Jabba said:
- I think that I can essentially prove immortality using Bayesian statistics.
- If this belongs in a different thread, or has already been done, please let me know. Otherwise, I'll present my case here.
--- Jabba
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You specifically proposed to prove immortality. You specifically cited a branch of mathematics that you would use to do it. You specifically accepted a burden of proof. Now trying to reframe the debate in terms of what you think your critics should or have affirmatively claimed is dishonest.

~H, in this case, involves several possibilities. See below.
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Linking back to where you changed horses in the middle of the race does not justify your having done so. Following those links, the reader can easily see your ad hoc refinements that, ironically, expand the definition of "immortality" to include a panoply of offhand and incompatible concepts.

In other words, it's your standard argument by equivocation.
 
Jabba, is H the scientific model of consciousness, where souls do not exist? Or is it some model of consciousness where souls exist but are mortal?
 
Jabba said:
Jay,
- If we want to determine the posterior probability of an existing hypothesis after new relevant info becomes available, don't we need to know the likelihood of the new info given the old hypothesis?
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JayUtah said:
I wrote extensively about this several months ago in your shroud thread. You ignored it then. Maybe you should have read it, then you'd know the answer.
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Jay,
- Please direct me to it.
 
Jabba said:
Jay,
- Please direct me to it.
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No.

I made plain several times that I would not entertain requests to repeat or refer back to previous posts. You admit you read only the first line of people's posts -- if you read them at all. I will not indulge your sloth. If you ignored my explanations when I gave them, then your penance is to research the thread until you are caught up.
 
abaddon said:
If you did not read it then, why would anyone think you will read it now?
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He won't. He just wants to be able to say, "I asked Jay for a reference and he refused to give it to me, therefore it's his fault."

We had this discussion before and I warned Jabba at the time that I would not respond to his runaround and endless requests to having things repeated for him. He admits a history of vexing those who attempt to educate him, so I feel that the appropriate consequence for his behavior is ongoing ignorance. My obligation to inform him ended the moment I clicked Submit. The rest is up to him.
 
godless dave said:
Jabba, is H the scientific model of consciousness, where souls do not exist? Or is it some model of consciousness where souls exist but are mortal?
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Dave,
- I don't really understand your question -- but, for the word "soul" I'd use Wikipedia's basic definition: The soul in many religions, philosophical and mythological traditions, is the incorporeal and immortal essence of a living being.
- But, keep in mind that I don't use that word as it automatically accepts immortality, and I'd be begging the question if I used it. Here, I'm just talking about the "self," or individual consciousness and trying to show that H -- the scientific expectation that each (potential) self has one, finite, life (at most) -- is misled.
 
Jabba said:
Dave,
- I don't really understand your question -- but, for the word "soul" I'd use Wikipedia's basic definition: The soul in many religions, philosophical and mythological traditions, is the incorporeal and immortal essence of a living being.
- But, keep in mind that I don't use that word as it automatically accepts immortality, and I'd be begging the question if I used it. Here, I'm just talking about the "self," or individual consciousness and trying to show that H -- the scientific expectation that each (potential) self has one, finite, life (at most) -- is misled.
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Evidence?
 
Jabba said:
[F]or the word "soul" I'd use Wikipedia's basic definition: The soul in many religions, philosophical and mythological traditions, is the incorporeal and immortal essence of a living being.
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That's not a definition that's useful here. When there are several contradictory and disparate abstract concepts behind a word, lexicographers must address them all. That is not a basis for testing the actual existence of any of the concepts. Regardless what word you assign to the entity having the properties you seek, testing the existence of that entity requires the properties to be definable.

You need to decide what object, entity, or force exhibits the properties that affect your conclusion and devise a way to quantify those properties such that they can be manipulated by a quantitative model. Otherwise you're just begging the question irrespective of lexical mechanics.

But, keep in mind that I don't use that word as it automatically accepts immortality, and I'd be begging the question if I used it.
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You don't seem to have a problem begging the question by assigning arbitrary numbers to probabilities in your statistical model.

Here, I'm just talking about the "self," or individual consciousness and trying to show that H -- the scientific expectation that each (potential) self has one, finite, life (at most) -- is misled.
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But that's not what you set out to prove. You said -- as I quoted above -- that you would prove immortality by means of mathematics. Now you're desperately trying to change horses and reverse the burden of proof. So if you intend now to embark upon a new quest, please provide closure for your first proposition. Do you concede that you are unable to prove immortality mathematically?

There is no "scientific expectation" at work here, but thanks for letting the veil slip ever so slightly on your crusade against "science."

The proposition that life is as we observe it to be is simply the logical conclusion based on evidence. You are the one saying that there is more to life than what we can observe. In that formulation, the "scientific expectation" of one finite life is simply the null hypothesis. And yes, you have the burden to falsify the null. Your critics don't have a burden to uphold it; that's what it means to be a null hypothesis.

But you don't get to falsify the null by handwaving vaguely toward a grab-bag of dissimilar and contradictory propositions whose only common element is denial of the null. You especially don't get to do that in a statistical context, where specific propositions have numerical combinatorics and severability. Your frustration along these lines is evident and understandable, but you don't get to alleviate it by begging your critics simply to relax their standards until your claim survives.

Think about interpreting your frustration as the failure of your claim to survive rational scrutiny.
 
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