Proof of Immortality III

[Mojo]

Your whole approach is to compare the likelihood of you existing under OOFLam (where "you" is just the physical body) to the likelihood of you existing under some model where "you" is an immaterial soul inhabiting or connecting to a physical body.

Not quite: that's what he claims to be doing now, but his approach initially was to define H as what he termed "the scientific model", which is a particular scenario under which he is mortal, and ~H as immortality. His objection to H was that his specific existence is infinitely unlikely under it. He's then done a sort of bait-and-switch and substituted "OOFLam" for "the scientific model", while maintaining essentially the same argument against it, even though "OOFLam" doesn't necessarily imply that his existence is unlikely. He still seems to be relying on the underlying false dilemma, as his approach still seems to be to try to cast doubt upon H rather than to provide evidence to support his preferred hypothesis (or even to consistently define it).

 

[jond]

jond,
- I see your point -- there are all sorts of mental illnesses. But, I'm not saying that the brain is the same as a radio, I'm saying that it is just analogous, and is not limited by the same mechanisms. There is a physical reason for Capgras Syndrome, and some kind of damage to the brain is responsible. I assume that a radio doesn't have nearly as many ways that its reception can be altered.
- And, what have you done to the real jond?!

The problem is that the analogy doesn't work. For a number of reasons. And: If you have to assume things about a system for which there is no evidence, you're probably getting yourself into deeper trouble. Especially when the alternative is a much simpler system, requiring fewer elements.

As for the real jond, you're back to the same thing that you keep ignoring every time you bring up the impossible duplication scenario. Both "jond"s think they are the real one, but no one including, both of the"jond"s, would know which was the real one. You've never once acknowledged this.

 

[abaddon]

Jay,
- It is speculation, but still possibly supportive of the claim. Can someone be responsible for murder when he was 1000 miles away from the victim at the time of the crime?

Yes. If one accepts your speculations as being in any way viable, there is no reason at all why this is not a valid possibility.

The side consequence of such thinking is that YOU must accept that no murder convictions are ever valid, nor theft, nor much of anything in terms of convictions for any crime.

 

[jt512]

Nope. Jabba's existence would still require his body to exist.

You just pulled a Jabba: You completely ignored the argument and just restated your assertion.

 

[JayUtah]

Jay,
- I assume so -- though, in the era of singularities and multiverse, it's hard to pin anything down.

So is that a yes or a no?

 

[JayUtah]

Dave,
- I think I agree -- but so far, I don't see how that's relevant to the probability, or likelihood, of reincarnation.

You don't see how the number of possible pairings is related to the likelihood that a claimed pairing takes place?

 

[JoeMorgue]

Oh God it's spreading.

 

[JayUtah]

It is speculation, but still possibly supportive of the claim.

Not in any meaningful way. Patching a hole in your theory by speculating that a solution might exist is not "supportive" in any way that matters.

Can someone be responsible for murder when he was 1000 miles away from the victim at the time of the crime?

Irrelevant. The way you're using speculation is akin to defending someone against a murder charge by speculating that he may have been 1,000 miles away at the time.

 

[JayUtah]

I see your point -- there are all sorts of mental illnesses. But, I'm not saying that the brain is the same as a radio, I'm saying that it is just analogous, and is not limited by the same mechanisms.

No, this is just equivocation. You're trying to equivocate the need for vital causation that your radio analogy gives your argument without acknowledging that such a causation would require a mechanism, that you now realize you can't prove. That dilemma is not solve by vague mystical handwaving that requires your critics to accept that it just all magically happens somehow.

What mechanism is at work here, according to you, and how does it work, and how may we test it to differentiate observations between body and soul?

 

[jt512]

Respectfully, Jabba is using the odds of his physical existence to calculate the odds of his physical plus spiritual existence. That's the conjunction fallacy.

When you write it like that, it sounds like the conjunction fallacy. But we already know we have bodies. It's literally a given: it's implicitly behind the conditioning bar in every term in Bayes' Theorem. That is, it's part of the background information. Jabba used to explicitly condition on the background information when typing out Bayes' Theorem, but I recommend he stop in order to simplify notation. He did, and now the recommendation is coming back to haunt me, because people are forgetting that it's there.

 

[JayUtah]

But we already know we have bodies. It's literally a given: it's implicitly behind the conditioning bar in every term in Bayes' Theorem.

How does this relate to the sample-space argument you made regarding Jabba's definition of E? It seems that if we accept that E categorically cannot possibly exclude a physical body, then your comment about Jabba's E coming from a biased sample needs additional discussion (at least for my benefit).

 

[jt512]

There seems to be a minor difference in terminology here though. I've been using "soul" in general, ie we all have a soul (the subjective "I") but it can either be mortal or immortal. Apparently "soul" here is only used for the immortal subjective "I", but then what are we using for the mortal subjective "I" - that which, under what JayUtah calls the null hypothesis, is the emergent property of the brain?

I don't know. I've been ignoring Jabba's tortuous (and torturous) explication of his hypotheses, and boiling them down to simpler models that we can more easily talk about mathematically. I think you and I have been thinking differently about what he means by "immortal" when he talks about immortal souls. I was thinking that these souls are immortal in the sense that they have always existed and always will; whereas, I think you wrote that they supposedly come into existence when the body does, but are immortal in the sense that once they're come into existence, they exist forever after. If Jabba means the latter then I'm even more confused by why he thinks can reason about them probabilistically. If he meant the former, then at least (I think) I can understand: he thinks his soul was always around, and thus, in a sense, exists with a probability of 1 under ~H.

 

[jt512]

No. In fact he has specifically denied that corporeality is his H. His H is "Each of us has only one finite lifetime at most," which he refers to as OOFLam. Corporeality is a vagabond in this debate. You can argue, and many of your critics will agree, that corporeality would need to be part of his argument, but he dances around it while his critics assign it a particular role in their formulation. Now if the problem were formulated as you suggest, then your case against conjuctive fallacy on the basis of augmenting an existing corporeality would tend to persuade. But as I'm sure you'll agree, the problem isn't being consistently or correctly formulated on Jabba's side, and perhaps also on his critics' side.

As I've said, I've tried to boil down Jabba's hypotheses to their essences; it is possible that in doing so I've boiled off some of their essence.

Nonetheless, Bayesian inference requires that everything that isn't data (E) be background knowledge on which the priors (and the likelihoods) are conditioned. It's also true that, in general, individuals will differ on what background knowledge they bring to a problem. My background knowledge includes the fact that bodies exist. If Jabba's background knowledge does not include this crucial and obvious fact, then his inferences are likely to be wildly wrong. Who'd have thunk it?

 

[JayUtah]

As I've said, I've tried to boil down Jabba's hypotheses to their essences; it is possible that in doing so I've boiled off some of their essence.

Nonetheless, Bayesian inference requires that everything that isn't data (E) be background knowledge on which the priors (and the likelihoods) are conditioned. It's also true that, in general, individuals will differ on what background knowledge they bring to a problem. My background knowledge includes the fact that bodies exist. If Jabba's background knowledge does not include this crucial and obvious fact, then his inferences are likely to be wildly wrong. Who'd have thunk it?

Okay, thanks -- no worries. If the analysis doesn't reconcile from point to point because the problem is ill-formed, I'm okay with that.

 

[caveman1917]

I don't know. I've been ignoring Jabba's tortuous (and torturous) explication of his hypotheses, and boiling them down to simpler models that we can more easily talk about mathematically.

Yes, me too. Or at least for the past couple pages after Jabba directly asked me about it, before that I wasn't really paying much attention to his posts here. Hence why I asked him those 3 questions, to boil it down to a simple well-defined problem.

I think you and I have been thinking differently about what he means by "immortal" when he talks about immortal souls. I was thinking that these souls are immortal in the sense that they have always existed and always will; whereas, I think you wrote that they supposedly come into existence when the body does, but are immortal in the sense that once they're come into existence, they exist forever after.

It is correct that this was how I interpreted "immortal soul" but as I replied to Jabba later, my argument doesn't depend on that. One could just as well consider an immortal soul to have always existed, All that's required is that each soul inhabits a body at least once.

If Jabba means the latter then I'm even more confused by why he thinks can reason about them probabilistically. If he meant the former, then at least (I think) I can understand: he thinks his soul was always around, and thus, in a sense, exists with a probability of 1 under ~H.

From where I'm sitting that doesn't matter, at best his likelihoods are equal and hence non-discriminatory, at worst they are stacked against immortality (if immortal souls can be identified with multiple bodies each). But like you said, we are all probably using slightly different models for this question.

 

[abaddon]

Yes, me too. Or at least for the past couple pages after Jabba directly asked me about it, before that I wasn't really paying much attention to his posts here. Hence why I asked him those 3 questions, to boil it down to a simple well-defined problem.

This is the problem. We are all of us attempting to interpret a fundamentally incoherent idea. You may have read back up thread a few posts, but many of us have been following and participating in this nonsense for years.

After all of those years (and that is not hyperbole), I cannot guess what it is that Jabba really believes, nor can I tell you that it will not be different tomorrow. Attempting to apply any mathematical rigour to such jet propelled goalposts is, at best, a fools errand.

You are welcome to make that attempt, and I will observe the results with some mild interest. It won't go anywhere. You might, perhaps, fancy it as an intellectual challenge, that won't work either when the protagonist of any argument is willing to change their position on a whim and promptly claim that you agree with them.

If you want to take up that challenge, good luck. Get back to me 5 years hence when you have had enough.

 

[JayUtah]

I think you and I have been thinking differently about what he means by "immortal" when he talks about immortal souls.

You're only suffering under the same kind of confusion as everyone else, so this is to be expected. Jabba won't nail down what he wants to prove, either as a single proposition or a compound proposition properly enumerated to be computable. I believe part of this is innocently intended to keep the goalposts as wide as possible in order not to preclude any legitimate possibility. But I also believe part of it is to keep his conclusions fluid so that he can sidestep any particular refutations without having to explicitly concede anything. Consequently I don't believe Jabba fully appreciates the problems it causes to his framing of the problem when he can't or won't discuss the variables in his model that affect the probability.

 

[Loss Leader]

All of this is a bunch of nonsense. Jabba's argument has nothing to do with Bayes or anything else. He is saying:

1. If I am mortal, there is no chance that I exist.
2. If I am immortal, it is certain that I exist.
3. I exist
Therefore: I am immortal.

The problem isn't in his logic above, it's in the logic of his givens. They have absolutely no foundation whatsoever in testable fact. There's no way to assign a truth value to them. Thus, there's no way to assign a truth value to his ultimate conclusion.

If Jabba wants to advance his argument, he needs to provide evidence that his givens are true. This is something that he cannot do. He cannot even define what he means by "immortality," let alone provide falsifiable evidence for it.

And this all rests on the largely unspoken assumption that God exists. After some thousands of posts, Jabba has finally and very recently referred to a "creator." He can't provide a working definition for that, either.

 

[caveman1917]

And this all rests on the largely unspoken assumption that God exists.

That was the basis for my assumption that the immortal soul only came into existence at the same time as its body since, as far as I know, that's how it works in Christianity.

 

[Jabba]

Whomever(?),

- As I've said before, the real issue for me (so far?) is whether the likelihood of my current existence, given H, is an appropriate entry for P(E|H) in the formula I'm using.
- I need to establish that the likelihood of my existence is not of the same order as that of the likelihood of winning the lottery -- which, I accept, is not an appropriate entry for estimating the posterior probability that the lottery is fair.
- What is the appropriate terminology for that kind of situation in which the particular winner, whoever it is, of a fair lottery will be extremely unlikely? Bayes must talk about that kind of entry somewhere -- but so far, I can't find it.