Proof of Immortality, VII

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Monza said:
No, you didn't understand. In the scenario of making a copy of you: you would look out one set of eyes, and the other you would look out of the other set of eyes.
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It's been clear for a while now (and by a while, I mean before Obama's second term) that Jabba is utterly unable to let go of the concept of soul even for the sake of argument, regardless of the hypothesis he's working under. According to Jabba, H, the materialist hypothesis, also has souls, making H falsified. He doesn't seem to grasp, or doesn't want to grasp, that there ARE NO SOULS under H, and thus the jabba copy would have his own mind, identical but separate from the original's, without having any other distinguishing feature.
 
JayUtah said:
Earlier in the debate, "virtual zero" meant a concept he'd apparently invented for mathematics that has all the properties of zero that he needed for his proof, yet somehow all the properties of a non-zero number that he needed for his proof. He'd argued that a certain number should be close to zero, but the proof he provided for this required that the result be exactly zero. Hence "virtual zero."
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I think I commented on that a day or two ago in #2430. Jabba's "virtual zero" appears to be a positive non-zero number X such that X<<Y for all positive non-zero Y, and is the number he assigns to the probability of his existence under H.

Dave
 
Jabba said:
SOdhner,
- The more likely was getting the blue block in the first experiment.
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Correct!

So now to relate that back to your argument: in the materialistic model, we're looking at the odds of your specific body existing (the first experiment, with one blue block) because the sense of self or whatever is a property of that body and doesn't have separate odds of existing.

In your non-materialistic model you still need your specific body, but you also need your specific soul (or whatever you want to call it). So that's like the second experiment, with the two blue blocks.

So clearly without even worrying about all the other stuff in this thread your specific existence is more likely in the materialistic model.
 
Belz... said:
Jabba not only has his cake and is eating it, but the cake is immortal and in several copies being eaten by several sets of eyes and... I've completely lost the analogy, there.
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Jabba is actually one of a long series of clones from a Venture Brothers style cloning machine. That's why he's so hung up the idea of a soul. He wants to imagine the "him" walking around at any given moment is the same "him" whose memories were pre-programmed into his clone body when he was thawed out. He's unsettled by the fact that the memories he carries were accumulated not by the body he currently has but by an identical body that is now long dead.

What's really going to toast his crumpet is when he realizes a fresh clone has been thawed out far more often than he thinks. That time not long ago he remembers almost slipping in the bathtub? That clone actually fell and broke his neck. Jabba was picked as a test subject because he's so accident prone. This allows for testing repeated cloning and memory implant in a much shorter time frame, because he provides so many iterations without intervention.
 
JayUtah said:
When Jabba says "virtual," he means a made-up concept that magically and vaguely lies somewhere conveniently near a valid concept.
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Yeah, "virtual X" means "close enough to X that we should just treat it like X". The problem is that the one defining "close enough" is Jabba, and he's doing so arbitrarily based on what's best for his case. When others say "but it's not close enough for me!" he just dismisses them because he feels that he's the only one here qualified to make this subjective call.
 
Jabba said:
- That the earth revolves around the sun is also a hypothesis.
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godless dave said:
It's really not.

"The earth revolves around the sun in an ellipse as if some force were pulling it toward the sun" would be closer to a hypothesis.

The problem with your OOFLam is that it doesn't specify why each person only lives one finite life. When you started the thread all those years ago we assumed you meant a model where each person lives one finite life because in that model people are entirely physical, and we know bodies don't rise from the grave. That's why most of us in this thread believe we each have one finite life. But it eventually became clear that you were talking about a model where immaterial "selves" exist and are somehow connected to bodies, and those selves disappear at the same time the bodies die, and never come back. Those two models would have different prior probabilities and different likelihoods for a particular person existing.
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- From Wikipedia: A hypothesis (plural hypotheses) is a proposed explanation for a phenomenon.
- So, the first issue here is what is the phenomenon we're explaining with the assertion that the earth revolves around the sun. I would suggest that the phenomenon referred to is a particular aspect of the sun's location as we see it relative to the other stars -- that the earth revolves around the sun is part of the scientifically accepted explanation. I don't think that means that it is not also a proposed explanation.
- But whatever, I'm claiming that the proposed explanation (OOFLam) for part of what we observe about human life is not fully (even scientifically) accepted, and is consequently a hypothesis.
 
OOFLam isn't the explanation, it's the observation. We observe people living once for a finite time.
 
Jabba said:
- But whatever, I'm claiming that the proposed explanation (OOFLam) for part of what we observe about human life is not fully (even scientifically) accepted, and is consequently a hypothesis.
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It's absolutely scientifically accepted. Also, hypotheses can be accepted.

You are desperate. If you focused on one thing at a time it might not be so evident.
 
Thermal said:
Jabba:

By 'virtual proof', I take this to mean a logical or mathematical proof, as opposed to physical evidence. All well and good. If that assumption is wrong, please correct me.

Your arguments seem to rely heavily on the exquisitely small chance of a particular outcome from 'the beginning', and the comparison to billions of known human lives. Agreed, assuming a chaos model. But any particular outcome of any kind is, as you say, vanishingly small. That's a testament to the size of the observable universe, and an awesome one at that. One could use those vanishingly small probabilities to virtually prove that a hammer likely has sentience. The vanishingly small probabilities are just a byproduct of the immensity and complexity of the observable universe, like a pack of cards that statistically is never shuffled in the same order.
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Thermal,
- By 'virtual proof' I am referring to mathematics, but only statistical. My claim is that my current existence -- given the typical non-religious hypothesis of Only One Finite Life (at most) -- is so unlikely as to virtually disprove that hypothesis.
- So far, I think that your reservation refers to the 'Texas Sharpshooter" fallacy. Would you agree?
 
Jabba said:
- From Wikipedia: A hypothesis (plural hypotheses) is a proposed explanation for a phenomenon.
- So, the first issue here is what is the phenomenon we're explaining with the assertion that the earth revolves around the sun. I would suggest that the phenomenon referred to is a particular aspect of the sun's location as we see it relative to the other stars -- that the earth revolves around the sun is part of the scientifically accepted explanation. I don't think that means that it is not also a proposed explanation.
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It's pitifully funny when you attempt to school knowledgeable people with your naïve understandings.

- But whatever, I'm claiming that the proposed explanation (OOFLam)
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Whatever, OOFLam isn't an explanation. It's the observation.

for part of what we observe about human life is not fully (even scientifically) accepted, and is consequently a hypothesis.
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What part of what we observe about materialism isn't accepted?
 
Jabba said:
Thermal,
- By 'virtual proof' I am referring to mathematics, but only statistical. My claim is that my current existence -- given the typical non-religious hypothesis of Only One Finite Life (at most) -- is so unlikely as to virtually disprove that hypothesis.
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You haven't disproved materialism, virtually or otherwise. I'm sure you agree.

- So far, I think that your reservation refers to the 'Texas Sharpshooter" fallacy. Would you agree?
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You agree that you are employing the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy?
 
godless dave said:
OOFLam isn't the explanation, it's the observation. We observe people living once for a finite time.
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- OOFLam doesn't refer to the body (even for materialists) -- it refers to a particular awareness. Materialists claim that a particular awareness is completely linked to a particular body.
 
Jabba said:
- OOFLam doesn't refer to the body (even for materialists) -- it refers to a particular awareness. Materialists claim that a particular awareness is completely linked to a particular body.
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No, materialists say that there is no such thing as a particular awareness. You've been told this hundreds of times. Stop lying.
 
Jabba said:
- From Wikipedia: A hypothesis (plural hypotheses) is a proposed explanation for a phenomenon.
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Correct, it is not merely a statement of the phenomenon. The phenomenon is that no signs of life appear outside of the term of physical existence. One hypothesis is that life is tied to the existence of the physical organism.

But whatever, I'm claiming that the proposed explanation (OOFLam) for part of what we observe about human life is not fully (even scientifically) accepted, and is consequently a hypothesis.
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Observing that we have one finite life is not an explanation for the observation that life is finite and doesn't repeat. It's just a restatement of the observation.

Leaving aside that you don't know anything about science and aren't even the least qualified to speak on its behalf, your statement is still wrong. A statement is a hypothesis if it proposes a causation for some observable. It becomes a theory, in the scientific sense of the word, when the mechanism is tested empirically and shown to be the operative mechanism. Theories are always tentative in science. They may be upended at any time by new observations that don't fit the theory, or by evidence that the empiricism by which the hypothesis was formerly confirmed was in error.

You don't have either of those, so you don't get to upend the theory. Instead what you have is a pseudo-mathematical exercise in handwaving that you've already admitted is dead on arrival at its most fundamental level. You're trying to posture this as a new means of falsifying a hypothesis. Your critics rightly are not letting you.
 
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