Proof of Immortality, VII

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Jabba, I'm confused by your use of the word "reproduce". You seem to agree that reproducing a brain would result in two brains, the original and the copy. But when it comes to what you're calling "selves", you seem to be implying that "reproducing" a self would result in one self in two locations. I don't get it.
 
JoeBentley said:
I don't think Jabba understands that him browbeating us into agreeing to some term to describe some made up distinction isn't immediately going to equate to him winning the argument.

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That's what I'm seeing. He's looking to use some equivocation to trick people into saying something that he agrees with, then he pounces with his "AHA! I've got you now!"

We've seen it dozens of times here. I suspect he's gotten away with it many times in his past with more credulous audiences, and this leads him to think he is a master of logical, rhetorical, and even mathematical erudition.

But it hasn't worked since he began dashing himself to pieces against the rock that is ISF.
 
I suspect he's happy with this endless equivocation, because he knows his use of statistics doesn't hold water - we've seen how he ran away from the Talk Stats forum forum after a couple of months
 
Which is why I asked, and of course got no answer from Jabba, if he honestly thinks we all secretly agree with him but just are too proud to admit.
 
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Filippo Lippi said:
I suspect he's happy with this endless equivocation, because he knows his use of statistics doesn't hold water - we've seen how he ran away from the Talk Stats forum forum after a couple of months
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Even this flaming dumpster fire on wheels has to have an end game though. Even Jabba at some point will reach the "Planck's Hairsplit" and be unable to subdivide the argument further.
 
JoeBentley said:
Even this flaming dumpster fire on wheels has to have an end game though. Even Jabba at some point will reach the "Planck's Hairsplit" and be unable to subdivide the argument further.
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OMG! That is too funny! :D

"Planck's Hairsplit" - I love it.

ETA: Nominated.
 
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Jabba, under materialism there is no difference between the two 'yous' that result from making a perfect copy of you. Prior to the replication process, there was one you. After the replication process, there are two identical-but-separate yous. No difference, nothing missing. The self is a process, undergoing constant change, and punctuated by gaps when the brain is asleep or otherwise unconscious.

What you are talking about is something that has no place in materialism, not even in your bastardised version which you call ooflam. The thing you are talking about only exists in the imaginations of people who believe in reincarnation, and it has no evidence to support its existence.

Call it a soul or a flapdoodle or anything else you choose; it doesn't matter what you call it as long as you recognise that it does not have a place in the materialist position you are trying to disprove.
 
John Jones said:
This URL http://www.talkstats.com/showthread.php/60035-Immortality-amp-Bayesian-Statistics/page6 needs to be repeated every few months, lest any innocent lurkers (or Jabba's imaginary impartial audience) think Jabba has any opinion of merit on his side.
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That happened here as well. Jabba begged and pestered and browbeat the PTB to grant him a special thread that operated under his "Rules of Effective Debate" under the promise that when we agreed to play by his rules he's finally grace us with getting around to making an actual point. Surprising no one that lasted all of a couple of pages before he was immediately argued into the same corner he started in to which he sulked and went to grown for a little while before starting this death spiral of a thread back up with a full fringe reset as if nothing had happened, still whining that nobody would play by his rules.
 
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John Jones said:
"Planck's Hairsplit" - I love it.

ETA: Nominated.
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If nothing else this thread has been a good creative writing course. My only win and probably 90% of my nominations in the Language/Pith awards have come from this thread.
 
godless dave said:
Jabba, I'm confused by your use of the word "reproduce". You seem to agree that reproducing a brain would result in two brains, the original and the copy. But when it comes to what you're calling "selves", you seem to be implying that "reproducing" a self would result in one self in two locations. I don't get it.
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I am going to push back on the highlighted part. Jabba clings to it to reason: One is the original and one is the copy, so there must be a difference even though there is not.

There is no requirement the reproduction process produce just a copy from the original. Consider how an amoeba reproduces. Neither cell that results is the original. The same could be true of the Jabba Replicator 5000 -- input one Jabba and output two Jabbas neither of which is the original.
 
jsfisher said:
I am going to push back on the highlighted part. Jabba clings to it to reason: One is the original and one is the copy, so there must be a difference even though there is not.
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1. We've already tried to clarify this with terms like "exact copy" but Jabba just plows ahead lamb bleating "But it wouldn't be the saaaaaame..." without clarifying or explaining anything beyond that.

2. We've already spent enough of the last 5 years pretending it's reasonable that a grown man who's claiming to have perfected the art of Truly Effective Debate can't understand the concept of a distinct but identical thing/process.

3. The nuance between same, identical, copy, exact copy, and so forth is absolutely meaningless if the person (that would be Jabba) claiming the distinction can't even begin to start to try to make an attempt at explaining what the difference is.

Jabba just repeats "But it wouldn't be the saaaaaaame" over and over.

Because we all know he's talking about a soul.
 
Agatha said:
The thing you are talking about only exists in the imaginations of people who believe in reincarnation
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I wouldn't go that far. We have almost no idea what the beliefs of people who accept reincarnation are. I don't think anyone here is learned enough in (mostly eastern) religions to speak confidently about them.

I believe from what I've read in my children's homework, both Buddhism and Hinduism have an endgame. There's a point where one becomes so enlightened that the journey through many lives stops. If that's the case, neither religion has a reincarnation concept that is or could conceivably be considered immortal.

Jabba could easily put this whole thing to rest by learning about religious views of reincarnation. However, he absolutely and under all circumstances refuses too. He is perfectly happy to swim in a pool of ignorance knowing that it's much roomier than the puddle it would shrink to if he had information.
 
It's not like the whole reincarnation thing is actually important to Jabba's argument, it's just another word he's throwing against the wall hoping it will stick.

He could call it the Force from Star Wars and it would be just as valid.
 
Jabba said:
Mojo,
- Do you think that you experience the process I'm alluding to, but believe (are sure) that it's mortal?
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It doesn't matter if you or anyone believes they experience this process, or if they (or you) are sure it that it's mortal or think there is even a tiny, tiny possibility that it isn't material.

Under the theory of materialism, the sense of self is 100% guaranteed to be to 100% tied to the material of the body. It can't be anything else and be part of materialism.

So in order to estimate a probability for your sense of self existing under materialism, you must use a probability of 100% that the sense of self comes from and is dependent on the material of the body and nothing else.

A sincere question: What is the result of your formula if you use 100% for the probability under materialism that the sense of self is dependent on and caused by the material of the body and brain? (In this scenario, you can use any mathematically valid probability you want for the cause of the sense of self under ~materialism).
 
Loss Leader said:
Jabba could easily put this whole thing to rest by learning about religious views of reincarnation. However, he absolutely and under all circumstances refuses too. He is perfectly happy to swim in a pool of ignorance knowing that it's much roomier than the puddle it would shrink to if he had information.
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He does go a bit further than that, with the references to some sort of cosmic sentience that we all get a bit of; we've all got a little bit of Napoleon. Not sure if it's his own invention or it's some hippy/newage bollocks.
 
Jabba said:
- But, I think you know to which process/experience I'm trying to find a word or phrase for -- if so, can you give me a word or phrase to use for it?
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Jabba, I've explained this several times. You're thinking of sentimental value.

That feeling that a copy wouldn't be *you* in some sense is just sentimental value rather than an actual tangible property. Just like if there are two souvenir sombreros and one is from Walmart but the other is from a dear friend and was given to you after the two of you spent a magical weekend in Tijuana - even if they're perfectly identical down to the last atom the one that was a gift is special to you because you assign extra value to it.

But that value doesn't correspond to any actual property, and can't be said to be mortal or immortal or anything. If I secretly swap the two hats you will assign that extra value to the wrong one and never know it, because it's not a real difference in a materialistic sense.
 
It's not even that deep. Jabba is trying to wring some grand intellectual gotcha scene for his play out of how pronouns work.

The neuro-chemical process going on right now in the 3 lbs of grey matter inside my skull is "me." I call that "me" because "me" is the term we use to describe it. That's how language works.

Would another exactly, down to the tiniest detail, copy of that neuro-chemical process be me? I don't know or care. It's not a valid question. It's applying a term to something in context it was never meant to be used and trying to use the fact the term doesn't work as evidence of something.

That's why I wish we would all reject Jabba's attempts at forcing an answer to "Would another me be me" out of us because it's a trap. No answer can work in the scenario. It's not a valid question.

If you say "The other me would be me" Jabba latches onto this with his "But it wouldn't be the saaaaaaaame" fetish because you can't linguistically have two "me's" since "me" is a singular pronoun. But that's just how language works because that's the most useful way of wording the concept in 99.9999999% of cases.

If you say "The other me would be different" Jabba latches onto this by claiming the difference is the soul he's totally not arguing for.

Can't win, can't lose, can't quit the game.

Here I'm gonna make up a word. Ahhhh... Fleen. A Fleen is defined as a totally unique object, one that by definition only one of exist in the entire universe. If there are more than one, it's by definition not a fleen. Okay? Everybody on board.

*Clears throat* But what if there were... *dramatic pause* two fleens? *BADADUM! Gasps, old ladies get the vapors, children start crying, monocles fall into teacups.*

See how silly that is? I define something singularly and than ask a question in direct opposition not to meaning but to definition. It has all the intellect validity of asking what if 1 = 2 or how many legs does a dog have if you call a tail a leg. It's meaningless playing with the language.

And that's all Jabba's doing at this point in this waking nightmare of a discussion. Currently our linguistic concepts for personal consciousness and sense of self are all singular because... well at this moment and every moment in history up to his point they have been. There's no mystery just the fact that our language doesn't go out of its way to make up words and terms and linguistic constructs for things it doesn't to describe.

I'm done playing by Jabba's rules and so very much wish other people would be as well.
 
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