Proof of Immortality, the IV league

[godless dave]

Mojo,
- If we reproduced your exact set of base pairs, would we reincarnate you?

Why do you keep asking questions that we've already answered?

Two is more than one.

If you make a copy of something, you now have two of that thing and you can't tell them apart.

 

[godless dave]

Dave,
- They all violate causality.

Do they?

If I'm about to throw a dart at a board, you can make predictions about where that dart might possibly hit. Anywhere on the board is a possibility, as is anywhere on the wall surrounding the board and anywhere on the floor between me and the board. A dart board in a pub in 17th Century Ireland is not a possible landing point for the dart.

You could try to assign probabilities to all those locations, and the probability for that last one would be zero.

After the dart has already hit the board there are no longer multiple possible landing locations.

- No. If the egg that produced me and a different sperm cell from the same batch that produced me did get together instead, causality would be violated.

I'm not sure you understand what causality means. Events in the present can affect the future. Events in the present cannot effect the past.

 

[JayUtah]

No. It is bizarre that you might even suggest such a thing.

No more bizarre than when he suggested it previously, in conjunction with the cloning thought experiment. It seems he's too ham-fistedly eager to cram the notion of reincarnation into scientific hypotheses.

 

[JayUtah]

If the egg that produced me and a different sperm cell from the same batch that produced me did get together instead, causality would be violated. If the two germ cells that did produce me did get together but produced someone else, causality would again be violated.

That's not what science means by causality.

 

[Loss Leader]

Mojo,
- If we reproduced your exact set of base pairs, would we reincarnate you?

Have you never met a pair of twins?

 

[Peregrinus]

Have you never met a pair of twins?

Then there're triplets - quadruplets - from personal recollection I think 6 is the upper limit.

 

[Hokulele]

Mojo,
- If we reproduced your exact set of base pairs, would we reincarnate you?

Is there a master self that looks out of two sets of eyes when a single fertilized egg results in identical twins?

 

[abaddon]

Then there're triplets - quadruplets - from personal recollection I think 6 is the upper limit.

Try the Suleman octuplets.

 

[zooterkin]

Try the Suleman octuplets.

Well, since two of them are girls and six are boys, that doesn't increase the limit for identical siblings.

I don't know how many of the boys are from the same egg.

 

[Mojo]

Have you never met a pair of twins?

I suspect that he'll come back with, "well, then there must be something else besides genetics that makes each self unique". Yes, there is, Jabba: environment. It still doesn't get you your infinite number of "selves", or any evidence against consciousness being a brain process.

 

[Jabba]

Jabba, the human genome has a finite number of base pairs. There are therefore a finite number of possible combinations.

Mojo,
- If we reproduced your exact set of base pairs, would we reincarnate you?

Why do you keep asking questions that we've already answered?

Two is more than one.

If you make a copy of something, you now have two of that thing and you can't tell them apart.

Dave,
- But that's my point. There is a finite number of base human pairs, but there is not a finite number of selves (or senses of selves).

 

[jond]

Dave,
- But that's my point. There is a finite number of base human pairs, but there is not a finite number of selves (or senses of selves).

And everyone else's point, which you refuse to understand, is that the self is not a thing which could be numbered. It's a process which is ongoing while the brain is functioning.

 

[zooterkin]

there is not a finite number of selves (or senses of selves).

When did you establish this?

 

[Jabba]

Dave,
- They all violate causality...

Do they?

If I'm about to throw a dart at a board, you can make predictions about where that dart might possibly hit. Anywhere on the board is a possibility, as is anywhere on the wall surrounding the board and anywhere on the floor between me and the board. A dart board in a pub in 17th Century Ireland is not a possible landing point for the dart.

Dave,
- Do you accept that determinism might be true?

 

[zooterkin]

There is a finite number of base human pairs,

Given the way you've mangled that, I suspect that, like "emergent property", "base pair" is a term the meaning of which has eluded you.

There is no shame in asking for clarification of a term you're unfamiliar with. Bluffing it out will likely end with making a fool of oneself. Imagine what would happen if someone pretended to understand some statistical formula, in the face of explanations from those more knowledgeable than they were...

 

[Mojo]

I suspect that he'll come back with, "well, then there must be something else besides genetics that makes each self unique". Yes, there is, Jabba: environment. It still doesn't get you your infinite number of "selves", or any evidence against consciousness being a brain process.

Dave,
- But that's my point. There is a finite number of base human pairs, but there is not a finite number of selves (or senses of selves).

I win 1 internets (and Jabba still loses).

 

[The Sparrow]

hmmmm, I think I get Jabba's reasoning now. If you have an infinite number of anything, its impossible for any of that thing to actually exist.

Ie, if you have an infinite number of grains of sand, you actually cannot actually have any of those specific grains of sand existing.

 

[Mojo]

Dave,
- Do you accept that determinism might be true?

Jabba,
- Do you accept that this has nothing to do with whether or not you are mortal?

 

[Jabba]

Dave,
- But that's my point. There is a finite number of base human pairs, but there is not a finite number of selves (or senses of selves).

Given the way you've mangled that, I suspect that, like "emergent property", "base pair" is a term the meaning of which has eluded you.

There is no shame in asking for clarification of a term you're unfamiliar with. Bluffing it out will likely end with making a fool of oneself. Imagine what would happen if someone pretended to understand some statistical formula, in the face of explanations from those more knowledgeable than they were...

Zoo,
- I assume you're right. I thought I knew what I was talking about.
- But, isn't there a finite number of DNA possibilities that will produce a human?

 

[Peregrinus]

- But, isn't there a finite number of DNA possibilities that will produce a human?

No. Some of them produce parrots & some produce politicians. But I repeat myself.