Proof of Immortality III

Status
Not open for further replies.
caveman1917 said:
Not include in the sense of "is a superset of" but include in the sense of "has at least one element contained within", ie the sense that Jabba was using it which you responded to.
Click to expand...

"H includes X" is completely different from "H includes elements that are also X". If you or Jabba meant the latter, than use the latter construction.

It's not a nit at all, I can define the universe to be whatever I please.
Click to expand...

Yes, you could, but the point was you didn't. Without that restriction, your ~H was wrong.
 
jsfisher said:
If you or Jabba meant the latter, than use the latter construction.
Click to expand...

Jabba may have intended to state the latter but didn't. That's just part and parcel of his (IMO deliberate) inexactitude that several of us have commented upon. Consider also that Jabba's post which sparked this quoted both Loss Leader and Mojo, and the arguments in the quotes were not as related as Jabba's singular response may have insinuated.
 
jsfisher said:
"H includes X" is completely different from "H includes elements that are also X". If you or Jabba meant the latter, than use the latter construction.
Click to expand...

It was obvious. First, it was introduced in that sense by Loss Leader and not by Jabba, who apparently adopted the term in the same sense. That Jabba intended to use the term in that way is confirmed by his later post saying "There is no logical reason why they can't both include both deterministic and free universes."

If you have an issue with the use of term "include" in sentences such as the one above, then you should take it up with Loss Leader who introduced it like that.

Yes, you could, but the point was you didn't. Without that restriction, your ~H was wrong.
Click to expand...

I did. By definition the union of any event and its complement is the universe.
 
Story Time

Jabba, on April 8, 1994, I was driving through the city during a thunderstorm with the radio on when the DJ announced that Curt Cobain had been found dead of a gunshot wound. Just a few minutes later, on the same drive, I saw a tree get struck by lightning: I actually saw a branch break off with a shower of sparks at the spot of the break.

(These two events happening so close to each other made quite an impression on me - I immediate wrote about them in a notebook and still remember them years later.)

I'm sure you'll agree that the probability of that tree being struck by lightning at that point in time was very small.

Should that have made me doubt the scientific explanation for lightning?

When you figure out why the answer is "no", you will have begun to understand the flaw in your reasoning.
 
Last edited:
Jabba said:
LL,
- The possibility of multiverse only decreases the prior probability of OOFLam; it increases the prior probability of ~OOFLam.
Click to expand...
So you are now counting your possible existence in other universes as part of your definition of immortality?

Otherwise, there are as many universes where you exist as where you do not - both sets are infinite. This destroys any chance of estimating any probability.
 
Oh I was wondering when we would finally come around to quantum immortality.

So Jabba will now claim "immortality" if any possible version of the already non-defined "self" of Jabba exists.
 
jt512 said:
Hmmm....
Click to expand...

At least for me the question turned on a fine parsing of statements from Loss Leader and from Jabba, and inferences drawn from them. Both are now reasonably disputed.

Loss Leader said, "H includes a clockwork universe..." without specifying the precise categorical nature of his meaning, but from which I understood "H includes wholly a clockwork universe." Jabba countered saying both H and ~H include a clockwork universe, which may contradict Loss Leader on its face but which can be reconciled by understanding how each litigant understood the severability of various properties. Jsfisher at least seems to have read Loss Leader the same way I did.
 
JayUtah said:
At least for me the question turned on a fine parsing of statements from Loss Leader and from Jabba, and inferences drawn from them. Both are now reasonably disputed.

Loss Leader said, "H includes a clockwork universe..." without specifying the precise categorical nature of his meaning, but from which I understood "H includes wholly a clockwork universe." Jabba countered saying both H and ~H include a clockwork universe, which may contradict Loss Leader on its face but which can be reconciled by understanding how each litigant understood the severability of various properties. Jsfisher at least seems to have read Loss Leader the same way I did.
Click to expand...


My point was that the inclusion of a clockwork universe of any sort on either side of the equation borks any attempt to calculate odds.
 
Loss Leader said:
My point was that the inclusion of a clockwork universe of any sort on either side of the equation borks any attempt to calculate odds.
Click to expand...

On that point we assuredly agree. Jabba's argument relies upon drawing up H and ~H such that he can foist P(E|H) or P(E|~H) accordingly to produce the desired result. This has led him to equivocate H and ~H such that they do not meet the qualifications for the inferential method he wants to employ. In that larger sense it doesn't matter whether immortality is severable from determinism, as has been the brouhaha on this page.
 
Loss Leader said:
Otherwise, there are as many universes where you exist as where you do not - both sets are infinite. This destroys any chance of estimating any probability.
Click to expand...

No it doesn't. Throw a dart at random at a 1 meter by 1 meter square, the points of which are an infinite set. Compare finding it hit the 1 centimeter by 1 centimeter center square to finding it hit outside that center square. Both the "inside" and the "outside" are infinite sets, yet the dart is much more likely to land outside of the center square than inside.
 
jt512 said:
Hmmm....

Roses are red.
Violets are blue.
But, roses have leaves,
And violets do, too.
Click to expand...


So if set A is defined as "things that are red" then violets are in ~A. If A is "things that have leaves" then violets are in A.

If Jabba defines H as "hypotheses under which we have a single finite lifetime", then hypotheses have to be placed in either H or ~H according to that criterion.
 
Last edited:
caveman1917 said:
No it doesn't. Throw a dart at random at a 1 meter by 1 meter square, the points of which are an infinite set. Compare finding it hit the 1 centimeter by 1 centimeter center square to finding it hit outside that center square. Both the "inside" and the "outside" are infinite sets, yet the dart is much more likely to land outside of the center square than inside.
Click to expand...


That rather depends on whether you define the square before or after you throw the dart.
 
jsfisher said:
H and ~H have nothing in common. Otherwise, they wouldn't be complements of each other.
Click to expand...

jt512 said:
Hmmm....

Roses are red.
Violets are blue.
But, roses have leaves,
And violets do, too.
Click to expand...

Mojo said:
So if set A is defined as "things that are red" then violets are in ~A. If A is "things that have leaves" then violets are in A.
Click to expand...


What I meant (contra jsfisher) is that it is false that two disjoint sets can have "nothing" in common. What I was trying to illustrate with my little poem is that roses and violets are disjoint sets (in, say, the universe of plant species), yet they have a common property: they have leaves.

Somewhat more formally, even though a set A (eg, roses) and a set B (eg, violets) are disjoint, there can be a third set C (eg, plants with leaves) that intersects them both, in which case at least some elements of A and some elements of B would have in common the property represented by C.

What A and B cannot have, if they are disjoint sets, is any common element. If x is an element of A, then x cannot be an element of B. Nonetheless, A and B can have properties (e.g., leaves) in common.

The central question. then, is whether the thing that Jabba claims that H and ~H have in common is a property or an element. I have no idea what this thing he claims they have in common is, although I have tried to go back and figure it out. Having been gone for a week, it's remarkable how, in one sense, I've missed so much; yet in another, so little.
 
Last edited:
jt512 said:
What I meant (contra jsfisher) is that it is false that two disjoint sets can have "nothing" in common. What I was trying to illustrate with my little poem is that roses and violets are disjoint sets (in, say, the universe of plant species), yet they have a common property: they have leaves.
Click to expand...

Sets have elements. The elements have properties. Yes, the elements of a set can share properties with elements of other sets, but in the context of Jabba's remark, if two sets are disjoint, they have nothing (meaning elements) in common.
 
3216
jsfisher said:
Neither your H nor ~H include "is in the Fibonacci sequence". (And your ~H assumes the universe of discourse is the integers, but that's only a minor nit.)
Click to expand...

3216-3220
caveman1917 said:
Not include in the sense of "is a superset of" but include in the sense of "has at least one element contained within", ie the sense that Jabba was using it which you responded to.
It's not a nit at all, I can define the universe to be whatever I please.
Click to expand...

3220-3221
theprestige said:
Unfortunately Jabba was using it in a sense that contradicts his definitions. Thus the response that Jabba's usage was wrong.
Click to expand...

3220-3222
jsfisher said:
"H includes X" is completely different from "H includes elements that are also X". If you or Jabba meant the latter, than use the latter construction.
Yes, you could, but the point was you didn't. Without that restriction, your ~H was wrong.
Click to expand...
js and prestige,
- Show me just where, and how, I was wrong.
 
Jabba you do understand that the other people in this thread are not characters in some play you are writing whom you can direct a will right?
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Back
Top Bottom