Cont: Proof of Immortality, V for Very long discussion

[abaddon]

sackett,
- Your responses are not arguments for OOFLam.

You are being outright mocked and you cannot tell the difference. OOFLAM is your term that you made up out of whole cloth and which means precisely nothing in this context.

Why should anyone subscribe to that? Well Only One Finite Life At Most is the only thing for which there is actual evidence. You can dance all you want. There is no evidence to the contrary.

 

[John Jones]

sackett,
- Your responses are not arguments for OOFLam.

In other words, they are not straw man arguments to your liking.

Why don't you just tell sackett what words he is supposed to write, goddammit? You've never had pangs of conscience before.

 

[Loss Leader]

- I think that what really sets a result apart is there being a reasonable possibility that it wasn't the result of the hypothesis being evaluated -- and here, that applies to everyone who exists.

Wrong.

How is anything you say different from picking a card from a deck at random? The odds are very low that it will be any particular card and yet it is always a card. And there are an infinite number of decks of cards that could be printed, so the odds that it would be those specific molecules shaped into an 8 of clubs is ridiculously low. Yet there the card sits, unabashedly overcoming monstrous odds.

Are cards immortal?

 

[JoeMorgue]

And irony is Jabba has openly admitted the obvious fact that "OOFLAM" is a code word for a religious style soul.

Jabba treats, or expects us to treat, every post and argument made here in a vacuum as if we aren't supposed to remember or allude the basic fact that Jabba's already been argued into a corner and admitted what he's doing a good dozen times at this point.

OOFLAM isn't a thing Jabba. It isn't a valid concept and even if it was it's not what you are arguing. None of us here are under any obligation to argue via your made up special pleading.

You're arguing that a God is making souls and putting them in people and your "immortality" is nothing but a hodgepodge of various religious afterlifes picked and chosen at random. You know it, we know it, and us not pretending otherwise isn't being "mean."

 

[JoeMorgue]

Wrong.

How is anything you say different from picking a card from a deck at random? The odds are very low that it will be any particular card and yet it is always a card. And there are an infinite number of decks of cards that could be printed, so the odds that it would be those specific molecules shaped into an 8 of clubs is ridiculously low. Yet there the card sits, unabashedly overcoming monstrous odds.

Are cards immortal?

And this is another "The thing you are making up doesn't even prove the thing you are claiming" error of Jabba's.

He's never been able to make a link between the made up version of Bayesian uniqueness he's pretending he has evidence for and immortality.

I've used the analogy before that a well shuffled standard deck of 52 cards is so mathematically complex that it is near certain that each well shuffled deck is unique in the history of the universe. If uniqueness is the proof of the pudding my deck of cards should be immortal.

 

[JayUtah]

I think that what really sets a result apart is there being a reasonable possibility that it wasn't the result of the hypothesis being evaluated -- and here, that applies to everyone who exists.

No, that's just more tautological thinking. You imagine there's a soul, so you imagine further that this soul somehow undermines a competing hypotheses in which there isn't a soul. That begs the question of necessity. I can imagine that there is an invisible elf who lets the air out of my car tires at night. That doesn't undermine the theory that the nail I pulled out of my tire as a more proximate and straightforward causation. Yes, you can say there is also an elf, but that's just wishful thinking. For God's sake, read something by or about William of Occam.

But of course we've ventured very far afield. The "result" and the "setting apart" we're talking about is the difference you imagine between a "potential self" and a real person. You start off by talking about it only in vague, obviously equivocal generalities. You won't let it be pinned down, because frankly it's just something you made up and you don't want it subjected to any sort of test. And when we finally get a detail on which to begin an analysis, the "potential soul" turns out to have all the operative properties of a pre-animate soul. Sorry, no such thing exists under H. You can't use it in Bayes to reckon P(E|H) and claim it to be very small.

 

[JayUtah]

Dave,
- In this case, all he had to do was hit the barn.

No, that just post-defines the barn as the intended target. You don't get it.

 

[JayUtah]

sackett,
- Your responses are not arguments for OOFLam.

First, you chose Sackett. If you're now complaining that he's not giving serious or palatable answers, whose fault is that? Stop blaming the dog for your soiled hands after you intentionally pick up his poop.

Second, no one is obliged to provide an affirmative rebuttal just because it would be more advantageous and convenient for you if he did. You are being presented with serious, valid rebuttals to your claims. Demanding an affirmative rebuttal that defends the null hypothesis is a reversal of the burden of proof. Deal with the serious rebuttals you have received and stop whining.

 

[JayUtah]

But he hasn't done that, he has just hit something, and painted a target round it.

Same as pulling a card at random from the deck. The act of doing that ensures we will be dealing with some card. Similarly, firing the gun ensures that a bullet will issue forth. It will hit something. It ensures there will be some Ground Zero for the bullet. Whether it qualifies as a target depends on how well the shooter can make the case he intended to hit it before he fired the gun, just as the card dealer must make a case for having predicted which card he would draw before drawing it. Post-justifying it after the event has happened doesn't work. Identifying a person that now exists as having been preselected before birth is exactly this fallacy. Jabba doesn't seem to get what "selected" means in this case. Too bad.

 

[sackett]

C'mon, Jay, I'm nobody's incontinent pooch.

Okay, maybe I'm Jabba's. But so are all of us, at this point in the, um, discussion.

Jabba, maybe you should wash your hands of the whole affair.

 

[JayUtah]

C'mon, Jay, I'm nobody's incontinent pooch.

Okay, maybe I'm Jabba's. But so are all of us, at this point in the, um, discussion.

Jabba, maybe you should wash your hands of the whole affair.

Well woofed spoken.

 

[carlitos]

I believe that this is on topic with regard to Jabba's immortality / reincarnation / consciousness thing: If you resurrect a wooly mammoth, can you still call it a wooly mammoth?

If you re-created an extinct species from old DNA, can you still call it that same species? (see: George Washington's ax, Theseus' paradox, we could have spam and eggs, if we had some spam ... and some eggs, etc.)

 

[zooterkin]

C'mon, Jay, I'm nobody's incontinent pooch.

Okay, maybe I'm Jabba's. But so are all of us, at this point in the, um, discussion.

Jabba, maybe you should wash your hands of the whole affair.

How many legs do you have?

 

[Jabba]

Dave,
- In this case, all he had to do was hit the barn.

But he hasn't done that, he has just hit something, and painted a target round it.

That is all you have: one of the possible outcomes has occurred (as is inevitable), and you are claiming that it is special because it has occurred. It wasn't prespecified, and nothing sets it apart from all the other possible outcomes other than the fact that it has occurred.

What Mojo said.

Dave,
- My claim is that to be legitimate, a target does not need to be pre-specified. A legitimate target doesn't need red and white rings around it. Also, there are degrees of "targetness."
- I'm claiming that what makes a target legitimate is a reasonably possible alternative hypothesis to the hypothesis being evaluated -- and, the Bayesian formula accounts for that requirement with its prior probabilities...
- I'm saying that as soon as a result has a reasonably possible alternative explanation, we have a legitimate target.
- I think that's the answer because I can't find anything in the Bayesian instructions that refer to this issue. If you, or anyone else, can refer me to such a statement, I'll happily concede this claim.
- The Bayesian instructions seem to imply that the formula accounts for the Sharpshooter explanation.

 

[RoboTimbo]

Jabba, can you explain the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy to me and give some examples of it?

- My claim is that to be legitimate, a target does not need to be pre-specified. A legitimate target doesn't need red and white rings around it. Also, there are degrees of "targetness."

Ok, that's another good example. You're giving good examples but can you explain the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy for me?

 

[Mojo]

- My claim is that to be legitimate, a target does not need to be pre-specified. A legitimate target doesn't need red and white rings around it.

No, but it needs something that distinguishes it from all the targets that have been missed other than that it happens to be the one that has been hit. You have been entirely unable to establish this for your existence.

 

[Belz...]

- My claim is that (snip)

Stop repeating your claims over and over. We know what they are. But they are wrong.

 

[Hokulele]

I'm claiming that what makes a target legitimate is a reasonably possible alternative hypothesis to the hypothesis being evaluated -- and, the Bayesian formula accounts for that requirement with its prior probabilities...

To move on from your priors, you need additional, new data. On its own, your existence cannot assist one in determining which if the competing hypothesis is more or less true. This is why your claim is simply another example of the fallacy. By your claim here, everything is a legitimate target, you just choose not to accept that fact.

 

[Mojo]

Jabba, if someone else existed instead of you, would your argument for immortality be valid if they made it?

 

[JoeMorgue]

Tell you what Jabba try this.

Using Bayesian statistics (either the real version or your made up version) describe the qualities of self (I'll even let you make up what ever "qualities of self" you want) of a "self" (I'll even let you make up what ever defines a "self") of any person versus this mythical "infinite pool of selves."

The only caveat... it has to be a person who hasn't been born yet. Use your technique to describe "the self" of someone that's going to be born tomorrow or next week or next year or a thousand years from now.

You refuse to accept that you can't use the simple fact that you exist for evidence of uniqueness of your existence so don't.

Prove this isn't all the obvious after the fact rationalization that it is.

I'll let you do everything you want. I'l let you make up definitions, I'll let you make up new words to describe things, I'll let you misuse the concept of Bayesian statistics and basic math all the live long day if you'll just predict a future event using your argument instead of a past one.