Proof of Immortality III

[JoeMorgue]

Which is again what makes this whole trainwreck of a discussion so fascinating.

Stripped to it's core this yet another game of "Outside the realm of science, therefore Woo" argument. Those are a dime a dozen. I lost count of how many of that exact discussion I've been in on this very site.

It's the amount of effort being put into maintaining it that's so perplexing. This is like the Japanese Tea Ceremony of Woo Arguments.

 

[halleyscomet]

This is like the Japanese Tea Ceremony of Woo Arguments.

The ceremony at least results in tea. It has a point and an end. This is a Sisyphean tea ceremony.

 

[Dancing David]

Apropos of Jabba's comments
This thread should have a warning "Pure uncut sophistry straight from the source, warning may cause sophistry overdose"

 

[jt512]

jt,
- But then, if you were a gambling man, and you had to bet your house on one or the other, which would you place your bet on: H, or ~H?

You're the one playing Bayesian on the Internet. You ought to be able to answer that yourself.

- If OOFLam stipulated material selves, who would argue?
- But since
1) it doesn’t, and
2) many of us sense, or imagine, an immaterial self, and
3) there are no natural laws governing the who of an immaterial self,
- if there is an immaterial "who" to be born, science has no idea who it will be.

Your premise #2 suggests that what you really believe boils down to "I think I have an immortal soul, therefore I do," and the rest of your argument is merely an elaborate attempt to convince yourself that there's more to it than that.

 

[JayUtah]

Stripped to it's core this yet another game of "Outside the realm of science, therefore Woo" argument.

Yes. If you suffer through the video Jabba posted, which he said illustrated his beliefs, you come away with, "It's amazing what might be possible once you agree that science can't answer anything."

Those are a dime a dozen. I lost count of how many of that exact discussion I've been in on this very site.

Which is why I keep referring to Jabba's arguments as echoes of the typical fringe theorist. They really are just the same ignorant and prejudicial rejection of science we see everywhere. What makes this thread especially amusing is the claim to be able to prove woo scientifically.

Someone a couple days ago asked why anyone would do that, why anyone would not be satisfied with simply having a subjective spiritual or religious belief and accepting intellectually that others don't share the belief. The answer is that for some people it's not enough to believe they're right; they have to believe everyone else is wrong. Jabba thinks he can beat skeptics at their own game. He thinks he can show that skepticism isn't just wrong, but also that its hypocritical, dishonest, and unfair. He wants to show that if his critics were "true" skeptics, they would have to agree his beliefs follow logically from the evidence.

 

[Mojo]

The ceremony at least results in tea. It has a point and an end. This is a Sisyphean tea ceremony.

It frequently results in beer, though. And the occasional whisk(e)y.

 

[MRC_Hans]

3) there are no natural laws governing the who of an immaterial self,
- if there is an immaterial "who" to be born, science has no idea who it will be.
- And, the likelihood of any particular current immaterial who -- given OOFLam -- would be infinitesimal. Virtually zero.

How exactly does that follow? Maybe it is just the opposite.

Hans

 

[halleyscomet]

Click the box icons to see what I'm doing here.

I think that I can essentially prove Jabba is a quasi-sentient typing raccoon 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.

Now, Like Jabba, I'm not a statistician, but, like Jabba, I passed a statistics course, or at least a course that was heavy on statistics. Since my training was in the 1990's. This makes my training more recent than Jabba's.

This is inspired by the content at http://messiahornot.com/ACT2Scene1.php and http://messiahornot.com/Act2Scene2.php


Say that you find a deck of cards in the closet and decide to play some solitaire or something.

You sit down at the table and turn over the first card. It's an ace of spades. You place the ace back in the deck, shuffle the cards and once again, turn over the first card. This time, it's the ace of diamonds. Hmm. So, you try the same thing again. This time, you get the ace of spades again.

'Wait a minute…' You do it one more time, and this time, you get the ace of hearts.

If you’re paying attention, you’re growing suspicious about this deck you found in the closet. You’re starting to suspect that you don’t have the ordinary deck that you had assumed. But, why is that? Why are you suspicious?

You’re suspicious because the probability of drawing that 'hand' is so small if the deck is a normal deck.

Let’s try that again. But, this time, the first card you draw is a 3 of diamonds, the second is a
Jack of spades, the third is a 9 of clubs and the fourth is a 9 of hearts. In this case, you probably are not suspicious.

But, of course you realize that the probability of drawing that hand, given a normal deck, is just as small as the probability of drawing that previous hand…

So, what’s the problem here? Why are you not suspicious of this deck, when you were suspicious of the first one?

It turns out that there are two factors causing you to be suspicious of that first deck -- and one is missing in regard to the second deck. There is nothing about the second hand that sets it apart in such a way as to suggest another plausible hypothesis… If there were, you’d be suspicious of that second deck as well. It’s as simple as that…


I will try to use Bayesian statistics to show that the position that only human beings can type and that Jabba is not a raccoon is MUCH less probable than the total probability of all the other somewhat plausible positions re Jabba's species. Typically, I can commit about a little time each a day to the topic. I can only do so much.


4 aces is no more improbable than any other specific hand. But then, 4 aces does raise a somewhat plausible possibility that the other guy's hand is not simply random -- when most other specific hands would not raise that concern… That’s the point.

My claim is that Jabba's existence at this time does raise that kind of plausible possibility in regard to his status as possibly being human. If I stick that possibility into the Bayesian formula, I see that his species right now is probably not a random hand dealt from a only-one-species-can-type-and-sorta-think-deck.

So now, besides dropping the whole issue, how would you guys like me to proceed?

 

[JoeMorgue]

"If you assume everything I can't provide evidence for is true, my argument is statistically probable."

 

[halleyscomet]

"If you assume everything I can't provide evidence for is true, my argument is statistically probable."

The core issue is that any arbitrary claim can be supported with the exact same arguments Jabba is trying to use. There is absolutely NOTHING special about Jaba's arguments that Bayesian statistics can support the idea of an immortal soul. The arguments are JUST as persuasive and useful in supporting the notion that aliens routinely probe the rear ends of presidential candidates, Jabba is a quasi-sentient typing raccoon or that the recent Avengers movies are in fact documentaries about a parallel universe, not fiction.

According to Jabba's own arguments all of those scenarios are just as likely as consciousness persisting after biological death.

Jabba's argument isn't just flawed, it's garbage. All he's done in this thread has been to try and polish that lump of refuse.

 

[JoeMorgue]

And again it's a very familiar song and dance at its core, firebomb the very concept of the ability to "know" anything and then, for some reason, act as if that makes your unlikely claim more likely.

 

[Jabba]

@caveman1917:

I'm inclined to agree with JayUtah that there are qualitative differences between deductive arguments and probabilistic ones. For example, if hypothesis H implies that observation X is impossible, and X is observed, then H is false with certainty. However, if hypothesis H implies only that observation X is improbable, and X is observed, then not only does this not imply that H is false, it doesn't even imply that H is probably false. So here we have an argument of a particular from that is valid in a purely deductive context not in a probabilistic context. I'd call that a qualitative difference.

jt,
- But then, if you were a gambling man, and you had to bet your house on one or the other, which would you place your bet on: H, or ~H?

You're the one playing Bayesian on the Internet. You ought to be able to answer that yourself...

jt,
- I assume that you would still bet on ~H. Am I right?

 

[Loss Leader]

According to Jabba's own arguments all of those scenarios are just as likely as consciousness persisting after death

Which is to say that he's excluded the middle. He's pretending that an immortal and reincarnated soul is the opposite of the current scientific model. It isn't. It's just one of an infinite number of possibilities. It's likelihood is, at best, very close to zero.

 

[JayUtah]

I assume that you would still bet on ~H. Am I right?

Maybe he, like the rest of us, doesn't see this as a probabilistic problem. You cannot tell me something previously unknown and uncharacterized must exist or doesn't exist based on a probabilistic argument. You highlighted one sentence of his post and ignored what he was trying to tell you by writing it.

 

[Loss Leader]

jt,
- I assume that you would still bet on ~H. Am I right?

You are wrong. First, you've defined ~H incorrectly. Second, you've asked someone to bet without evidence the thing is possible. It's like going to Vegas and, since your chance at a straight flush is so small, placing all your money on the eleventy-seption of moons.

 

[jt512]

jt,
- I assume that you would still bet on ~H. Am I right?

No.

You've been arguing by using Bayes' Theorem for like a decade, and apparently you have no idea what it actually means.

 

[abaddon]

jt,
- I assume that you would still bet on ~H. Am I right?

When, exactly, are you going to have a mind of your own?

When, exactly, are you going to cease demanding that others make your argument?

 

[Jabba]

jt,
- I assume that you would still bet on ~H. Am I right?

No.

You've been arguing by using Bayes' Theorem for like a decade, and apparently you have no idea what it actually means.

jt,
- I see your point -- we have no idea how often X occurs in general, so "hardly ever" doesn't really mean anything about the posterior probability of H...
- I've been claiming that the likelihood of X being unimaginably small -- given H -- has negative mathematical implications re H. At this point, I should probably change that to an indefinite mathematical implication re the posterior probability of H. The other variables in the formula determine the direction of the implication.
- My ultimate claim is that the value of the different variables in this case "add up to" an unimaginably small posterior probability of H.

- How's that?

 

[caveman1917]

No; tu quoque.

Guide to making irrelevant claims without having to defend them:

A: P
B: NOT P, and argue NOT P
A: Irrelevant(NOT P)
B: Either irrelevant(P) or relevant(NOT P)
A: tu quoque

But since you seem to think that argument is simply stating the names of fallacies, your fallacy is: Faulty generalization

Up the thread, there is a link to one of the OP's probabilistic arguments. Can you show that your proposition would give it deductive strength?

I need do no such thing. You make a claim, you defend it. Also,

A: No X are Y.
B: All Y are X. NOT(No X are Y).
A: Prove "This specific X is Y".

May I suggest you rather stick to claims such as the one I suggested earlier, especially in light of your confusion between "All X", "No X" and "this specific X".

 

[Loss Leader]

jt,
- I see your point -- we have no idea how often X occurs in general, so "hardly ever" doesn't really mean anything about the posterior probability of H...
- I've been claiming that the likelihood of X being unimaginably small -- given H -- has negative mathematical implications re H. At this point, I should probably change that to an indefinite mathematical implication re the posterior probability of H. The other variables in the formula determine the direction of the implication.
- My ultimate claim is that the value of the different variables in this case "add up to" an unimaginably small posterior probability of H.

- How's that?

Useless. Utterly meaningless.

You start by agreeing that we cannot know anything about the probability of immortality based on the mere fact that you exist.

Then, in the last paragraph, you throw that all away and return to insisting that you can know something about the probability. You cannot. Your latest LCP just told you that. You just agreed with him. How can you contradict yourself in the same post without, you know, noticing?