Cont: Proof of Immortality, V for Very long discussion
- Thread starter Dancing David
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Jabba refuses to explain how "a massively unlikely outcome" is meaningful if every other outcome is equally or more unlikely.
It's like if I take a deck of cards and shuffle it and make a big deal out of high massively unlikely that particular order is while ignoring that every other possible order is equally unlikely and that the cards have to be in some order.
Jabba has yet to raise above the level of a puddle of water pontificating about how amazing it was the hole he is in fits him so perfectly.
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
Which will only make it funnier when his readers eventually find their way over to ISF and see how badly Jabba misrepresents it.
I write in a dialectical style when I'm writing on skepticism outside a forum. It's just the best way to respond to particular allegations as a single block of prose like a book chapter. But when I quote claimants, I document the quote. I invite people to go see the statement in the original and verify for themselves that I'm quoting honestly and fairly. I simply get no pleasure from "winning" by subterfuge. I'd rather be known as an honest, trustworthy reporter.
We'll see if Jabba does the same. Summarization is part of authorship and editorship. If Jabba wants to summarize this debate elsewhere, that's certainly a valid enterprise. But it's customary to make it easy for the reader to find the source material if, for any reason, he doubts the integrity of the summary. Failing to do this fairly admits one's goal is to deceive.
Jabba
Philosopher
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- No. My blog will just provide the "murder board" -- the "investigation," will be conducted here.
Loss Leader
I would save the receptionist., Moderator
There is no such concept as "potential evidence."
Also, you're the one who said you wanted to take each point separately. Yet, when criticized on point 1, you answer by referring to point 2. Why are the rules of your debate different for you than for everyone else?
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#3189, order up!
122. The Bayesian formula, I suggest, goes
One ‘n a two ‘n a three:
21.1. Finagle’s Constant =
7,000,000,000 x ∞)*=*
‘N thass a fΔx.
8. My theory: Here I am…
10. I shouldn’t be here right now …
11. “Jabba” is a problematic concept in that it’s difficult to see how he has some – any! -- concept in mind…
(I string those dots around because I’m the best punctuator in the room.)
Let’s make that “OOFLam.” Stands for “Oh, ‘onestly, foolish little alliterate man.”
122. The Bayesian formula, I suggest, goes
One ‘n a two ‘n a three:
21.1. Finagle’s Constant =
7,000,000,000 x ∞)*=*
‘N thass a fΔx.
8. My theory: Here I am…
10. I shouldn’t be here right now …
11. “Jabba” is a problematic concept in that it’s difficult to see how he has some – any! -- concept in mind…
(I string those dots around because I’m the best punctuator in the room.)
Let’s make that “OOFLam.” Stands for “Oh, ‘onestly, foolish little alliterate man.”
The Sparrow
Graduate Poster
This! Exactly this!
Because....eights of clubs are just........wow.
If I may further it, since Jabba would say there is a 1/52 chance of the top card ceing the 8 of clubs....
instead you could flip over each card one after the other.
The odds of them coming out in that exact sequence (that they just came out in) are 1 in 80658175170943878571660636856403766975289505440883277824000000000000.
So incredibly unlikely!!!!!
Therefore, VIRTUALLY impossible!
So... there must be a limited pool of possible card combinations, and those combinations are being recycled. Therefore, those combinations are actually.............................immortal.
Seriously Jabba. Explain to us why this is NOT your argument, what your potential selves/texas sharpshooter does differently.
You have my permission to put this post IN ITS ENTIRETY on your map.
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godless dave
Great Dalmuti
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I don't doubt your math abilities but you're forgetting that an 8 of clubs from a different deck of cards would be a different 8 of clubs. Since we could theoretically print an infinite number of decks of cards the odds of you drawing that particular 8 of clubs are 1/∞ (or mabye 52/∞).
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
Not quite true. He explains it, but his explanation assumes something that's not true. When that assumption is made plain to him, he ignores it.
Yes, but let's simplify. You have a fair deck and you shuffle it thoroughly. Now simply turn over the top card.
Now if, ahead of time, you said you'd turn over the three of clubs, and you do, then that's admirably improbable -- p = 1/52. Obviously the probability of any preselected card being at the top of the deck is 1 in 52. What Jabba does, however, is turn over the top card, note that it's the jack of diamonds, exclaim post-draw that it's the card he needed, and marvel at the tremendous luck. The card he needed was whatever card he drew. Some card has to be at the top of the deck. Drawing it establishes the certainty that we'll be talking about some card. The probability that some card will appear is 1.
(We could here talk about an infinite number of "potential" cards, but that would drive us to drink.)
Now here's Jabba's false dilemma expressed in casino terms. Take the fair, shuffled deck. Preselect a card -- as before, the three of clubs. But instead of turning over the top card, draw one from the middle of the deck. It's the nine of spades. Since you didn't draw the preselected card from the middle of the deck, the preselected card "must" be the top card. Right?
In card terms the false dilemma is obvious. If you want to know what the top card is, just draw the top card. You can't infer what one hidden card "must" be just because you know what one other one is. Yet that sort of inference is at the heart of most fringe claims.
Here's how Jabba hides it in his formulation.
Take the proposition "People are immortal." The converse of that is that "People are not immortal," of which one possible condition is that "People have at most one finite life." Jabba formulates immortality as ~H (i.e., "not" some other condition), and that other condition as H, meaning "one finite life." That formulation requires that the union H∪~H is the universe -- all possible conditions. In probability, it means that P(H) + P(~H) = 1. If you can know either P(H) or P(~H), you can compute the other.
Arbitrarily say that P(H) is very small. That's what Jabba does. From that it follows inevitably that P(~H) must be very large, to take us up to 1. The equivocation central to the false dilemma is what ~H exactly is. If ~H is Jabba's singular propostion, then H must be every other proposition. But in determining P(H), Jabba only considered one proposition -- materialism. It's as if he drew only one card from the middle of the deck and proposed that it should represent all the rest of the deck except the top card.
If, on the other hand, H is materialism, then ~H must be the set of all conditions -- hypotheses -- that aren't materialism. And not all of those will lead to immortality. P(~H) may indeed be very large, but Jabba's desired probability really comes from some unknown subset of ~H.
So his argument constantly equivocates between whether H or ~H is the singular, elemental hypothesis, just as the card-deck example flip-flops between whether we're drawing the top card or some other card as the singular card we're going to discuss. You'll notice him variously redefining H and ~H throughout the debate as his critics corner him.
Then there's the notion of preselection, which is what you were really trying to get at. You are just as likely to be dealt a royal flush of spades as you are any other hand. The only reason you have to stifle your tells when dealt a good hand is that we've preselected those hands arbitrarily to have special significance. Jabba doesn't preselect. As you've noticed, he considers himself (or, variously, all seven billion living people) the "target." He doesn't seem to get how that's still the Texas sharpshooter fallacy.
He pulled the same stunt in the Shroud of Turin debate. He tried to Bayes his way through a false dilemma between "Shroud is the burial cloth of Jesus" and "Shroud is a medieval forgery." It was just as amusing back then as it is now. He was trying to argue that the "event" of having stone dust on a piece of cloth that's spent hundreds of years in medieval and modern Europe, in stone buildings, was more probably explained by the cloth having spent a night in Jesus' tomb.
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
Please tell us what you mean by "murder board." I'm unfamiliar with the concept.
If the investigation is to be conducted here, why have you not participated heretofore in the investigation here? Your claims have been thoroughly addressed here, and lately again my me and others. But instead of engaging in that investigation here, you have simply offered a comical set of excuses for why you don't have to.
Even more strangely, you seem to want to take my post from here and put it on your "murder board" as some sort of pertinent response to your latest manifesto. Since you know I have no intention of engaging your blog, I have to wonder how seeming to shift the proposition-and-response dynamic to your own backyard facilitates the "investigation" you say will happen here. Your willingness to respond to investigation seems entirely determined by whether people will play by your arbitrary, unilaterally-foisted, one-sided set of ground rules.
Explain that.
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
Good luck. He's already made it plain that he has no intention of respecting anyone's wishes regarding publication. (So much for Mr Nice Guy, eh?) Qualifying your permission by saying it has to be quoted in its entirety is hardly likely to keep him honest.
"In its entirety" means up to the entire thing. Smaller parts can be published if they fit; it's Jabba's murder board, after all.
"Murder" is only virtually not literal here.
The Sparrow
Graduate Poster
jsfisher
ETcorngods survivor
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In the interest of circumventing a torturous explanation, by murder board Jabba is alluding to what we sometime see in police dramas and the like. Image a big white board with the pictures and documents taped on it, then lines and arrows connecting things together.
All the evidence is supposedly represented on the board, all connected together in meaningful ways. Then the hero yells, "Aha!!!", and solves the crime using some secret bit of information previously undisclosed and nowhere on the white board.
abaddon
Penultimate Amazing
Think scientific peer review as it would be carried out by the Spanish Inquisition. No holds barred.
Or at least that's what it's supposed to mean. What Jabba means by it, well...
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
Oh, that. I'm up to speed, thanks. Never heard it called that.
That would never, ever happen in a debate testing a mathematical proof of an immortal soul.
Hokulele
Deleterious Slab of Damnation
If this is not quoted in full, verbatim, on the murder board, I will be first in line with pitchforks and torches.
abaddon
Penultimate Amazing
How could you tell. Nobody knows yet where this board is.
Aw ye of little faith. Here's another jumprope song:
Heeey Jabba!
Wanna have some fun?
Go over to the
Murderboard
With yer pants
Undone.
ETA: Tee hee.
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