Cont: Proof of Immortality, V for Very long discussion

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jsfisher said:
There is a typo near the end of my post. For that I apologize. The last part was supposed to read, "Luckily, this is not a discussion and not a confrontation, right? So, yeah, meh."

That misplaced "not" wasn't supposed to be there. Its presence completely altered the meaning, which was intended to be a plea that a less aggressive posting style might be more effective. Yes, it was heavily steeped in sarcasm, but still a suggestion for a change in tone.

And, for the absence of doubt, posted not as a mod.
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If the effectiveness of an argument (ie the probability of it being accepted) depends on the posting style with which it is delivered, then the people doing the accepting/rejecting are irrational. Posting style is irrelevant.
 
carlitos said:
I'm not getting this either. I subtract "body" from both sides of the above equation and I get:

soul = soul + not soul

Putting it another way, life with (not ham sandwich) seems to be the same as regular old life to me. Where am I wrong?
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If you do have a ham sandwich, do you then stop having a life? If no, then how can life (in general) be the same as life with no ham sandwich?
 
SOdhner said:
...

5. So we have to look at the possibility of a materialistic explanation - no soul. We could make a big list of things about each unique person (brain configuration, DNA, whatever - again I'm not trying to put words in your mouth and the exact physical properties you do or don't count don't really matter for this part) but we don't need to do that here. We know that any one specific configuration is extremely unlikely but not zero...

6. I could write out an actual long number with lots of zeros, but since we're just examining the underlying logic and we both know that in the real world this is some extremely small percentage to make the math and typing easier let's just treat it as 20%. As demonstrated above, the principle here works the same way as long as it's less than 100% chance.

7. Having a soul, on the other hand, would not remove all of the factors above. Meaning, whether or not we have a soul we still have a body with DNA and a particular brain configuration or whatever physical properties.

8. You presumably believe that there's more than one soul we could get, so again getting a specific soul is less than 100% chances. Let's call it 50% just to keep it simple, even though it would presumably be at least one in eight billion or so...
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SOdhner,
- Unfortunately, I don't really understand that first sentence in #8.
- I assume that there is an infinity of potential souls -- is that what you mean?
 
Jabba said:
SOdhner,
- Unfortunately, I don't really understand that first sentence in #8.
- I assume that there is an infinity of potential souls -- is that what you mean?
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- Unfortunately, I think that I just figured out what you meant. Once I figured it out, it seemed obvious...
- You're suggesting that each of the potential specific physical human specimens (bordering on an infinity of) also have more than one potential soul.
- How's that?
 
Jabba said:
SOdhner,
- Unfortunately, I don't really understand that first sentence in #8.
- I assume that there is an infinity of potential souls -- is that what you mean?
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You assume that there is an infinity of potential souls, which means any one of them could have attached itself to your brain. So the likelihood that your soul attached itself to your brain is very small, your 7B/Infinity number.

Maybe you missed this the first time: under H, your self is an emergent property of your brain. Which means that under H, all that is required to explain your existence is your functioning brain. You've agreed that your brain is a given, so we'll call that likelihood 1. Under ~H, you need a brain as well as a soul. So you need to decide what the likelihood of a soul is. For the sake of argument, let's say that the likelihood of souls under ~H is also 1. That means that they are equally likely.

But then we have to find the likelihood of your soul connecting with your brain, so that is where your 7B/Inf. But we need to ascribe a number to it. When you were born there were closer to 5B people, yes? And most of them already had souls, which means we have to look at the number of people born the same day as you. 200,000 maybe? So let's call it 1/200,000. Which is a much bigger likelihood than 200,000/inf, so we're helping you here.

Under H, we have 1.
Under ~H, we have 1x1x.000005

There's the math, H is quite a bit more likely than ~H.
 
Jabba 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.
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Dave,
- I don't think that you ever responded to that claim. Can you provide a source contradicting my claim?
 
Jabba said:
Dave,
- I don't think that you ever responded to that claim. Can you provide a source contradicting my claim?
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Every one of my posts discussing your reliance on the Texas sharpshooter fallacy, of which there are several.

It's quite rude of you to proudly ignore most of the discussion, then ask it to be repeated.
 
Jabba said:
I assume that there is an infinity of potential souls -- is that what you mean?
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That is what you have assumed. But you have utterly ignored the philosophical, mathematical, and metaphysical implications of that assumption. It is not something you concluded after careful thought. It's something you offered up in knee-jerk fashion to justify your wish that there be a Big Denominator in your computation.

In any case, no such concept exists in H. You may not use it to reckon P(E|H).
 
Jabba said:
- You're suggesting that each of the potential specific physical human specimens (bordering on an infinity of) also have more than one potential soul.
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I'm suggesting that you're suggesting that. :)

If souls exist, that would be one of the variables that give you a big number of "potential selves". If they don't exist, obviously they wouldn't be.

While I don't think that your specific unlikeliness to exist is a good argument for anything, the fact remains that if we do choose to use how unlikely a specific set of characteristics is as our basis you should note that your particular 'self' existing is actually more likely in a materialistic universe.
 
RoboTimbo said:
Jabba, can you explain the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy to me and give some examples of it?
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Jabba said:
Jabba said:
- I'm saying that as soon as a result has a reasonably possible alternative explanation, we have a legitimate target.
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Dave,
- I don't think that you ever responded to that claim. Can you provide a source contradicting my claim?
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Ok, you've posted this example again of the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy. Can you give some different ones?
 
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