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Cont: Proof of Immortality, V for Very long discussion

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godless dave said:
So are you using "reproducible" to mean make a copy? I assumed you were because you posted this:
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Dave,
- At first, not the way you were -- I was using it to mean the same, when it came to selves. Now, I'm trying to use it in your meaning of making a copy. I think I should now use "re-create" to indicate my previous meaning.
 
Jabba said:
Dave,
- At first, not the way you were -- I was using it to mean the same, when it came to selves. Now, I'm trying to use it in your meaning of making a copy. I think I should now use "re-create" to indicate my previous meaning.
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Can you think of anything in nature that can come back after it's gone? Anything where, if you repeated the steps that resulted in the thing, you would get the same thing?
 
Jabba said:
Dave,
- At first, not the way you were -- I was using it to mean the same, when it came to selves. Now, I'm trying to use it in your meaning of making a copy. I think I should now use "re-create" to indicate my previous meaning.
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Yes in theory. No in practice. How do you plan to recreate something down to its smallest particles and structure?

Why do you know none of this?
 
JoeBentley said:
Nobody was talking about that and you know it.

The mind is not severable from the brain with our current level of technology. Jabba's entire premise is based upon there being some sort of inherent, natural difference between the normal everyday neurological functioning of a brain and his belief that there is an immortal soul that God created and put in all of us, not in some hypothetical post-Singularity future where we've backed up our brains to the cloud.

There now your pedantic exception has been noted and addressed, let's move on before Jabba spins it off into a 30 page derail.
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No let's hear Jabba's take on it. Jabba, when you introduce the notion of the sense of self being severable from the brain to support your claim that some deity made our souls are immortal, do you mean that said deity is using our current level of technology in doing so?
 
caveman1917 said:
No let's hear Jabba's take on it. Jabba, when you introduce the notion of the sense of self being severable from the brain to support your claim that some deity made our souls are immortal, do you mean that said deity is using our current level of technology in doing so?
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Jabba's claim about souls is that there is an infinite number of them, one of which is randomly assigned to a body at some point, possibly at conception. He is very clearly not talking about uploaded cosciousnesses.

And he has been very careful not to make claims about deities.
 
Mojo said:
Jabba's claim about souls is that there is an infinite number of them, one of which is randomly assigned to a body at some point, possibly at conception.
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Hence our current level of technology for separating sense of self from brain doesn't seem very relevant indeed. So I'll consider JayUtah's counterargument based on the claim of an incapability of severing a sense of self from a brain to have been refuted.

He is very clearly not talking about uploaded cosciousnesses.
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Clearly.
 
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caveman1917 said:
Hence our current level of technology for separating sense of self from brain doesn't seem very relevant indeed.
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And neither is any other level of technology.

So I'll consider JayUtah's counterargument based on the claim of an incapability of severing a sense of self from a brain to have been refuted.
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Jabba is not claiming that people may, if they achieve a sufficient level if technology, become immortal. It us that they are inherently immortal, without the intervention of any other entity.

Jabba's claim is that he has an immaterial soul; a soul that can exist independently of a physical substrate, whatever the nature of that substrate.

Jabba claims that when his brain ceases to function his consciousness will continue, without any technological intervention.
 
caveman1917 said:
So I'll consider JayUtah's counterargument based on the claim of an incapability of severing a sense of self from a brain to have been refuted.
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He didn't make a point for you to refute. He didn't go out of his way to acknowledge some completely unrelated to the discussion nitpicking pedantic exception that nobody in the discussion was talking about.

Jabba is talking about a magical Woo-woo soul given to him by God. He's not talking about sci-fi mind uploading so why on Earth would JayUtah be expected to acknowledge an exception that had nothing to do with what either him or Jabba was talking about?

You can't separate the mind from the brain in the way Jabba's argument needs it to be. We all know that's what was being discussed.

Why yet another case of thread nannying?
 
Jabba said:
- I might know how to clear this up: you think that the human brain is, in theory although not in practice, physically reproducible, and that consequently the sense of personal identity is also. You believe that theoretically we could produce a perfect copy of a personal identity -- however, you do not believe that we could even theoretically produce the same personal identity. [...]
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Of all the temerity.

Thanks for telling Dave what he believes. It would be rude to ask him I guess.
 
godless dave said:
Can you think of anything in nature that can come back after it's gone? Anything where, if you repeated the steps that resulted in the thing, you would get the same thing?
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Dave,
- No. But then, I can't think of anything else like consciousness or self -- and besides, all I was trying to show here was why I thought we could assign the likelihood of my current existence to chance, as in a lottery, and equal to something over infinity.
 
Jabba said:
Dave,
- No. But then, I can't think of anything else like consciousness or self -- and besides, all I was trying to show here was why I thought we could assign the likelihood of my current existence to chance, as in a lottery, and equal to something over infinity.
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Jabba. What could anyone possibly say, what sequences and order of words could any human being place into your brain that would break you out of this loop?

You've got the question begging the answer and the answer begging the question. You refer to some vague, undefined variable that makes the soul "different" but when ask to define the soul (which you still refuse to just call it" you point to that same vague, undefined variable to define it.

You can't keep pointing at this non-existence quality you refuse to define as evidence of anything.

You can't "think of anything" like consciousness or self because you have to treat to it as special for your belief system to work.

Just call it a bloody soul and say it's special because God puts it in you and be done with it.
 
Jabba said:
Dave,
- No. But then, I can't think of anything else like consciousness or self -- and besides, all I was trying to show here was why I thought we could assign the likelihood of my current existence to chance, as in a lottery, and equal to something over infinity.
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Seriously? With all the examples of emergent properties you've been given on this immortal thread?

Oh, and you've also been told an infinite number of times how and why your lottery analogy fails.
 
- It seems to me that the simplest Bayes formula --
P(A|E)=P(E|A)*P(A)/P(E|B)*P(B) --
makes more sense for my purpose than does the bivariate formula I've been trying to use. I can't even find the old formula anymore. Objections?
 
Jabba said:
Dave,
- No. But then, I can't think of anything else like consciousness or self -- and besides, all I was trying to show here was why I thought we could assign the likelihood of my current existence to chance, as in a lottery, and equal to something over infinity.
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Jabba,
- If H says there are no souls, how many souls are there if H is true?
 
Jabba said:
But then, I can't think of anything else like consciousness or self...
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Or rather, you can't imagine any other way except by your preconceived immortal soul that consciousness could arise. And because you can't imagine any other possibility, you grow ever more frantic trying to grope for concepts in H that you can make look like a soul. In your formulation, H too must have some kind of souly thing. And you stoop to such low tactics as shoving words in people's mouths to make it seem so. The concept of the sense of self under H is utterly unlike anything involving an immortal soul. At the same time, it's an incredibly simple concept. The sense of self under H is simply another property of the organism that already has several properties.

Your inability to imagine anything except what you already believe fairly pounds the last nail in the coffin of the notion that you are some sort of great "holistic" thinker and that your critics are hopelessly mired in a lesser mode of thought. Let's hope that odious egotistical argument never again sees the light of day.

all I was trying to show here was why I thought we could assign the likelihood of my current existence to chance, as in a lottery, and equal to something over infinity.
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You don't understand what "something over infinity" actually means, either mathematically or arithmetically.

But let's not mince words, because you certainly haven't. As have so many other fringe claimants before you, you've latched onto Bayes as if it were some sort of way to convert belief into fact. You know what you have to do arithmetically to get a low probability that H can produce conscious life, and you're just looking for random concepts to support the arithmetic you've already decided must be the case. As has already been said, you've got the answer you want. Now you're trying to invent a question that leads you there, whether that question makes any objective sense or not.

Enough people have explained patiently why the lottery analogy doesn't work for H. It's patently clear at this point you simply don't want to listen. You're happy in your fantasy world and you've invented a pseudo-mathematical justification that makes it seem real.
 
Jabba said:
- It seems to me that the simplest Bayes formula --
P(A|E)=P(E|A)*P(A)/P(E|B)*P(B) --
makes more sense for my purpose than does the bivariate formula I've been trying to use. I can't even find the old formula anymore. Objections?
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As if anyone's objections in this thread matter the slightest to you. I object to the wielding of any formula by proponents who can't describe and define its terms properly. You've already admitted you don't know what your other formula meant. We have no reason to put faith in you to know what this one means. You're still grappling with the simple concept of evaluating P(E|A) as if A were true. So with that observation, your question is like asking whether you should buy the Ferrari or the Lamborghini when in fact you're still learning to ride the tricycle without falling over. Changing formulas is just another move in your desperate game to come up with a question that fits your answer. You clearly don't actually know anything about quantitative modeling so you're just randomly fiddling with the knobs in hopes of getting something you like.
 
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