Cont: Proof of Immortality, V for Very long discussion

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jsfisher said:
Not quite. ~H says it at least one thing that isn't physical must exist. It does not say specifically it has to be Jabba's sense of self.
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Actually, since Jabba has been including immaterial souls in his calculation of the likelihood of his existence under H, ~H must include all hypotheses under which there are no immaterial souls.
 
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JayUtah said:
Okay, so that's two posts you've written deferring discussion of a mathematical expression whose dilemma was supposed to be self-evident in seconds. Any idea how many more deferrals you'll be writing before you address the actual, very simple issue?
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Prediction: Four, or an infinite number...
 
JayUtah said:
It appears the forum lost the first edit. The original post now has the correct relational operators. If it doesn't, this is how the problem should read:

Let a be a non-negative real number such that 0 ≤ a ≤ 1. Find b, 0 ≤ b ≤ 1, such that a ⋅ b > a.​
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Jabba said:
- Good. I'll be back.
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Jay,
- I'm not saying that P(a)*P(b)>P(a).
- I'm saying that P(c|a,b)>P(c|a)
- I'm not sure that I'm using all the right symbols, but you can probably figure out what I'm trying to say. In my proposition, a and b are both givens.
 
Argumemnon said:
You just said there wasn't a pool of potential selves and now you bring it back up! Which is it?
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Argumemnon,
- It's just that to me, a "pool" of potential selves implies a limited pool -- so in that sense, I'm claiming that there is no pool. An unlimited pool is something entirely different.
 
Jabba said:
An unlimited pool is something entirely different.
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No. A pool is a pool regardless of its cardinality. But you used the absence of such a pool to attempt to justify why the number was infinitely large. That argument no longer holds because you conceded its premise. Please provide another.
 
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Jabba said:
...but you can probably figure out what I'm trying to say.
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No; I don't know what you mean by c. There was no c in my example. I asked you a very simple question involving only purely symbolic values. You complained earlier that you didn't understand what I was trying to say. Now that I've pared it down to its absolute bare essentials, you're trying to obfuscate it all up again.

Does this expression have a solution? Yes or no.

Let a be a non-negative real number such that 0 ≤ a ≤ 1. Find b, 0 ≤ b ≤ 1, such that a ⋅ b > a.​

In my proposition, a and b are both givens.
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Then they must also be givens under H, otherwise you're changing horses. Except that H requires only a, so you gain nothing if it's a given.
 
JayUtah said:
No. A pool is a pool regardless of its cardinality. But you used the absence of such a pool to attempt to justify why the cardinality was infinitely large. That argument no longer holds. Please provide another.
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- OK.
- I think that there is no limited pool, but there is a limited pool...
 
JayUtah said:
No; I don't know what you mean by c. There was no c in my example. I asked you a very simple question involving only purely symbolic values. You complained earlier that you didn't understand what I was trying to say. Now that I've pared it down to its absolute bare essentials, you're trying to obfuscate it all up again.

Does this expression have a solution? Yes or no.

Let a be a non-negative real number such that 0 ≤ a ≤ 1. Find b, 0 ≤ b ≤ 1, such that a ⋅ b > a.​



Then they must also be givens under H, otherwise you're changing horses. Except that H requires only a, so you gain nothing if it's a given.
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Jay,
- Your example is not analogous to my claim. C is my current existence. My claim is that my current existence is more likely if not all things are physical, than it is if all things are physical.
 
Jabba said:
Your example is not analogous to my claim.
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It is exactly analogous to your claim.

C is my current existence.
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Under H, C is conditioned solely upon the existence of a body.

Under your hypothesis, C is conditioned not only upon the existence of a body, but also upon other events. It cannot possibly be more probable than C conditioned merely upon one of the factors in your model.

My claim is that my current existence is more likely if not all things are physical, than it is if all things are physical.
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That is your claim, but it is not supported by your formulation.

Your current existence under H requires only the body. Your current existence under your hypothesis requires a body, a soul, and the connection to be made between them. These additional events can occur, at most, with probability 1. At most they can only equal the probability of H. They cannot exceed it, and in practical terms they must be less.
 
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Jabba said:
- OOPs. I think that there is no limited pool of potential selves, but that there is an unlimited pool of potential selves.
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Better. However, your argument for an infinite number of them was still predicated on a premise you've now completely discarded. You have no remaining argument for why any number of "potential selves" must be said to exist in a countable way. You can't throw out your premise and keep your conclusion.
 
Jabba said:
Jay,
- Your example is not analogous to my claim. C is my current existence. My claim is that my current existence is more likely if not all things are physical, than it is if all things are physical.
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Please explain how your brain is more likely to exist if not all things are physical.
 
Jabba said:
Jay,
- Your example is not analogous to my claim. C is my current existence. My claim is that my current existence is more likely if not all things are physical, than it is if all things are physical.
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Right.

According to you: all things physical = less likely

but

all things physical PLUS something non-physical = more likely

You cannot see that one thing plus another thing equals something larger than the first thing alone?
 
Oh!

After writing my previous post, I think I now understand how Jabba is thinking.

If zero is "doesn't exist" all the way to one is "exists", then he seems to think that the probability of the physical is close to zero and all he has to do is ADD whatever he wants because it moves that first probability closer to one.

Anyone care to respond and let me know if that makes sense? I know actual conditional probabilities are multiplicative, but does my (erroneous) reasoning seem sensible?
 
jond said:
Please explain how your brain is more likely to exist if not all things are physical.
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jond,
- My self is more likely to exist now if not all things are physical. If not all things are physical, my self may not depend upon my specific brain.
 
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