Cont: Proof of Immortality, V for Very long discussion

Status
Not open for further replies.
Where I differ with many of you is that I'm willing to call a working brain a conscious thing. That doesn't help Jabba's math though.
 
Jabba said:
- So, I need to back further up...
- Somehow, we need to agree upon the thing/process to which I'm referring.
Click to expand...
You have tried this before. You are saying nothing new.
- I contend that science is wrong about the very temporary nature of this thing/process.
Click to expand...
Then get yourself to publishing in the appropriate journals. By all means, try to convince others how the science is wrong. Present evidence.

Simply saying "the likelihood of existing given my arbitrary assumptions is so low that these grains of sand Mt. Rainier you must be immortal" won't cut it. Neither will ignoring all the eloquent input from others.
 
godless dave said:
Where I differ with many of you is that I'm willing to call a working brain a conscious thing. That doesn't help Jabba's math though.
Click to expand...


That is just saying that consciousness is a property of the brain, which is what we've been telling Jabba all along.
 
godless dave said:
Where I differ with many of you is that I'm willing to call a working brain a conscious thing.
Click to expand...

A working brain is a conscious thing in the same way that a car going 60 mph is a moving thing. Things are enumerable. "Is conscious" is not. "Is moving" is not. Expressed as such, these are properties of a thing. "Conscious" is not enumerable. "Moving" is not enumerable. Expressed as such, these are processes. I doubt we're so far off in our nomenclature as you fear.

That doesn't help Jabba's math though.
Click to expand...

Not at all, illustrative of the fact that an argument can simultaneously have many things wrong with it. I agree of your analysis of his statistical model as well.
 
godless dave said:
Where I differ with many of you is that I'm willing to call a working brain a conscious thing. That doesn't help Jabba's math though.
Click to expand...

And I'm willing to call a working car a thing. But that doesn't mean "going 60mph" can only be explained as the car drawing from an existential pool of "potential going 60mph", and that therefore "going 60mph" must either be infinite or immortal.
 
Jabba said:
- So, I need to back further up...
- Somehow, we need to agree upon the thing/process to which I'm referring.
- According to science, there is a particular conscious thing/process that first came into existence when my physical body evolved to a certain complexity. This thing/process never existed before, will cease to exist when my body dies, and will never exist again. This is the "self" to which I'm referring.
- I contend that science is wrong about the very temporary nature of this thing/process.
Click to expand...


It's like deja vu all over again!

Has time stood still?

Is this 2012?
 
Guys, are you really going to do this all over again?

Jabba's mistakes and faulty arguments have been utterly demolished already. Many times. If he doesn't already understand why they're worthless he never will. Just tell him to read the thread.
 
Pixel42 said:
Guys, are you really going to do this all over again?

Jabba's mistakes and faulty arguments have been utterly demolished already. Many times. If he doesn't already understand why they're worthless he never will. Just tell him to read the thread.
Click to expand...

That would be the smart thing to do.
 
Jabba said:
- So, I need to back further up...
- Somehow, we need to agree upon the thing/process to which I'm referring.
- According to science, there is a particular conscious thing/process that first came into existence when my physical body evolved to a certain complexity. This thing/process never existed before, will cease to exist when my body dies, and will never exist again. This is the "self" to which I'm referring.
- I contend that science is wrong about the very temporary nature of this thing/process.
Click to expand...

My Dear Mr. Savage:

I know the "thing/process" to which you are referring--you have called it the "soul".

Your own physical body did not "evolve"; it developed.

Please support your contention with facts...
 
Jabba said:
- So, I need to back further up...
- Somehow, we need to agree upon the thing/process to which I'm referring.
- According to science, there is a particular conscious thing/process that first came into existence when my physical body evolved to a certain complexity. This thing/process never existed before, will cease to exist when my body dies, and will never exist again. This is the "self" to which I'm referring.
- I contend that science is wrong about the very temporary nature of this thing/process.
Click to expand...

My Dear Mr. Savage:

I know the "thing/process" to which you are referring--you have called it the "soul". As long as you continue to conflate "thing" and "process" you will continue to err.

Your own physical body did not "evolve"; it developed.

Please support your contention with facts...
 
godless dave said:
Where I differ with many of you is that I'm willing to call a working brain a conscious thing. That doesn't help Jabba's math though.
Click to expand...
Dave,
- But each brain has a different consciousness, its own consciousness -- that it does not share with any other brain, that never existed before the existence of this brain, and will never exist after the existence of this brain.
 
Jabba said:
Dave,
- But each brain has a different consciousness, its own consciousness -- that it does not share with any other brain, that never existed before the existence of this brain, and will never exist after the existence of this brain.
Click to expand...


Wrong, Jabba. Wrong.

Each brain is running a process that creates within itself an illusion of consciousness and continuity. There is no real basic thing called consciousness. If there were, you could define it. What are its characteristics? What of it survives from your first birthday to your forty-first? What survives death and reincarnates?

You can't answer these questions. You will pretend they don't exist. And you will continue to be: 1) wrong; and 2) remarkably disrespectful of those who have explained this to you already.
 
Jabba said:
Dave,
- But each brain has a different consciousness, its own consciousness -- that it does not share with any other brain, that never existed before the existence of this brain, and will never exist after the existence of this brain.
Click to expand...

Yes, because each brain is a different brain, that is not connected to any other brain, that never existed before and will never exist again after it dies.
 
Why are you so afraid of death, Jabba? Are you afraid of sleep? A dreamless sleep?

Do you fear death more than you fear making a fool of yourself? Think: When you're gone, the memory of your foolishness may very well outlast any other memory of you.

You won't be aware of that, of course, not after your dying moment, but until then it might weigh on you. Oh yes, honey, it might.
 
Jabba said:
- Not to worry. I'm back

- I don’t really understand the formula I’ve been using... I just accepted it -- it was in a book -- even though it didn't seem to make sense. I just assumed that I was missing something.
- Could be that you guys were trying to explain this to me and I either wasn't reading, or just wasn't understanding, your explanations. Obviously, I'm not admitting any wrong-doing -- I simply didn't have time to scrutinize nearly all of your posts, and naturally focused on the friendlier ones...
- Anyway, my first problem is that the formula always has the denominator larger than the numerator -- whatever the issue -- and the complementary hypothesis always outweighs the null(?) hypothesis.
- What am I missing, or misunderstanding?

P(H|E) = P(E|H)*P(H)/( P(E|H)*P(H)+P(E|~H)*P(~H)).
Click to expand...

You are not the only regular participant in this thread who does not understand the formula. A good many of your detractors also do not understand it, especially the ones who keep repeating the mantra "The probability that I exist is 1".

The formula, in plain English:

The probability that I would have come to exist given H is equal to (the probability that I would have come to exist given H times the probability that H is true) divided by (the probabiliity that I would have come to exist given H plus the probability that I would have come to exist given something other than H times the probability that something other than H is true)

The formula uses the observed existence of one's sentient experience as a test of the "H" hypothesis. The mathematical question the formula poses is "How likely is it that I would be observing anything at all if H is true?" The question is anthropic in nature.

The formula is formally correct. "H" and "not H" need to be approximately defined. The probabilies may also be approximated, if one is looking for an approximate answer to the question posed.

An approximate answer can be quite compelling, if one is convinced that the approximations are within reason, and that no reasonable change to any approximation would significantly alter the conclusion.

I think one might well use the formula to rule out a particular interpretation of the science. But any interpretation of the science is not the science itself. An interpretation is simply what someone thinks the science implies, or "H".

Your difficulty, in terms of achieving your stated goal, is that the formula is entirely subjective. You might well use the formula to completely convince yourself that "H" is either correct or not.

But you cannot use the formula to prove anything to anyone else. The formula applies only to the user, and no one is compelled to be a user.

Many, in fact, would be unable to force themselves to be users even if they wanted to be users. Some people simply have no faith in probabilistic approximations.

I happen to disagree with those people. I think the ability and the willingness to make and use probabilistic approximations is essential. I think we all successfully use such approximations every day of our lives, and could not get by without them.

Additionally, I think there are many here among us who, aside from feeling life is but a joke, also do not understand that probability is not about randomness. Probability is simply a methodology for making fuzzy determinations in the light of incomplete information. In that sense, probability is useful when randomness causes our knowledge to be incomplete. But that is as far as the relation between probability and randomness goes. Probability works the same in a deterministic universe as in an indeterministic one. the formulations are the same, the ranges of outcomes are the same, the fuzzy determinations, and their reliability, are the same, whether the universe is deterministic or indeterministic.

 
Last edited:
Toontown said:
You are not the only regular participant in this thread who does not understand the formula. A good many of your detractors also do not understand it, especially the ones who keep repeating the mantra "The probability that I exist is 1".
The formula, in plain English:

The probability that I would have come to exist given H is equal to (the probability that I would have come to exist given H times the probability that H is true) divided by (the probabiliity that I would have come to exist given H plus the probability that I would have come to exist given something other than H times the probability that something other than H is true)

The formula uses the observed existence of oneself as a test of the "H" hypothesis. The mathematical question the formula poses is "How likely is it that I would be observing anything at all if H is true?" The question is anthropic in nature.

The formula is formally correct. "H" and "not H" need to be approximately defined. The probabilies may also be approximated, if one is looking for an approximate answer to the question posed.

An approximate answer can be quite compelling, if one is convinced that the approximations are within reason, and that no reasonable change to any approximation would significantly alter the conclusion.

I think one might well use the formula to rule out "H", but what the alternative to "H" might be is another question.

Your difficulty, in terms of achieving your stated goal, is that the formula is entirely subjective. You might well use the formula to completely convince yourself that "H" is either correct or not.

But you cannot use the formula to prove anything to anyone else. The formula applies only to the user, and no one is compelled to be a user.

Many, in fact, would be unable to force themselves to be users even if they wanted to be users. Some people simply have no faith in probabilistic approximations.

I happen to disagree with those people. I think the ability and the willingness to make and use probabilistic approximations is essential. I think we all successfully use such approximations every day of our lives, and could not get by without them.

Additionally, I think there are many here among us who, aside from feeling life is but a joke, also do not understand that probability is not about randomness. Probability is simply a methodology for making fuzzy determinations in the light of incomplete information. In that sense, probability is useful when randomness causes our knowledge to be incomplete. But that is as far as the relation between probability and randomness goes. Probability works the same in a deterministic universe as in an indeterministic one. the formulations are the same, the ranges of outcomes are the same, the fuzzy determinations, and their reliability, are the same, whether the universe is deterministic or indeterministic.

Click to expand...
Good post! As to the highlighted, how is it misunderstood?
 
The Norseman said:
Good post! As to the highlighted, how is it misunderstood?
Click to expand...

I was still editing the post when you posted. The finished version is a little different from your quote.

"The probability that I exist is 1" is either a red herring or a non-sequitur, in terms of the formula, depending on the intent of the claimant.

The probability that any observed evidence exists is always 1. Even if the evidence takes the form of the absence of something, the absence of that something exists.
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.

Back
Top Bottom