Proof of Immortality III

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godless dave said:
Just to save time, let me stress that "replicate" means "make a copy of". When you make a copy of something, you now have two of that thing. Not one.
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Dave,
- If selves really did reincarnate (replicate), you'd have two instances of one self.
 
Your models haven't been specified at all. What's the mechanism for producing a self and associating it with a physical body?
 
Jabba said:
Please try explaining that again.
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By my count that's the third time he's explained it. Several others explained it to you before. If you don't understand his rebuttal, you're not competent to carry out the analysis you've undertaken.

If H is true, isn't my current existence a REALLY unlikely event?
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No. In the sense you want H to be considered, you're just begging the question that the scientific model has to overcome long odds in order to produce you. We've discussed that at length and you refuse to address that discussion, so it's clear you recognize it as fatal to your claims. Otherwise you wouldn't be avoiding it so assiduously.

But in the sense H must be considered in your formulation, you draw from a sample space that makes your current existence a certainty.

Jabba said:
Why is it bizarre?
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For starters, because it doesn't partition the set. As jt512 noted, it's as if you really didn't understand what was needed and just threw something out there in hopes it would defray the rebuttal.

Jabba said:
jHave my models not been adequately specified for you?
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He and others have been very detailed and very vocal about what's wrong with your models. They are inaequate not because you don't spend excessive verbiage writing them, but because they don't provide suitable rationales for the parts of it that must be unambiguously specified, and they don't satisfy the constraints for how the model must be employed in order to have descriptive or predictive value.

After four years of people teling you your models don't work as specified, you'd think you wouldn't have to keep asking this question.
 
Jabba said:
- Next.

- In effect, I'm claiming that we are all "special cases."
- If we're here, we're special cases.

- I think that we're too quick to assign an event to chance and luck, given the existing scientific hypothesis -- even though we generally accept that it's only an hypothesis.
- My claim has been that all we need in order to avoid that conclusion (H) is a reasonably possible alternative hypothesis under which the event is more likely (RPAH(eml)) than it is under the existing hypothesis. Once the RPAH is applied, we have cross-hairs on the target -- whereas before, we had only a straight line that crossed the target.
- I tried to apply that claim to our lottery issue, and found that in my effort to make this claim work, I had unwittingly made E a special case... Which poked a hole in my bucket.

- But now, I'm wondering if the hole was just an illusion -- after all, I have always claimed that this conclusion applies to all of us. Or, in other words, we must all be special cases -- in, that we currently exist...
- And in fact, each of us that does exist is much more likely to exist given ~H, than given H. IOW, the likelihoods of our current existences, given OOFLam and ~OOFLam, should all be appropriate entries into the Bayesian formula, and all yield the same results...

- I must admit that this sounds wrong -- but so far, I can't figure out why.

- Just as a reminder -- if we are in fact reincarnated, in order to account for so many of us now, and so few of us a long time ago, we need that we are all part of an infinitely divisible 'bucket' of consciousness -- and more than one of us was Napoleon in a previous life...

- So, say we had a lottery in which all of the winners turned out to be far-flung relatives of the controller of the lottery (say that happened 10 times, then the controller and winners disappeared). Wouldn't that be analogous to everyone who currently exists being a special case, and the likelihoods of each, given H and ~H, be appropriate entries into our formula?
- If this is not correct logic, hopefully I can figure it out before you guys do...
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jt and Caveman,
- I haven't figured it out yet.
- As far as I can tell, you guys haven't either.
- But then, I'm known to miss a lot...
- Do you have more to say about this? Is my claimed lottery analogy not analogous?
 
Jabba said:
jt and Caveman,
- I haven't figured it out yet.
- As far as I can tell, you guys haven't either.
- But then, I'm known to miss a lot...
- Do you have more to say about this? Is my claimed lottery analogy not analogous?
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You have it completely backwards. Forget analogies, and start looking at facts. Your body exists. However unlikely that may be, it exists. Under H, your body and your "self" are the same thing. (I suspect this is the point that you refuse to accept.) Under ~H, you have to account for the existence of your body, and then you have to account for the existence of your "self" as a separate item, and then you have to account for some methodology by which your "self" enters and coexists with your body. It is IMPOSSIBLE for ~H to be more likely than H.
 
Jabba said:
I haven't figured it out yet.
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Yes, you have. You keep replaying the same argument over and over again while ignoring the major problems with your argument. You're repeatedly picking the lint off a turd and trying to pass it off every time as a donut. You've been told by people you specific sought out to advise you that the thing you're attempting is not possible. You can't use statistical methods to prove the existence of an immortal soul. You know this, which is why you occasionally try to suggest we all have to think "holistically" in order to understand you.

- As far as I can tell, you guys haven't either.
- But then, I'm known to miss a lot...
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You're known to deliberately ignore a lot. You say it's too much for you to read. You insinuate people should be more friendly to you. Whatever the reason du jour, you admit you don't read a substantial amount of what's posted in response to your claims.

So no, you're not in any sort of position to judge whether your opponents have figured out the epistemology of the existence of a soul. And it's insulting of you to suggest that your critics are as lazy and derelict as you are.

Do you have more to say about this? Is my claimed lottery analogy not analogous?
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Since you admit you don't read responses, it's rude of you to ask for more discussion. Why don't you address the copious discussion that has already ensued, which you previously ignored.
 
One, but not the only, reason the lottery analogy is not analogous:

A lottery draw is a single event.

The creation of a human is the result of a chain of events. The likelihood of a particular person existing is different depending on what point in time you're looking at.
 
Jabba said:
Is my claimed lottery analogy not analogous?
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No, it is not. You have specified winners who are all related to the controller of the lottery. That makes them a special case because, before the lottery is drawn, they have a particular characteristic that is not shared by all the ticket holders.

For everyone who exists to be an analogous special case they would need to share a particular characteristic other than the fact that they exist that is not shared by people who don't exist.

You are trying to claim that your existence is a special case analogous to a relation of the lottery controller winning the lottery.

Your existence is not analogous to this unless you are claiming to be related to the controller of the universe.
 
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Mojo said:
...they have a particular characteristic that is not shared by all the ticket holders.
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Or perhaps all the people who could have bought a ticket but didn't. Or all people. Jabba's ongoing flaw is failure to pay careful attention to sample spaces.

Your existence is not analogous to this unless you are claiming to be related to the controller of the universe.
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Great, now you've done it. :D
 
Jabba said:
Is my claimed lottery analogy not analogous?
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Jabba -

Think of the differences between the universe and the lottery. The lottery has been designed completely from top to bottom by humans. We know how it is supposed to work and we know why it works the way it does. We know how much air to pump in to make the balls fly all around. We know how to mark our bets and properly register them. And, most importantly, we can run the lottery thousands of times and compare all the results.

I imagine, in fact, that states perform hundreds of test draws before putting a system in place. And I imagine that the states and whatever company built the machines then uses some sort of statistical model to assure that they've created some level of randomness. I know that scratcher tickets are run at past some sort of laser sensor to make sure the printing is correct.

But your existence is very much unlike the lottery. We only have the one universe. We didn't design it. We have only some vague notions of how it works. We can't run the universe again to see what else might happen. Nor can we identify anybody with a conflict of interest, like lottery comptrollers. It's one roll of one die of unknown size, shape, weight or anything else.

We do, however, know a little about the universe. What we know is that material changes are all observed to have material sources. We know we've never observed the immaterial interacting with the material.

We also know that if you drive a six foot tamping rod through a person's skull, he changes from a mild family man to an angry gambler. We can change personality through drugs, hunger, trauma, and pain. We can implant and alter memories. We can ruin a person's childhhood so thoroughly that he becomes socially atypical.

So, to the extent we have any information, it appears that the physical brain, acted on by physical forces, creates the "self." This self" is a process that changes by the minute. And only physical forces appear to affect it.



Jabba said:
If H is true, isn't my current existence a REALLY unlikely event? And if ~H is true, isn't my current existence actually likely (accepting for the moment my prior probabilities for my simple hypotheses)?
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This is what you just said, "Assuming I'm right, aren't I right?"

That is no way to conduct an argument.
 
Pixel42 said:
The only valid lottery analogy would be a random individual unrelated to anyone involved in the lottery buying the winning ticket, as been explained to you umpteen times.
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Not quite: the best analogy involving a lottery would be for Jabba to discover that last week's completely random lottery winner had bought the winning ticket for last week's lottery, and conclude from this that it must have been rigged.
 
Oh my, every thread I visit lately has degenerated into a slanging match. Mind you Jabba's utterances do venture beyond my limit of comprehension. So be it.:confused:

I have something to suggest regarding the possibility of immortality so let's run it up the flagpole and see if someone salutes it, (something I borrowed from the movie "12 Angry Men", one of my favorites.)

My door is just slightly open to the possibility of surviving death as a conscious entity up until this point of time, but much more open to the possibility in the future.

If one's brain contents could be downloaded into someone else, or perhaps into a computer maybe, (one that had self awareness), would this not be surviving death? Of course the identity of self has to be simultaneously erased from the ailing body, as it is planted in the recipient, or there would be two of the same person.

I say only slightly open to the possibility that someone has pulled it off in the past, because that would have to mean that ESP, or thought transfer, may exist. A big ask.
 
Even if you downloaded a consciousness, you wouldn't survive death. You'd just create a computer/synth/clone that thinks it survived death. It wouldn't be you.

And, after the food few seconds, it would have different memories, orientations and inputs - driving it farther and farther away from you.
 
Loss Leader said:
Even if you downloaded a consciousness, you wouldn't survive death. You'd just create a computer/synth/clone that thinks it survived death. It wouldn't be you.

And, after the food few seconds, it would have different memories, orientations and inputs - driving it farther and farther away from you.
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If you downloaded your consciousness into another piece of hardware then wouldn't it be you?

Sure after a few seconds different memories would happen but that is the same as is happening to us all the time now. I am not precisely the same person I was years ago nor even to some degree a few hours ago.

Just throwing it out there. Something that entered my ever changing mind and self some time ago.:)
 
Thor 2 said:
If you downloaded your consciousness into another piece of hardware then wouldn't it be you?

Sure after a few seconds different memories would happen but that is the same as is happening to us all the time now. I am not precisely the same person I was years ago nor even to some degree a few hours ago.

Just throwing it out there. Something that entered my ever changing mind and self some time ago.: )
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What exactly do you imagine is going on in this thread?
 
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