Cont: Proof of Immortality, V for Very long discussion

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The Sparrow said:
Same for bananas.
It has been about 400 posts since this was last raised. Are you going to explain how it is possible for any given banana to exist?
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See, bananas don't have selves so two identical bananas are identical, but we assume that two identical people each have separate selves. By assuming people have immortal souls, we can show that people have immortal souls.

It's all so very simple.
 
Jabba said:
Dave,
- My claim is that if there is an infinity of potential selves, the likelihood of the current existence of your particular self (given OOFLam) is virtually zero. I know you don't agree with that -- but, that's what I'll try to show next.
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godless dave said:
I wasn't asking you to repeat your claim, I was asking you to support it.
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Jabba said:
Dave,
- I was trying to explain what I thought that the number of potential things over all time has to do with the likelihood of any particular thing existing at a particular time. I.e., if there is an infinity of potential selves, the likelihood of the current existence of your particular self (given OOFLam) is virtually zero. I.e., the (or at least a) basic answer to your question.
- I now need to explain why I make that claim.

- If there is an infinity of potential selves, but only 7 billion existing selves, the likelihood that your particular self would be currently existing (given OOFLam) would be 7 billion over infinity.
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godless dave said:
Why?
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- For the same reason that the likelihood that the top card in a freshly shuffled deck of cards would be a 3 of hearts is one over 52...
 
Jabba said:
- For the same reason that the likelihood that the top card in a freshly shuffled deck of cards would be a 3 of hearts is one over 52...
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No.

There are 52 unique cards in a standard deck giving you a 1/52 chance of any individual card.

There are no "Infinite Number of Potential Souls" sitting around in a pool somewhere waiting to magically poof into existence.

This has been explained to you already. Multiple times.

YOU ARE MAKING UP THE DENOMINATOR OUT OF THIN AIR! IT'S NOT VALID. YOUR EQUATION DOESN'T WORK.

STOP STATING THE SAME THINGS.

Edited by jsfisher: 
Changed Size=7 tag to bold so text formatting would be less distruptive.
 
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Jabba said:
- For the same reason that the likelihood that the top card in a freshly shuffled deck of cards would be a 3 of hearts is one over 52...
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But my existence wasn't the result of picking a person at random from a pool of potential people. It was the result of two adult humans mating, which, for those two people, has only a finite number of possible outcomes.
 
Jabba said:
- For the same reason that the likelihood that the top card in a freshly shuffled deck of cards would be a 3 of hearts is one over 52...
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But those are actual cards, not "potential" cards. There are an infinite number of "potential" cards no matter how many of them are in the deck in your hand. This is why the notion of potentiality, and its ability in your model to produce infinite possibilities from which to draw a single sample, is just plain wrong.
 
Jabba said:
...if there is an infinity of potential selves, the likelihood of the current existence of your particular self (given OOFLam) is virtually zero.
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No, it is zero. Hence reductio ad absurdum and your claim fails forthwith.

If there is an infinity of potential selves...
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There aren't. The scientific hypothesis involves no such concept.
 
JayUtah said:
No, it is zero. Hence reductio ad absurdum and your claim fails forthwith.



There aren't. The scientific hypothesis involves no such concept.
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But infinity doesn't belong in a math equation it is a concept right? By inserting infinity in math you can 'prove' a false statement.

So if we treat infinity as a number...

5/inf = 0

10,000/inf = 0

therefore
5/inf = 10,000/inf

and
inf*(5/inf) = inf*(10,000/inf)

therefore
5 = 10,000
 
Waterman said:
But infinity doesn't belong in a math equation it is a concept right?
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Yes, in most cases. But even as such a concept, some mathematical contexts define the result of dividing a non-zero real number by infinity as zero. The obvious subsequent failure of the equivalence relation among real numbers by the results of dividing each by infinity (or, for that matter, by zero) is why it is usually more productive in other contexts to retain the concept of infinity as its behavior in the limit, such that all the relations that are meant to hold for real numbers still hold in the limit.

Jabba is trying to have his cake and eat it too. He is invoking the special contexts in which division by infinity is defined. But he is equivocating by trying to retain the in-the-limit result of "virtually" (i.e., approaching) zero instead of exactly zero. You can say (in a restricted fashion) that a non-zero real number divided by infinity yields zero. Or you can say that the quotient of two real numbers approaches zero as the denominator approaches infinity. But neither of those fits his hypothesis. And predictably he refuses to engage in any discussion that points out any such error. I interpret this as certain knowledge on his part that his desired approach has no basis in actual mathematics, but likely desperation on his part to make it seem to others that it does.
 
godless dave said:
But my existence wasn't the result of picking a person at random from a pool of potential people. It was the result of two adult humans mating, which, for those two people, has only a finite number of possible outcomes.
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-What were the odds, back at the big bang, of you existing now?
 
The Sparrow said:
Same for bananas.
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And also the same for Jabba's observable existence in Jabba's preferred hypothesis, since if Jabba's numbers are valid there would still be an infinite number of "potential selves" and a finite number of bodies for them to occupy.

But not for the hypothesis he opposes, in which consciousness is the result of brain processes.
 
Jabba said:
-What were the odds, back at the big bang, of you existing now?
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Small but greater than zero. The key concept is that those odds have nothing to do with how special I am in any sort of objective sense. To think otherwise would be to circle my hole in the billions of other holes in the barn and say, "See, that's the one I was supposed to hit."

Here's a noodle-baker, Jabba. What were the odds, ten years ago, of you existing now with exactly this sense of self, complete with all its memories, proclivities, and angst? From that point in time, aren't there an infinite number of "potential selves" that could have arisen given certain vicissitudes of life?
 
Jabba said:
-What were the odds, back at the big bang, of you existing now?
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I return to the question you ran away from before.

You have two parents. Each of those had two parents, each of those had two parents of their own and so forth. Rolling that back to the time of the Romans, you alone must have 295,147,905,179,352,825,856 direct ancestors living at the time of the romans. Let's roll that back over the 200,000 years of human history.

You alone must have 6.8384992808342714285192722785332 x 102026 ancestors all existing at the same time some 200,000 or so years ago.

But it's worse than that. Those are just the ancestors from that many generations back. In terms of people who have actually existed the number is the sum of 1 (you) +2 (your parents) +4 (your grandparents) +8 and so forth. That is well beyond the number of atoms in the observable universe which is around 1084
But it's worse. There are 7 billion of us and this equally applies to us all.

But it's worse again. This only applies to people who actually existed. If one includes all of the possible combinations which could have happened then one approaches infinity and your calculation reduces to infinity/infinity which, I am certain that you Jabba would agree, is one.

Are you not agreeing with me?
 
JayUtah said:
Small but greater than zero. The key concept is that those odds have nothing to do with how special I am in any sort of objective sense. To think otherwise would be to circle my hole in the billions of other holes in the barn and say, "See, that's the one I was supposed to hit."

Here's a noodle-baker, Jabba. What were the odds, ten years ago, of you existing now with exactly this sense of self, complete with all its memories, proclivities, and angst? From that point in time, aren't there an infinite number of "potential selves" that could have arisen given certain vicissitudes of life?
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Even before reading your reply, I thought it apparent that Jabba had quite clearly demonstrated the tautological nature of his argument by asking his Odds-at-the-Big-Bang question.

At the instant of the Big Bang, Jabba cannot argue there are potential selves without arguing that they exist prior to the Big Bang itself (yes, I know that "prior" doesn't apply, but you get my meaning). And if he is arguing they exist prior to the Big Bang itself, then he is quite clearly using the existence of souls as a premise to prove the existence of souls.
 
Waterman said:
But infinity doesn't belong in a math equation it is a concept right? By inserting infinity in math you can 'prove' a false statement.

So if we treat infinity as a number...

5/inf = 0

10,000/inf = 0

therefore
5/inf = 10,000/inf
Click to expand...


Everything above is actually correct, with the last equation simplifying to 0 = 0.

inf*(5/inf) = inf*(10,000/inf)
Click to expand...


But the above statement is false, because multiplication of infinity by 0 is undefined in the extended real number system.
 
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jt512 said:
Everything above is actually correct, with the last equation simplifying to 0 = 0.




But the above statement is false, because multiplication of infinity by 0 is undefined in the extended real number system.
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Y'know, I think that might be precisely the point.
 
Rolling that along, the surface area of the entire planet is 510 x 1012 m2.

How much area did your 200,000 year old ancestors have?

510 x 1012/6.8384992808342714285192722785332 x 102026 = 74.6 x 10-1014 m2 each. That's approaching the planck length. Where is it that the other 7 billion of us place our ancestors?

But wait, it's worse. We can roll that back to our further mammallian ancestors going back 65,000,000 years at least. Imagine what that does to the numbers.

I await your response.
 
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