Cont: Proof of Immortality, V for Very long discussion

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caveman1917 said:
The real question here, after all, isn't the ludicrous unlikelihood of Jabba's specific experiences (they are ludicrously unlikely) but whether his specific experiences can be considered to have been specially rather than randomly selected from the class of all possible experiences (they can not).

I agree. I'd challenge anyone who sticks to this Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy explanation to explain what is wrong with the following argument (or any other such argument) where I condition on my own existence in the second statement:

If my parents hadn't met then I wouldn't exist. I exist. Therefor, my parents have met.
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But, from my perspective, there is a negligible but non-zero probability that your parents never met, and your mother was artificially inseminated with your father's sperm. Therefore, according to the fallacy fitters, your statement is false, you have cherry-picked a special case, and you have committed the TS fallacy.

This is essentially the argument of most of the professional TS fallacy fitters.

I would disregard that miniscule probability (from my perspective) and accept your conclusion. I would almost certainly be correct, but I would also be accused of having committed the TS fallacy, based solely on the miniscule probability that I'm wrong.

But I wouldn't bet on it if losing the bet means the world explodes. Even though the world almost certainly wouldn't explode, the payoff wouldn't justify the miniscule risk.
 
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jt512 said:
No. You've missed my point. My point is that Jabba's observation of his existence is not in the unconditional sample space*; it's in the restricted sample space that is conditioned on his existence—i.e., where his existence is a given.

*If you think it is, then what is the probability that he would have observed his nonexistence?
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The same goes for mine, doesn't it? Yes, after conditioning on E the sample space is restricted to the ellipse representing E, in both your and my diagram (you've made a second diagram representing this, just pretend that I have such a second diagram for mine as well). My point was to show you that this, in and of itself, does not entail that E doesn't differentiate between the hypotheses - that solely depends on where the line goes through E (whether through the middle or off on the side).
 
Toontown said:
But, from my perspective, there is a negligible but non-zero probability that your parents never met, and your mother was artificially inseminated with your father's sperm.
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Yes, I didn't feel like writing it out completely in Bayesian form, so I just put in the form of a simple syllogism - after all we know that Bayesian inference reduces to propositional logic in the limit where the probabilities go to 0 or 1. But as you can see in a further post I ended up having to write it out in full anyway, because of an edge case where we'd otherwise get a divide by zero error in P(E|~H,E) when ~H n E = empty set.

But I wouldn't bet on it if losing the bet means the world explodes.
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You should always bet on something if losing the bet means the world explodes. Because if the world explodes you'd be dead, and hence you can assign zero probability to finding yourself having lost the bet, therefor the bet is always positive ev :)
 
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- I'll try again.

232
godless dave said:
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In scientific models for consciousness, it is exactly as traceable as the cause and effect that led to a particular brain existing, because they are the same thing. My particular brain can never exist again. If you somehow made an exact copy of my brain, It would exhibit an exact copy of my consciousness.
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236
Jabba said:
- But, it wouldn't exhibit your particular self-awareness. "You" would not be reincarnated.
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239
godless dave said:
For exactly the same reason it wouldn't be my particular brain. It would be a copy.
If two separate brains could produce the same self-awareness that would mean the scientific explanation for self-awareness is wrong.
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Jabba said:
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Dave,
- In other words, there is a "thing," or process, that is exhibited in you that would not be exhibited in a perfect copy of you (see 232-239, above)...
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Jabba said:
- Am I wrong about that?
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- Yes, or no?
 
I already answered twice.

Both answers were identical.

But there were two separate answers.
 
godless dave said:
I already answered twice.

Both answers were identical.

But there were two separate answers.
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Dave,
- Unfortunately, I'm still not sure what you're saying, but I think you're saying that there is a "thing," or process, that is exhibited in you that would not be exhibited in a perfect copy of you. If I'm right, do you have a name that I can use for that thing or process?
 
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Jabba said:
Dave,
- Unfortunately, I'm still not sure what you're saying, but I think you're saying that there is a "thing," or process, that is exhibited in you that would not be exhibited in a perfect copy of you.
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I'm saying that a perfect copy of me would behave exactly as the original did, and that it would be self-aware in exactly the same away they original was, would be conscious in exactly the same way the original was, and would have subjective experiences in exactly the same way the original did.

It would be separate from the original because two is more than one. All processes it exhibits would be identical to the processes exhibited by the original.

My brain is conscious.

A copy of my brain would be conscious in exactly the same way. It would be impossible to tell them apart.

Everything about the copy would be separate from the original but none of it would be different from the original.
 
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abaddon said:
And how about your grandparent's parents? were there not eight of those?
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The results are more interesting if you consider how descendents fit into Jabba's formula. For example, if Jabba has 4 grandchildren then it is 4 times more likely that one of them exists than it is that he exists. ;)
 
Jabba said:
Unfortunately, I'm still not sure what you're saying...
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Send Befuddled Old Man back to the green room and read the thread, Jabba. Everyone else manages it; so can you. You can start with all the posts telling you that what you're contriving and trying to paste onto the scientific hypothesis isn't even remotely the same kind of concept as what science actually theorizes on this point. You're not slightly wrong here, you're wildly wrong.

...but I think you're saying that there is a "thing," or process...
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No.

A process is not a thing. Nor is it a "thing." A process is a process, and it doesn't come in individually prepackaged units that you can count up and imagine exist "potentially" in infinite numbers so as to conjure up your Big Denominator. And for pete's sake stop trying to cram your words into your critics' mouths. This is the umpteenth time you've introduced such an attempt with, "What I think you're trying to say..."

...that is exhibited in you that would not be exhibited in a perfect copy of you.
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Exhibited by you. The difference is important. The sense of self isn't inside you somewhere. It's a property that the intelligent organism exhibits. If you simply must phrase it in passive voice, do it properly. The sense of self is a property exhibited by a functioning human nervous system.

A perfect copy of you would exhibit the same property in exactly the same way. "Same" is a word that here means "indistinguishable from" or "identical in all respects to." It does not -- nor was ever intended to mean -- "being of one entity with." Many of us have already had to descend to pedantic lengths to rid you of this equivocation, but you seem to be having none of it.

If I'm right, do you have a name that I can use for that thing or process?
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A soul. You're trying very desperately and very ham-fistedly to trick godless dave into agreeing that what he's talking about is your concept of a soul. Do you really think you're fooling anyone?
 
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Jabba said:
Dave,
- Unfortunately, I'm still not sure what you're saying, but I think you're saying that there is a "thing," or process, that is exhibited in you that would not be exhibited in a perfect copy of you. If I'm right, do you have a name that I can use for that thing or process?
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Jabba,
- What I think you're saying is that you are aware that your "proof" is a crock, so you are resorting to misrepresenting what other people have posted.
 
Jabba said:
Unfortunately, I'm still not sure what you're saying, but I think you're saying that there is a "thing," or process, that is exhibited in you that would not be exhibited in a perfect copy of you.
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And Natalie Portman is a "duck" or an Oscar Award Winner.
 
caveman1917 said:
The same goes for mine, doesn't it? Yes, after conditioning on E the sample space is restricted to the ellipse representing E, in both your and my diagram (you've made a second diagram representing this, just pretend that I have such a second diagram for mine as well). My point was to show you that this, in and of itself, does not entail that E doesn't differentiate between the hypotheses - that solely depends on where the line goes through E (whether through the middle or off on the side).
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No. It doesn't matter where the line through E goes. Evidence discriminates between hypotheses when it changes the probability of those hypotheses. Imagine you've been in a coma your whole life. One day you wake up and observe that you exist. You're in the conditional sample space, because you could not have observed otherwise. What does your observing you exist inform you about the probability that you were born by natural means or by artificial insemination? Nothing. Whatever those probabilities were before you woke up, they're the same after you woke up.

Jabba's got the same problem. His observing that he exists is completely uninformative about how he came to exist. And Bayes can't save him, because the likelihood ratio, when conditioned on his existence, is 1.
 
jt512 said:
Imagine you've been in a coma your whole life. One day you wake up and observe that you exist. You're in the conditional sample space, because you could not have observed otherwise. What does your observing you exist inform you about the probability that you were born by natural means or by artificial insemination? Nothing. Whatever those probabilities were before you woke up, they're the same after you woke up.
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Your analogy is not equivalent to Jabba' use of his formula, if that is your intent. In your analogy, the subject is equally likely to wake up irrespective of how he was conceived. Furthermore, upon awakening, the subject has no basis on which to form any competing hypotheses at all. He knows nothing at all except that he exists.

Jabba has bases upon which to form or recognize the existence of competing hypotheses, does so, and argues that he expects to observe nothing if H is true, and expects to find himself in the conditional space only if his alternative hypothesis is true.

jt512 said:
Jabba's got the same problem. His observing that he exists is completely uninformative about how he came to exist. And Bayes can't save him, because the likelihood ratio, when conditioned on his existence, is 1.
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I agree with this to the extent that casting doubt on one interpretation of reality does not reveal how he did come to exist. There are too many other possibilities. And Jabba's alternative is not well supported by evidence.

~H could be something like 'Every possible universe exists, and one of the possibilities inevitably includes me". And there is even support for that explanation. It is an implication of inflation theory, which is in turn an implication of quantum mechanics. As Tegmark successfully argued, the implications of a theory are part of the theory, and as well supported as any other part the theory.
 
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