Proof of Immortality, VI

[Jabba]

Jabba, this isn't any more complicated than the two loaves of bread.

I come out of the cells of my brain.

If you made an exact copy of my brain, an exact copy of me would come out of it.

I do agree that an exact copy of me wouldn't be me (as would anyone who understands the meaning of the word "copy"). I don't agree that this means the brain doesn't produce the self. On the contrary, it's exactly what we would expect if the brain produced the self.

- Hopefully, we're getting down to the "nitty gritties" of our disagreement. Again, my objective right now is to nail down our different basic disagreements.
- There is at least two issues in this 'one' disagreement:#1. How many potential loaves of bread are there -- i.e., how many different loaves of bread could we make if we never ran out of time or the necessary conditions?

 

[godless dave]

Our basic disagreement is this:

It comes out of the cells your brain is made of.

YOU does not come out of the cells of your brain.

 

[Belz...]

- Hopefully, we're getting down to the "nitty gritties" of our disagreement. Again, my objective right now is to nail down our different basic disagreements.

Right now? You've been saying that for years while ignoring what people point out about those disagreements. The problem is that, no, this isn't your objective. Your objective is clear. Everyone knows it, so how about you drop the act and either go away or discuss this topic like an adult?

- There is at least two issues in this 'one' disagreement:#1. How many potential loaves of bread are there

Irrelevant.

 

[JayUtah]

- Hopefully, we're getting down to the "nitty gritties" of our disagreement.

Here they are. That's where they've been for a few months now.

Again, my objective right now is to nail down our different basic disagreements.

I was kind enough to do that for you. Will you please take an hour and, for each of the fatal flaws outlined above, write a sentence or two describing how you will eventually address it in your argument? Thanks.

There is at least two issues in this 'one' disagreement:#1. How many potential loaves of bread are there...

Potentiality doesn't work the way you're trying to make it work. It doesn't amount to a denominator that governs whether something will actually exist. This has been proved to you quite a number of times, and you address it only with additional special pleading.

The crux of the disagreement is as godless dave has already outlined: you're trying to make materialism look like the incarnation of a soul. That's not at all how it works. Falsifying something you made up doesn't constitute having reckoned P(E|H) to be a very small number.

 

[Jabba]

Jabba, this isn't any more complicated than the two loaves of bread.

I come out of the cells of my brain.
If you made an exact copy of my brain, an exact copy of me would come out of it.

I do agree that an exact copy of me wouldn't be me (as would anyone who understands the meaning of the word "copy"). I don't agree that this means the brain doesn't produce the self. On the contrary, it's exactly what we would expect if the brain produced the self.

Dave,
- Aren't the hi-lighted statements contradictory?

 

[godless dave]

Dave,
- Aren't the hi-lighted statements contradictory?

No. I don't see why they would be. An exact copy of my brain wouldn't be my brain, therefore the self it produced wouldn't be me, it would be an exact copy of me.

 

[The Sparrow]

Dave,
- Aren't the hi-lighted statements contradictory?

I was going to post a meaningful reply, but then I realized the below would be equally helpful.

Dragons breathe fire, but they don't play backgammon.




(too many burnt boards)

 

[John Jones]

- Hopefully, we're getting down to the "nitty gritties" of our disagreement. Again, my objective right now is to nail down our different basic disagreements.
- There is at least two issues in this 'one' disagreement:#1. How many potential loaves of bread are there -- i.e., how many different loaves of bread could we make if we never ran out of time or the necessary conditions?

Oh stop it! You haven't agreed with anyone in 5 years. Go watch Rocky and Bullwinkle.

 

[Mojo]

Dave,
- Aren't the hi-lighted statements contradictory?

Only if we accept your "one self looking through two sets of eyes" garbage. Which, in case you've forgotten, we don't.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Jabba if an exact replica of my brain down to the atomic level was created and that brain was giving identical sensory inputs as the original brain they would be identical any emergent properties, such as consciousness or sense of self, would also be identical.

It would be "two me's" by any reasonable definition of the term.

 

[The Sparrow]

- Hopefully, we're getting down to the "nitty gritties" of our disagreement. Again, my objective right now is to nail down our different basic disagreements.
- There is at least two issues in this 'one' disagreement:#1. How many potential loaves of bread are there -- i.e., how many different loaves of bread could we make if we never ran out of time or the necessary conditions?

Why do you post this? Its the same thing you have said hundreds of times and you are ignoring the responses.

Why do you post this?

 

[The Sparrow]

......
It would be "two me's" by any reasonable definition of the term.

BUT........BUT............the second one wouldn't BE the first one.

 

[JoeMorgue]

BUT........BUT............the second one wouldn't BE the first one.

And I have full faith that within a metaphysical certainty there is zero chance I will get an answer substantially different than that from Jabba and that is even assuming the slight chance the Master of Patented Effective Debate graces me with a response at all, which he won't.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Why do you post this? Its the same thing you have said hundreds of times and you are ignoring the responses.

Why do you post this?

Well because you see even though it has the exact same content as all his other post it's not the SAME post, so he's not really repeating himself.

 

[John Jones]

- Hopefully, we're getting down to the "nitty gritties" of our disagreement. Again, my objective right now is to nail down our different basic disagreements.
- There is at least two issues in this 'one' disagreement:#1. How many potential loaves of bread are there -- i.e., how many different loaves of bread could we make if we never ran out of time or the necessary conditions?

Five long years have passed, and you haven't learned a damn thing.

 

[The Sparrow]

Well because you see even though it has the exact same content as all his other post it's not the SAME post, so he's not really repeating himself.

It is frightening that that actually makes sense.

 

[RoboTimbo]

Dave,
- Aren't the hi-lighted statements contradictory?

Would they be separate but identical?

 

[SOdhner]

Five long years have passed, and you haven't learned a damn thing.

Wait, we say 'five years' a lot, but... hang on! I missed it! The anniversary was yesterday!

21st November 2012, 01:29 PM:

- I think that I can essentially prove immortality using Bayesian statistics.

Of course then he took another few days to actually post any details, and didn't post any actual formula for like a week. But still, it's an exciting day! We should bake a cake.

So what was Jabba's actual first post, the one that really got the ball rolling? That one was on the 23rd, and - no surprise - it's a blatant example of the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy.

Scene 1:

Say that you find a deck of cards in the closet and decide to play some solitaire or something.

You sit down at the table and turn over the first card. It's an ace of spades. You place the ace back in the deck, shuffle the cards and once again, turn over the first card. This time, it's the ace of diamonds. Hmm. So, you try the same thing again. This time, you get the ace of spades again.

'Wait a minute…' You do it one more time, and this time, you get the ace of hearts.

If you’re paying attention, you’re growing suspicious about this deck you found in the closet. You’re starting to suspect that you don’t have the ordinary deck that you had assumed. But, why is that? Why are you suspicious?

You’re suspicious because the probability of drawing that 'hand' is so small if the deck is a normal deck.

Let’s try that again. But, this time, the first card you draw is a 3 of diamonds, the second is a
Jack of spades, the third is a 9 of clubs and the fourth is a 9 of hearts. In this case, you probably are not suspicious.

But, of course you realize that the prrobability of drawing that hand, given a normal deck, is just as small as the probability of drawing that previous hand…

So, what’s the problem here? Why are you not suspicious of this deck, when you were suspicious of the first one?

It turns out that there are two factors causing you to be suspicious of that first deck -- and one is missing in regard to the second deck. There is nothing about the second hand that sets it apart in such a way as to suggest another plausible hypothesis… If there were, you’d be suspicious of that second deck as well. It’s as simple as that…

So, it doesn't seem like there's a lot of progress. We haven't really gotten past this first issue, that this is all based on the sharpshooter fallacy.

 

[JayUtah]

Aren't the hi-lighted statements contradictory?

No, because Dave intends "be me" first to indicate cardinality only. You start with me. You make a copy of me. The copy isn't me because "me" is the label that refers to the original organism. "Copy" is the label that refers to the newly duplicated organism. "Me" and "copy" are simply labels here, not any sort of metaphysical description.

You are trying very hard to make "be me" mean "contains my soul" or some such. Since there are no souls in materialism, your intended connotation stops right there. When materialists say "be me," the notion of incarnation of a soul is the one thing you can be sure they don't intend.

But another meaning materialists might ascribe to "be me" is "exhibit all the properties of my organism," regardless of how many copies of that organism "be me" might apply to. You'll occasionally hear the materialists in this thread use "be me" in this connotation.

You can see how ambiguous phrases like "be me" cause problems. You keep telling us you're looking to settle on a consensus of meaning. But it seems that no matter how many times I and my colleagues parse this out for you, you keep jerking it back to the same ambiguous phrases so that you can keep equivocating and keep stalling for day after day, week after week, year after year.

 

[jsfisher]

Yet another continuation of the thread that will not die has grow to an unwieldy size. It, too, has been split, with the latest continuation appearing here.

Posted By: jsfisher