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Proof of Immortality, the IV league

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Loss Leader said:
Jabba -

I doubt I have ever read such a confusion of concepts in my life.

Let's examine the concept that you are the only thing you know exists. If that's true, then you don't know anything else exists - Mt. Rainier or anybody. Thus, you absolutely cannot determine the odds of you existing because you have no information whatsoever.

You cannot speculate as to how many possible people or arrangements of atoms there could be or how long the universe had to get any of it done because you don't know that the universe even exists. You cannot use this to devise odds of anything. And you certainly can't import an argument that nothing is knowable back into a structure where we agree things are knowable.

You cannot even state that you existed one minute ago. For all you know, you were fully formed just this moment complete with memories of things that never happened. Nor can you be certain you'll exist a minute from now. Because you know nothing other than that you exist.

Solipsism is nifty so long as you don't ask it to do anything, because it can't. It can just sit there being useless for describing any aspect of the universe - which is exactly what you are attempting to force it to do.





The confusion resides entirely within you. I'm not confused at all about what you are trying to say or why you're wrong.





Nope. A process is not a thing. An illusion is certainly not a thing. This becomes clear when we describe other bodily processes like, say, digestion. Is your digestion of the food you ate today the same digestion as yesterday or twenty years ago? Are there infinite possible digestions from which your digestion at this moment came to be, meaning that your digestion right now had an infinitely small chance of existing? Does this lead you to believe your digestion is immortal?

I hope you answered no. I hope you thought those questions were ridiculous. I hope you see that they are equally ridiculous when we substitute cognition for digestion.





That leads to nothing other than you knowing you exist at this moment. You can't even know whether you existed when you started reading this post. You certainly can't bring that back into an argument which depends on the axiom that the universe exists.





This is nonsense. You just argued that the opposite of this with your solipsism soliloquy.
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How unfortunate it is that Jabba will ignore this excellent post.
 
Jabba said:
Dave,
- Would you be reincarnated if we produced an identical sense of self?
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No. And that's why your argument is wrong.

(Although it would be a cool way to fool people into thinking there were another one of me, assuming the "duplicate" went along with the charade.)
 
Jabba said:
Dave,
< snipped for brevity >

- My sense of self, even if just a process or illusion, is still the only 'thing' that I know exists.
- And, if it didn't exist, there might as well be nothing -- it would be as if there were nothing – because, this self is the only observer I have. - And, if my self never exists, there might as well never be anything...- See what I mean?
- Probably not. But, I’ll keep tryin.

< snipped for brevity >
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Jabba: you made this same argument the last time you claimed that you were "special".

You were wrong then, and you are wrong now.

And please quit the pathetic attempts at humor, like this little misspelling.
 
jond said:
How unfortunate it is that Jabba will ignore this excellent post.
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Thanks.


Jabba said:
Dave,
-Does this mean that if we could produce a duplicate self, OOFLam would be wrong?
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Jiggawhaaa? First of all, OOFLam is a nonsense word that you made up. Nobody has ever agreed that your definition of it is either relevant or self-consistent. Asking someone whether your personal thing would be affected by some circumstance is like ... asking a neighbor if his driveway repaving changes your view of the James Buchanan presidency.


Second, there's no such thing as a duplicate self because the "self" is a process, not a thing. If I go 60 mph in my car today, tomorrow when I hit 60 mph it will not be a duplicate 60 mph. There's no such concept. It doesn't exist. This, sir, is an ex-parrot.
 
Jabba said:
Dave,
- My best guess, so far, as to why the current existence of MPSoCS...
Click to expand...


It didn't work, Jabba: everyone realised that "MPSoCS" is just another term you are using for the same concept. Perhaps you should try underlining it or putting it in italics.
 
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Jabba said:
Clearly, we have spent a goodly amount of time dealing with this issue -- so, much of what I have to say I have said already. Hopefully, I can add something more convincing, or just say what I've already said more convincingly.
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The problem isn't that you haven't expressed your arguments convincingly enough, Jabba. We all understand your arguments, and your reasoning process. The problem is that your arguments are wrong.

Instead of simply repeating yourself, why not go back to where you last made these arguments (or the time before that, or the time before that) and this time actually read and try to understand the responses you got? The mistakes you are making have already been explained to you patiently, in detail, and in the simplest possible terms. If you make them again there are people here who will once again explain them to you patiently, in detail, and in the simplest possible terms. but you really are wasting their time and yours. Just re-read and try to understand what you have already been told.
 
Jabba speak English. Nothing you've said needs or deserves its own new special made up term.
 
Loss Leader said:
Jiggawhaaa? First of all, OOFLam is a nonsense word that you made up. Nobody has ever agreed that your definition of it is either relevant or self-consistent. Asking someone whether your personal thing would be affected by some circumstance is like ... asking a neighbor if his driveway repaving changes your view of the James Buchanan presidency.


Second, there's no such thing as a duplicate self because the "self" is a process, not a thing. If I go 60 mph in my car today, tomorrow when I hit 60 mph it will not be a duplicate 60 mph. There's no such concept. It doesn't exist. This, sir, is an ex-parrot.
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This is a lucid, intelligent, well thought out post, all the contrary of Jabba's
 
JoeBentley said:
Jabba speak English. Nothing you've said needs or deserves its own new special made up term.
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I for one love the used car sales style of Jabba's and how he tries to convince anyone about the great value of his soylent green.

He's just looking for someone to partially agree with his nonsense, only for instinctive reasons (probably his unoriginal "philosophy" of eternal souls takes its drive from his survival instinct with a narcissistic component), and that's why he wouldn't stop. You can't reason with individuals in such state, the same way you can't reason to prevent your dog from humping legs.

That's why he just addresses the ones whom he detects "doable" and ignores those who seem to be unlikely to yield. Make no mistake, the whole thing is as primitive as that.

That doesn't mean it is not amusing and that we shouldn't stop doing what we do.
 
Jabba said:
Does this mean that if we could produce a duplicate self, OOFLam would be wrong?
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Don't change the thought experiment. By "produce a duplicate self" you don't get to sneak in your begged question. The thought experiment is to produce an exactly duplicate organism. Under the scientific model, the duplicate organism would have the same sense of self -- an identical consciousness -- as the original, although they would begin to diverge from that moment on. There would be two organisms, not one. Each would thereafter have an independent life. Consciousness would manifest itself as an emergent property in each organism. No, not two "consciousnesses," just consciousness. Emergent properties don't come in discrete units, and you really need to stop trying to force "consciousness" or "self" or "sense of self" to mean an immortal soul or any other entity.

I have no clue why you're trying to tie the outcome of the thought experiment to the truth value of "one finite life." It's a thought experiment. Its purpose is as a framework for hypothetical reasoning. Hypothetically if you could keep cloning an organism you might hypothetically achieve some form of immortality. But as it affects your argument, it's tantamount to your old chestnuts that boil down to, "If I had any evidence, would you agree I had proven my case?"
 
Jabba.

Take a match and light it. You now have a fire. Take the first match and light a second match. You now have two fires. Blow out one of the matches. You now have one fire.

Did any part of that not make sense? Did you just have a crisis of faith over which one is the original fire and if the second fire became the first fire or if the matches had some special magical fire that was in them just waiting to be let out or where the first fire went when you blew it out?

No? Okay then.
 
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Pixel42 said:
The two sentences where you typed 'know' instead of 'now' didn't even make grammatical sense.

More seriously - that was a good effort, but Jabba still won't see it because he doesn't want to.
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I am fond of that analogy though.

The flame is a process.
Once the fuel runs out, the flame dies.
The flame is in all likelihood unique in its particular configuration.
 
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