Cont: Proof of Immortality, V for Very long discussion

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abaddon said:
Unclear. In the Jabbaverse that could also be a cat or a coffee table. Since I possess neither dog, cat nor coffee table, the Jabbaverse is unknown to me.
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But since most people have two legs, and most coffee tables have four legs, a three-legged dog must be partly both. So the real question is...

Do you have a Juan Valdez?
 
Jabba said:
- This is where we're passing in the night. The experience that reincarnationists think returns after death must surely be the same experience that you think doesn't.
- Why do you think that they're referring to a different experience?
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Under H, you can't have reincarnation. You keep confusing H and ~H.
 
Jabba said:
LL,
- Which of the following do you disagree with?
1. If I have only one finite life (at most), my current existence is extremely unlikely.
2. That being the case, my current existence is evidence that I have more than one finite life.
3. The most likely conclusion of my current existence is that I always exist.
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Loss Leader said:
Jabba - I am very happy to answer you.

I've never really agreed with this. As far as I know, we live in a clockwork universe where everything that happens is a necessary consequence of its starting conditions. If that's the case, then the chance that you'd exist would be 100%...
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LL,
- I think this is really interesting stuff...
- Anyway, let's go back to the apparent singularity, 'before' the big bang. Supposedly, this was before time and cause and effect.
- What would be the likelihood, at that point, (accepting determinism from then on), of your current existence.
- Before determinism began, what was the likelihood of your current existence?
 
Jabba said:
LL,
- I think this is really interesting stuff...
- Anyway, let's go back to the apparent singularity, 'before' the big bang. Supposedly, this was before time and cause and effect.
- What would be the likelihood, at that point, (accepting determinism from then on), of your current existence.
- Before determinism began, what was the likelihood of your current existence?
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How could we even guess at that?

And what does it matter?

Hans
 
Jabba said:
LL,
- I think this is really interesting stuff...
- Anyway, let's go back to the apparent singularity, 'before' the big bang. Supposedly, this was before time and cause and effect.
- What would be the likelihood, at that point, (accepting determinism from then on), of your current existence.
- Before determinism began, what was the likelihood of your current existence?
Click to expand...

If you had paid attention to Loss Leader, you'd have discovered that his point is precisely that there is no rational basis to compute the requested value. Because we cannot know the nature of the universe from a perspective outside of it, we cannot know its mechanics in that necessary larger context. Hence, in the case of a clockwork universe, the probability would be 1. When the dearth of evidence makes it possible for a variable literally to take on any of of its possible values, it's meaningless to ask people to speculate within those limits -- because there are no limits.

Now how about you put away the pidgin cosmology and address the parts of the problem that do have computable answers.
 
Argumemnon said:
Under H, you can't have reincarnation. You keep confusing H and ~H.
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Argumemnon,
- But, that's the point.
- My claim is that my current existence supports reincarnation, and essentially disproves H. Under H, you can't have reincarnation. If there is such a thing as reincarnation, H must be wrong.
 
JayUtah said:
If you had paid attention to Loss Leader, you'd have discovered that his point is precisely that there is no rational basis to compute the requested value. Because we cannot know the nature of the universe from a perspective outside of it, we cannot know its mechanics in that necessary larger context. Hence, in the case of a clockwork universe, the probability would be 1. When the dearth of evidence makes it possible for a variable literally to take on any of of its possible values, it's meaningless to ask people to speculate within those limits -- because there are no limits.

Now how about you put away the pidgin cosmology and address the parts of the problem that do have computable answers.
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Jay,
- What would those be?
 
Jabba said:
Argumemnon,
- But, that's the point.
- My claim is that my current existence supports reincarnation, and essentially disproves H. Under H, you can't have reincarnation. If there is such a thing as reincarnation, H must be wrong.
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...

Why do we keep doing this? If you can see any logic at all in that argument, Jabba, you are, as far as I'm concerned, welcome to it.

Hans
 
Jabba said:
Argumemnon,
- But, that's the point.
- My claim is that my current existence supports reincarnation, and essentially disproves H. Under H, you can't have reincarnation. If there is such a thing as reincarnation, H must be wrong.
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You are ignoring your Bayesian formula completely now, and just going with an unsupported claim instead?
 
MRC_Hans said:
How could we even guess at that?

And what does it matter?

Hans
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Hans,
- It's very easy and matters a whole lot.
- At that point, none of the causes that determine your current existence are in place, and the likelihood that they will ultimately come about to produce you now is infinitely small.
--- Jabba
 
Jabba said:
My claim is that my current existence supports reincarnation...
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But you cannot prove it does. So it amounts to nothing more than your belief.

and essentially disproves H.
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False dilemma. There are alternatives besides reincarnation that you do not consider or handle properly in your formulation.

Under H, you can't have reincarnation. If there is such a thing as reincarnation, H must be wrong.
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This argument blatantly begs the question.
 
Jabba said:
and the likelihood that they will ultimately come about to produce you now is infinitely small.
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No, you have no idea what that likelihood is. That's the thrust of Loss Leader's argument. You're assuming a chance universe.

Further, now you're also committing the Texas sharpshooter fallacy once again.
 
Jabba said:
Hans,
- It's very easy and matters a whole lot.
- At that point, none of the causes that determine your current existence are in place, and the likelihood that they will ultimately come about to produce you now is infinitely small.
--- Jabba
Click to expand...

Jabba

On the other hand, the number of potential causes that could determine your current existence is infinitely large.

Hans
 
Jabba said:
Argumemnon,
- But, that's the point.
- My claim is that my current existence supports reincarnation, and essentially disproves H. Under H, you can't have reincarnation. If there is such a thing as reincarnation, H must be wrong.
Click to expand...

Your current existence in no way supports reincarnation. Quite the opposite. The self is an emergent property of a functioning brain. As such when the brain stops functioning, the self ceases to exist.

In order for reincarnation to be real, the self must be an entity that exists separately from the brain. It must, at some point, attach itself to a brain. As you are well aware and have agreed to, this is far less likely than the materialistic explanation.
 
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