Proof of Immortality, VI

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Jabba said:
- Agreed. You would never have a sense of self, and you wouldn't be part of the "we each" that has one finite life; but, you would be part of the "we each" that has one finite life at most. The combination of your particular sperm cell and ovum that never occurred would still represent a "potential" self -- a potential self that never actualized.
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No. A potential self is not a thing, any more than the carrots in my fridge are a potential cake.
 
Jabba your argument is functionally like going to Vegas, pulling the cards you want out of the deck before the hand starts, then not actually playing a strong hand, losing, and arguing that you won because there was a "potential" winning hand.

You're stacking the deck, somehow still managing to lose the hand, then arguing you should have one by trying to re-write the rules into rules that you still wouldn't have won under.
 
jsfisher said:
Your #1 premise, the very root of your position, lies seriously damaged from attack while you leave it undefended. Without #1 standing upright, your entire argument is without basis.

Wouldn't this be a good time to shore up your foundation?
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Jsfisher,
- Shore. I need a nap.
 
Jabba said:
- So, now:
4. Under that hypothesis [OOFLam], my current existence is*EXTREMELY*unlikely.
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Why not "So, now: 1. According to modern science, we each should have Only One Finite Life (at most) – 'OOFLam'"?

One does come before 4, after all.
 
Jabba said:
- I added the following to the Map...
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We don't care. This thread is not about your "map." You assured us that even though you were writing about this topic elsewhere, you would continue to debate the issues here. We're waiting for you to actually start debating the issues rather than repeat them ad nauseam and ignore chapter after chapter of rebuttal.

Here's the list of fatal flaws in your argument. You know what they are, but you also know you can't address them. But try.

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=11871278&postcount=3198
 
Jabba said:
My basic claim here is that there are, indeed, potential combinations of sperm and ovum, and each of those represents a potential person/self.
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Your argument is wrong, in the sense that it justifies your Big Denominator. It has been explained to you in detail why that argument is wrong. The rebuttal takes the form of reductio ad absurdum. You are unable to address that rebuttal except to beg the question that it only apples to humans because only humans have souls. And by this you propose to falsify materialism.

That's obviously wrong.

Take it, or leave it.
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You give us no valid reason to take it. You won't address the reasons why it's rational to leave it. Hence your browbeating just comes across as desperation.

I'll leave it to the jury.
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Imagining that there exists a vast unseen horde of people who believe in you does not fix what's objectively wrong with your argument. If we count as "the jury" everyone who has ever publicly commented on this immortality proof of yours, the jury returned its unanimous verdict years ago. You simply won't face those facts.
 
Argumemnon said:
Wasn't he, in fact, warned about this?
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I believe so. The moderators warned the entire thread about a number of things, including discussion of Jabba's extracurricular blog. But inasmuch as at least three moderators are actively participating in this thread and can see for themselves what's going on, I'll leave it to them to determine when the blog issue drifts too far off topic. The problem, of course, is what to do when that's all Jabba will talk about.

This thread is about Jabba's attempt to prove immortality using mathematics. I expect the proof to be discussed here. I don't expect it to be simply a pointer to Jabba's private blog where the discussion happens under his moderation. That's a bait and switch.
 
I believe that the intent was to keep Jabba from promoting his "map" in this thread.

Since the creation of this stupid map is the entire admitted ulterior motive for this whole thread and taints the entire thing, as well as (at least partially) explains Jabba's entire weird affect.

This thread can't be allowed to continue if we all have to pretend we don't know the game Jabba is planning.
 
Jabba said:
- So, now:
4. Under that hypothesis [OOFLam], my current existence is*EXTREMELY*unlikely.
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Your entire argument rests on the presumption that under ~H it is more likely, something for which you haven't offered the merest shred of a justification. Do you think you might try doing that, at least?

Dave
 
Jabba said:
- Agreed. You would never have a sense of self, and you wouldn't be part of the "we each" that has one finite life; but, you would be part of the "we each" that has one finite life at most. The combination of your particular sperm cell and ovum that never occurred would still represent a "potential" self -- a potential self that never actualized.
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Yes, you might say that. And SO WHAT? Explain how my not existing would have any impact on the world? How would me not existing impact the likelihood of YOU existing?

To include the concept of "potential selves" in your formula, you have to explain how it would impact existing selves.

Hans
 
Jabba said:
- How about as a theoretical potential? YOU would be part of the theoretical potential that never came to physically exist. That is an abstract concept.
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It's about as meaningful as The Sparrow's potential bridge in Brooklyn and the 500 million potential dollars I'm willing to pay for it.
 
Jabba said:
- How about as a theoretical potential? YOU would be part of the theoretical potential that never came to physically exist. That is an abstract concept.
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Jabba, let us, for the sake of progress in this discussion say that there is an abstract concept we can call potential selves. Those are selves that could have existed, but didn't (such as sperm cells that didn't make the race to the ovum, but of course not sperm cells and ovi that could never have met).

Then what? Explain how they impact the likelihood of those selves that do exist. If you play the lottery and I don't, do I impact your winning chances?

Hans
 
Dave Rogers said:
Your entire argument rests on the presumption that under ~H it is more likely, something for which you haven't offered the merest shred of a justification. Do you think you might try doing that, at least?
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He has, but you have to put on your rhetorical hiking boots to get there.

Jabba's case, as you may know, is the classic reversal that embodies a false dilemma. Many fringe theorists choose not to prove their theory, but instead to falsify the prevailing narrative and hold their theory therefore true (or at least more probably true) by default.

Jabba wants to prove he is immortal. But he can't do it directly, so he wants to falsify the notion that we are mortal. In his words, that we each have at most one finite life. (There are a multitude of problems with just that, but that's how he phrases it.) He calls this H. If he can prove that P(H) is very, very small, then P(~H) must be very, very large since P(H) + P(~H) = 1. With H formulated as above, ~H becomes "I am immortal." The unspoken addendum is "...in some way." In this formulation ~H is the singular hypothesis (since it omits the addendum) and H is the set of all possible theories leading to mortality, whether or not there is evidence for any of them. That set obviously includes scientific materialism, and a consequent of that hypothesis is mortality.

But then Jabba attacks only materialism -- just one of the theories in the set H. While he champions "OOFLAM," his arguments aim only at one tiny slice of all the ways we could be mortal, whether science presently addresses them or not. Then by that switcheroo, H becomes the singular hypothesis (the materialist hypothesis) and ~H necessarily becomes everything else -- all theories that are not materialism, whether they lead to immortality or not. Jabba emphatically doesn't know how to deal with ~H mathematically as a set of hypotheses, only and unknown subset of which might produce immortality. Oh, he tried to pick ~H apart as a set, but he doesn't know the math and is confronted with ~H being an infinite set of unknown composition. Which, in the real world, would mean the proof isn't a proof.

Naturally, since equivocation is Jabba's primary debate tactic, he won't acknowledge that this is what he's doing. He flip-flops effortlessly between the two formulations, depending on which he needs to be the singular hypothesis that day. He thinks he's resolved P(~H) because he can infer it from 1-P(H), and he thinks he's sewn up P(H) with a bunch of pseudo-Bayesian handwaving. As with all the other numbers in his model, P(E|~H) is simply made up (or wrongly inferred from P(E|H) -- what a shocker). So his model has more degrees of freedom than bloomers held to the clothesline by only one clothespin. He doesn't address the blatant false dilemma because he can't, so he just gaslights his critics into thinking there isn't one.
 
- There's a "nearly infinite" number of "potential selves."
- Therefore the chance of "my" potential self existing is 1 over "nearly infinite."
- Steal Underpants
- Therefore.... God Woo Soul.
 
Dave Rogers said:
Why are there not infinite possible souls that can be created as well? If there are (and to suggest otherwise would suggest that the agency responsible for their creation was not omnipotent, which may not be a road you want to go down), then P(E|~H) becomes zero. There are, however, a finite but very large number of ways in which DNA may be arranged, which implies that P(E|H) is non-zero. You can therefore plug P(E|~H)=0 and P(E|H)>0 into your Bayesian equation and find out that P(~H)=0; again, perhaps not a road you want to go down.

Dave
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Dave,

That is a clever argument, but, unfortunately, a flawed one.

You are implying that the sample space of E|~H is discrete and infinite. But that supposition alone does not imply that P(E|~H)=0. P(E|~H) depends on the conditional distribution of E|~H. So this is a road that you, yourself, should not head down without stating, and justifying, a conditional distribution for E|~H.
 
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