Proof of Immortality, the IV league

[John Jones]

Sparrow,
- The above are the premises that lead me to the conclusion that the likelihood of my current existence, given OOFLam, is appropriate for P(E|H) in the Bayes formula.
- I think that this is really the Texas Sharpshooter issue, and I need to show that I qualify as a legitimate 'target.' Would you agree with my assertion that such is what I need to show?

Don't anyone take this bait. He'll use it as an opportunity to misquote you or quote you out of context on one of his toxic web sites

 

[The Sparrow]

Sparrow,
- The above are the premises that lead me to the conclusion that the likelihood of my current existence, given OOFLam, is appropriate for P(E|H) in the Bayes formula.

Yes, I know, and they are not legitimate premises.

- I think that this is really the Texas Sharpshooter issue, and I need to show that I qualify as a legitimate 'target.' Would you agree with my assertion that such is what I need to show?

Sorry, but I'm not going to serve as your puppet that you try to manipulate into some sort of magical agreement with you, so you can claim "Even hard core skeptics agree" on some other website or forum.

 

[Garrette]

I just used this random number generator to generate an integer between -1,000,000,000 and 1,000,000,000. It came up with 539,103,280. What is the probability that 539,103,280 has an immortal soul?

Similarly, I have a bag of tangerines in my kitchen. Each one is unique when compared to the others and to every tangerine that has ever existed, and therefore the probability of any one of them existing is vanishingly small. Does this mean that they have immortal souls, too?

I also have a roll of electrical tape sitting here on my computer desk. Due to the particular wear its accrued from being in my pocket while out on jobs, and the length of the tape that's left, as well as the microscopic imperfections that, too, is unique. It's extremely improbable that this particular roll of tape would be in this particular state. I assume that it therefore has an immortal soul and will be reincarnated once I have used it up.

It's an incomplete analogy and doesn't really show the core of the flaw in Jabba's thinking which is the circularity of it.

Mt. Rainier, your random number, your tangerines, your roll of tape, and The Sparrow's banana are not analogous in Jabba's mind because they do not have awareness (or consciousness or soul or what have you). Though Jabba has on at least one occasion admitted that awareness is an emergent property, he still thinks it separate and immaterial. In thinking it separate and immaterial, he departs from the the prevailing science (and OOFLAM as a deceptive subset of it) by injecting something that is not part of it.

It is this invalid injection of an assumed immateriality for awareness that comprises Jabba's circular argument.

 

[Belz...]

Sparrow,
- The above are the premises that lead me to the conclusion that the likelihood of my current existence, given OOFLam, is appropriate for P(E|H) in the Bayes formula.
- I think that this is really the Texas Sharpshooter issue, and I need to show that I qualify as a legitimate 'target.' Would you agree with my assertion that such is what I need to show?

What you need to show is that your numbers aren't pulled out of your ass.

 

[Dave Rogers]

This thread needs a glossary page. What the hell is OOFLam, and what meanings are being ascribed to E, ~E, H and ~H?

(In a sane discourse one would be able to infer ~E and ~H from E and H, but I'm not making that assumption yet.)

Dave

 

[Jabba]

- So anyway, for now, I'll be doing my best to support my belief that my current existence makes for a legitimate target.
- You guys don't think much of my attempts so far. I'll try to add to, and refine, them.
- Neither do you guys think much of me telling you what I'm going to try to do -- but for me, it seems helpful.

 

[JayUtah]

The above are the premises that lead me to the conclusion that the likelihood of my current existence, given OOFLam, is appropriate for P(E|H) in the Bayes formula.

As previously discussed, they aren't "premises" of any kind. They're just a rambling expression of your personal beliefs and musings. Don't refer to them without addressing the rebuttals that ensued the last time you posted them, otherwise it's just a further admission that you really aren't listening to the other side of the debate.

I think that this is really the Texas Sharpshooter issue, and I need to show that I qualify as a legitimate 'target.' Would you agree with my assertion that such is what I need to show?

No. You've been told in great detail by several people what you need to show. You acknowledged that already when you confessed the lottery analogy showed you your error. Stop pretending it's something else. Stop begging for the semblance of agreement.

 

[JayUtah]

- So anyway, for now, I'll be doing my best to support my belief that my current existence makes for a legitimate target.

It has already been shown exactly how it isn't. Unless you've come prepared to respond to the rebuttals the last time you posted this list of nonsensical statements verbatim, you are wasting everyone else's time.

- You guys don't think much of my attempts so far. I'll try to add to, and refine, them.
- Neither do you guys think much of me telling you what I'm going to try to do -- but for me, it seems helpful.

This is exactly an admission that you don't care what your critics think or say, and you'll just keep broadcasting whatever nonsense you want regardless. Can you explain why you deserve grown-up attention when you waste everyone's time and rudely ignore them?

 

[Belz...]

- So anyway, for now, I'll be doing my best to support my belief that my current existence makes for a legitimate target.

Oh, yeah. It's not as if doing what you actually need to do is expected of you.

- You guys don't think much of my attempts so far. I'll try to add to, and refine, them.

Engage fractal shuffle drive. All ahead flank!

- Neither do you guys think much of me telling you what I'm going to try to do -- but for me, it seems helpful.

What seems helpful for you has a very poor track record of being actually helpful.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Sparrow,
- The above are the premises that lead me to the conclusion that the likelihood of my current existence, given OOFLam, is appropriate for P(E|H) in the Bayes formula.
- I think that this is really the Texas Sharpshooter issue, and I need to show that I qualify as a legitimate 'target.' Would you agree with my assertion that such is what I need to show?

Why does is matter? You're just gonna reset back to zero and grovel for someone to agree with you.

 

[Jabba]

This thread needs a glossary page. What the hell is OOFLam, and what meanings are being ascribed to E, ~E, H and ~H?

(In a sane discourse one would be able to infer ~E and ~H from E and H, but I'm not making that assumption yet.)

Dave

Dave,
- OOFLam (H) stands for what I call the scientific hypothesis that we each have Only One Finite Life at most; and,~H does stand for "H is wrong."
- E stands for the event of my current existence; and finally, I don't use ~E in the formula.

 

[Belz...]

Dave,
- OOFLam (H) stands for what I call the scientific hypothesis that we each have Only One Finite Life at most; and,~H does stand for "H is wrong."

It's a nice hypothesis, since everyone who ever lived died at some point and never came back.

 

[John Jones]

- So anyway, for now, I'll be doing my best to support my belief that my current existence makes for a legitimate target.
- You guys don't think much of my attempts so far. I'll try to add to, and refine, them.
- Neither do you guys think much of me telling you what I'm going to try to do -- but for me, it seems helpful.

In four+ years, your best argument has been incompetent.

 

[sackett]

Why, when I take a semi-sympathetic approach to your fears, do you ignore me, Jabba? I was also born in 1942, & I think my viewpoint & feelings might be relevant.

My convictions about death, immortality, and the value of consecutive thinking are probably repugnant to a mystic, so we'll leave them for Thread XXXIV or woddever.

 

[Dave Rogers]

and finally, I don't use ~E in the formula.

Has anybody suggested you should?

Dave

 

[godless dave]

Dave,
- OOFLam (H) stands for what I call the scientific hypothesis that we each have Only One Finite Life at most

Once again, you're confusing a consequence of a hypothesis with the hypothesis itself.

 

[Jabba]

Has anybody suggested you should?

Dave

Dave,
- No.

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

It's an incomplete analogy and doesn't really show the core of the flaw in Jabba's thinking which is the circularity of it.

Mt. Rainier, your random number, your tangerines, your roll of tape, and The Sparrow's banana are not analogous in Jabba's mind because they do not have awareness (or consciousness or soul or what have you). Though Jabba has on at least one occasion admitted that awareness is an emergent property, he still thinks it separate and immaterial. In thinking it separate and immaterial, he departs from the the prevailing science (and OOFLAM as a deceptive subset of it) by injecting something that is not part of it.

It is this invalid injection of an assumed immateriality for awareness that comprises Jabba's circular argument.

I think that's one of the things that compromises his argument.

 

[JayUtah]

OOFLam (H) stands for what I call the scientific hypothesis that we each have Only One Finite Life at most; and,~H does stand for "H is wrong."

Do you even care how many times the problems with your formulation have been brought to your attention? After pussy-footing around for four years, do you have any plans to rectify them or even acknowledge them?

Come on, Jabba. When you're this pig-headed, it makes it harder for you to argue that people who leave your debates in frustration were "really" bested by your logic and reasoning and not just fed up with your mindless repetition and fingers-in-ears approach to criticism.

First, you have turned your proof around. You want to prove immortality is true. But you know you can't, so you want to prove non-immortality is false.

Second, you constantly equivocate various forms of "non-immortality." The scientific hypothesis is simply that all the properties you attribute to the soul you wish to prove are emergent properties of the brain. The body of evidence that supports this is the ongoing failure to identify any such property that is observable before or after the viability of the physical organism. A consequent of that hypothesis is that if we define life as the properties you attribute to a soul but which the scientific community attributes to emergence in the brain, humans have one life and it is bounded in time to the biological life of the physical organism. And it is this consequent that defies your hypothesis. Your argument requires the consequent to be wrong, but proving the hypothesis wrong does not prove the consequent wrong. The consequent could remain true for other reasons. This is one of the simplest fallacies in our taxonomy, and one that you similarly stumbled over in the Shroud thread.

Third, you think you have lowered the bar for yourself by defining your desired outcome ~H not as a specific testable thing, but as an abstract and infinite body of possibilities. You think that because any one of those undefined and inconceivable hypotheses can hold and still prove your point, you are left in a strong logical position. Fortunately logic is not so easily fooled. In order to deal with that infinite set probabilistically, as you propose to do, you must define a continuous or discrete quantitative description for their behavior under a given event, which you can only do by stabbing blindly at a few haphazard probabilities -- assigning them essentially random numbers expressed to a misleading degree of precision -- and then lumping anything you can't think of into a catch-all set that you don't realize is functionally equivalent to the infinite set from which you subtracted your few straw men. Infinity isn't affected by subtraction in the way you desire.

Of course you'll ignore this. You do every time, and you were foolish enough to tell the world it's because you find my posts too challenging to address. And you'll blithely continue to claim in the face of such admission that you're actually surviving this test of your claims. When you decide to pull your head out, please address these points once and for all.

 

[The Sparrow]

Dave,
- OOFLam (H) stands for what I call the scientific hypothesis that we each have Only One Finite Life at most; and,~H does stand for "H is wrong."

What about 2 lives as most? 9?

- E stands for the event of my current existence; and finally, I don't use ~E in the formula.

'Current' begs the question. If you have to qualify your existence with the term 'current' you are already smuggling in the assumption there are 'previous' or 'future' existences.