Proof of Immortality III

[Toontown]

Post hoc, the probability of your existence is 1.

A priori, it was small, but that is irrelevant.

Hans

Oh well. So much for statistical tests of hypotheses. Now that you've revealed the flaw in the formulation of probability theory.

Statistical tests worked pretty well while they lasted though. But the Blue Mask cursed them. Now they're useless.

 

[Hlafordlaes]

Oh well. So much for statistical tests of hypotheses. Now that you've revealed the flaw in the formulation of probability theory.

Statistical tests worked pretty well while they lasted though. But the Blue Mask cursed them. Now they're useless.

The above is certainly wanting of substance given all the massive huffing and puffing prior. It's been quite some time since you've made an unambiguous proposition*; let's have one.

*ETA: Relating to the thread title, that is.

 

[Nonpareil]

Oh well. So much for statistical tests of hypotheses. Now that you've revealed the flaw in the formulation of probability theory.

Statistical tests worked pretty well while they lasted though. But the Blue Mask cursed them. Now they're useless.

Once again, you leap to defend Jabba's failures by making nebulous accusations of failure to understand probability, framed in a way that doesn't seem to have anything to do with the thing you are responding to.

I am puzzled as to how you manage to entertain yourself with deliberate incoherence.

 

[Toontown]

So is the likelihood of literally everyone else's existence...

So what?

If I'm at a poker table, should I not bother to look at my cards, because everyone else has cards too?

You'll need to do better than that, to be as "coherent" as you demand that I be.

This is me being more coherent than you. Giving an actual example of how following your blanket denial of conditional probability would be stupid and costly.

Well, no. It's not. Because it is an exceptionally obvious objection to Jabba's argument which, despite the fact that it has apparently stuck in your craw for no apparent reason, neither you nor he has managed to produce a coherent objection to.

Analogy: You claim I owe you 50 bucks. I pull out a die, roll it, and exclaim "so what" when it stops rolling.

What is your "coherent" response?

Claiming I still owe you 50 bucks isn't going to work. I'll just roll the die and exclaim "so what" again.

See what your main problem is now? Your main problem is not forging a coherent response. Your main problem is coming up with any response, short of abject surrender, which would have any positive effect at all on the Blanket Denial Corps, and therefore not be a waste of time and labor.

No matter how unlikely any given result of that die roll is, one of them has got to come up.

But what if you have been kidnapped, and your captors hand you a 10 ^80! - sided die, and tell you to roll a 1 or they'll killl you before you can say "so what" when it stops rolling.

Ruh-roh...all of a sudden the situation got all conditionally dependent. Now that it's your specific ass on the line, and not just "some number". But not to worry. You roll the freaking 1.

And of course it would never occur to you that the game was rigged and your captors were just messing with you, right? It's far more likely that you beat those 10 ^80! odds fair and square. Right? After all, no doubt many others throughout the universe have been in a similar bind and also beat similar odds. Right?

"So what", you say? I'll tell you so what. Unless the game is rigged, you're dead. It doesn't matter how many other people may have beaten the big odds (assuming they weren't part of the rigged game). You, specifically, are dead unless that game is rigged.

And I'll bet that you're dead in an unrigged game a trillion times in a row against those odds, and never sweat the outcome. I take orders of magnitude bigger risks every day, just puttering around doing everyday things.

Coherent response, please.

 

[theprestige]

I think I understand Jabba's claim.

- According to science, my lifetime is very short, relative to the lifetime of the universe.

- If science is right about this, then if I picked a random point in the lifetime of the universe, it is extremely unlikely that it would also be a point within my own lifetime.

- And yet here I am, at a random point in the lifetime of the universe, that also happens to be a point in my own lifetime.

- Since this outcome is extremely unlikely (see above), science must be wrong about the extent of my lifetime.

- The most likely explanation, for finding myself within both the lifetime of the universe and my own lifetime, is that the extent of my lifetime is the same as the lifetime of the universe.

- This means I am mathematically immortal.

 

[Mojo]

So what?

If I'm at a poker table, should I not bother to look at my cards, because everyone else has cards too?

That depends on whether some hands are "better" than others or not.

 

[Nonpareil]

So what?

So you aren't a special snowflake. You are no more or less likely than anyone else; the fact that you ended up existing is not evidence of any sort of you being any sort of special case.

This is not a complicated concept.

If I'm at a poker table, should I not bother to look at my cards, because everyone else has cards too?

Once again, you are making comparisons that simply fail to address the point. No one has made any argument even approaching "you shouldn't even look at your cards in a poker game". The actual point being made is that no hand of five randomly dealt cards is any more or less likely than any other.

This is me being more coherent than you.

It's really not.

Analogy: You claim I owe you 50 bucks. I pull out a die, roll it, and exclaim "so what" when it stops rolling.

What is your "coherent" response?

To point out that your analogy is still completely nonsensical and has nothing to do with the discussion in hand.

But what if you have been kidnapped, and your captors hand you a 10 ^80! - sided die, and tell you to roll a 1 or they'll killl you before you can say "so what" when it stops rolling.

Ruh-roh...all of a sudden the situation got all conditionally dependent. Now that it's your specific ass on the line, and not just "some number". But not to worry. You roll the freaking 1.

And of course it would never occur to you that the game was rigged and your captors were just messing with you, right? It's far more likely that you beat those 10 ^80! odds fair and square. Right? After all, no doubt many others throughout the universe have been in a similar bind and also beat similar odds. Right?

"So what", you say? I'll tell you so what. Unless the game is rigged, you're dead. It doesn't matter how many other people may have beaten the big odds (assuming they weren't part of the rigged game). You, specifically, are dead unless that game is rigged.

And I'll bet that you're dead in an unrigged game a trillion times in a row against those odds, and never sweat the outcome. I take orders of magnitude bigger risks every day, just fooling around.

Coherent response, please.

This is the same nonsense you brought up before my absence from the discussion. The same answers apply, in exactly the same manner.

Point one, this is a false analogy. It would be more accurate to describe the scenario as involving 10^80! different victims all making their own die rolls to determine survival, or, even better, a single die roll to determine which one of those lives while all the others die.

But this is largely irrelevant to the main point, which remains exactly what it was before: even assuming that your analogy is perfect in every regard, and the victim in question simply beat 10^80! odds, this is not proof - or even evidence - that the game was rigged. It may prompt you to investigate, but the only way to show that the game was rigged - I repeat, the only way - is to examine the die itself.

And this will not change, no matter how many times you call people idiots for pointing it out to you.

 

[Hlafordlaes]

I think I understand Jabba's claim.

- According to science, my lifetime is very short, relative to the lifetime of the universe.

- If science is right about this, then if I picked a random point in the lifetime of the universe, it is extremely unlikely that it would also be a point within my own lifetime.

- And yet here I am, at a random point in the lifetime of the universe, that also happens to be a point in my own lifetime.

- Since this outcome is extremely unlikely (see above), science must be wrong about the extent of my lifetime.

- The most likely explanation, for finding myself within both the lifetime of the universe and my own lifetime, is that the extent of my lifetime is the same as the lifetime of the universe.

- This means I am mathematically immortal.

Good one. Might as well extend it to the solipsist extreme and also conclude one is, indeed, the Almighty.

If so, though, I'd beg HisHerIts Mercy to end the thread.

 

[Toontown]

Do you ever entertain yourself with the possibility that every bit of evidence used in a statistical test exists, but it's prior probability may have been considerably less than 1 before it existed?

Do you ever entertain yourself with the possibility that a test of hypothesis is not about whether the observed evidence exists, rather it's about whether the hypothesis being tested adequately accounts for the observed evidence?

 

[zooterkin]

Do you ever entertain yourself with the possibility that every bit of evidence used in a statistical test exists, but it's prior probability may have been considerably less than 1 before it existed?

Do you ever entertain yourself with the possibility that a test of hypothesis is not about whether the observed evidence exists, rather it's about whether the hypothesis being tested adequately accounts for the observed evidence?

You're sticking with incredulity, then?

 

[Nonpareil]

Do you ever entertain yourself with the possibility that every bit of evidence used in a statistical test exists, but it's prior probability may have been considerably less than 1 before it existed?

And this is meant to address any of the points raised in this discussion... how, precisely?

 

[Garrette]

Good one. Might as well extend it to the solipsist extreme and also conclude one is, indeed, the Almighty.

If so, though, I'd beg HisHerIts Mercy to end the thread.

I could well be wrong, but it was something along these lines that in a long ago thread (or long ago incarnation of this thread) that I concluded is Toontown's end game. I recall asking if his position involved either Emerson's Over-Soul or some variation. I got no response.

 

[Toontown]

Once again, you are making comparisons that simply fail to address the point. No one has made any argument even approaching "you shouldn't even look at your cards in a poker game". The actual point being made is that no hand of five randomly dealt cards is any more or less likely than any other.

That's not a point. And it's not a battle station either. It's just a little old non sequitur.

.....

But this is largely irrelevant to the main point, which remains exactly what it was before: even assuming that your analogy is perfect in every regard, and the victim in question simply beat 10^80! odds, this is not proof - or even evidence - that the game was rigged.

Why?

Because you don't know exactly what the odds against a rigged game are, and you're too inflexible to assume they're insignificant against the giganogargantuan 10^80! ?

Do you have some dogmatic ideas about what constitutes evidence which you favor over reason and flexibility?

Doesn't matter what you think. If the game isn't rigged, you're dead with a certainty converging on 1. That's the evidence. Plain fact. If you get in that kind of jam, you're dead. Unless the game is rigged. And it doesn't matter how many lucky suckers across the universe have beaten the big odds. That doesn't help your chances any. That's like casinos putting loose slots near the entrance to make suckers think they can be winners too. But you're not going to be a winner. Not in this game. Not unless the game is rigged.

But you were a big winner, nevermind how.

Except now you're in another jam. Now your captors demand that you correctly tell them whether the game was rigged or they kill you, for sure this time, and you won't be able to roll your way out of it.

What's your answer? No, I mean your honest answer, the one you would give if your life depended on it. Yes, this is a rhetorical question. I'm not expecting an honest answer.

 

[Toontown]

I could well be wrong, but it was something along these lines that in a long ago thread (or long ago incarnation of this thread) that I concluded is Toontown's end game. I recall asking if his position involved either Emerson's Over-Soul or some variation. I got no response.

Never heard of it.

 

[Toontown]

And this is meant to address any of the points raised in this discussion... how, precisely?

You still don't know that Jabba's formula is a test of hypothesis?

Wierd. It's been nearly two years.

 

[Nonpareil]

That's not a point. And it's not a battle station either. It's just a little old non sequitur.

No, it's not. The fact that no specific combination of cards is more likely than any other is both true and entirely relevant to the discussion. It is, in fact, a complete rebuttal of Jabba's nonsense in and of itself.

This has been pointed out to you many times previously. Please pay attention.

Why?

It may prompt you to investigate, but the only way to show that the game was rigged - I repeat, the only way - is to examine the die itself.

Long shots are not impossible, no matter how long the shot in question is. That is why they are called "long shots" and not "impossibilities".

Doesn't matter what you think. If the game isn't rigged, you're dead with a certainty converging on 1. That's the evidence. Plain fact.

No, you are most likely dead, with odds of survival exactly equal to 1 in 10^80!. This is not zero, and does not converge on one.

This is not complicated.

Except now you're in another jam. Now your captors demand that you correctly tell them whether the game was rigged or they kill you, for sure this time, and you won't be able to roll your way out of it.

What's your answer? No, I mean your honest answer, the one you would give if your life depended on it. Yes, this is a rhetorical question. I'm not expecting an honest answer.

This would depend entirely on context clues which your hypothetical situation does not provide, unless you want to get into the whole thing about "if they asked the question, it's probably because the answer is 'yes' because they wouldn't plan on asking this question to someone who survived that kind of odds, but that's rather beside the point.

The entire thing is rather beside the point, in fact, because whatever I suspect based on context clues, the only way to actually show that the game is rigged is to examine the die.

You aren't getting around this.

 

[Toontown]

You're sticking with incredulity, then?

I don't suppose you've ever entertained the notion that a test of hypothesis is very closely related to incredulity.

If the data is sufficiently skewed relative to what the hypothesis predicts, the tester becomes correspondingly incredulous that the hypothesis is true.

And it works.

 

[Nonpareil]

You still don't know that Jabba's formula is a test of hypothesis?

Wierd. It's been nearly two years.

You must have a very strange definition of the word "test".

And the word "hypothesis", come to that.

 

[Toontown]

This would depend entirely on context clues which your hypothetical situation does not provide...

Oh, stop the tap dancing.

There are no "clues" except what the analogy describes. You got the 1. Now you correctly explain how you got the 1 or they kill you.

I'm beginning to think you actually know what the correct answer is, which is weird. I wouldn't have bet that you'd even know.

The entire thing is rather beside the point, in fact, because whatever I suspect based on context clues, the only way to actually show that the game is rigged is to examine the die.

But they're not letting you examine the die.

But fortunately you haven't been asked to "show" anything. You've been asked to correctly explain how you got that 1, or you die.

It doesn't make a rat's ass what you can oh-so-formally "show", if you can give the logically correct answer. That's what counts.

So. No answer? There's a time limit.

You don't have to analogically die, you know. You can be reasonable and give up the right answer.

You should be so lucky as to have such nice captors, who give you such an easy problem to solve.

tick, tick tick...'that 10 ^80! is pretty giganogargantuan...and that 1 did happen...

tick, tick tick...click

You aren't getting around this.

Get around what? The 8-ball you're behind? That's your problem.

 

[Nonpareil]

Oh, stop the tap dancing.

It isn't tap-dancing. I have already answered your question. That I did not give the answer you wanted to hear is none of my concern, as you have repeatedly demonstrated that you are not concerned with the actuality of the situation.

In case you missed it:

The entire thing is rather beside the point, in fact, because whatever I suspect based on context clues, the only way to actually show that the game is rigged is to examine the die.

You aren't getting around this.