Proof of Immortality, VII

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godless dave said:
Hold on a second. What do you mean by "now"? People who lived 100 years ago thought of the time they were living in as "now". Ditto people 1000 years ago and 100,000 years ago. February 14, 2018, 4:18pm Central Time is not some special moment in time. It was "now" when I wrote this. In another minute it will no longer be "now".



And, as I said before, that likelihood is 1, because this is the only time you, Jabba, could exist. The likelihood of you existing at any other time in the past is 0, because the preconditions for your existence had not been met. The likelihood of you being born in the future is 0, because the preconditions for your existence will no longer be there.
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- Again, we're passing in the night. It's like one of us is the teacher -- of say, "Factor Analysis" -- and the other the student -- and the student just doesn't grasp the teachers explanation.
- Could be that I'm the student, and only think that I'm the teacher -- but, probably not...:)
- But anyway, my basic claim is that the likelihood of "now" being during my lifetime is a meaningful statistical concept, and is extremely small whatever.
 
Jabba said:
But, that isn't the issue.
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Of course it's the issue. The proper modeling of the behavior of the underlying system is absolutely crucial to the validity of your inference. You failed at doing it, the latest in a long line of such failures to buttress the predetermined Big Denominator. And you failed in a way that exposes your ignorance of basic statistical methods. And your critics caught you, as they always will.

Will time go on forever?
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There is no reason to suppose it will not.

If so, there is an infinity of 100 year segments in all of time...
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There is an infinity of 10-year segments, 10-hour segments, and 10-nanosecond segments. Maybe that's why there's no requirement that a probability distribution function express its domain as discrete values. Further, we routinely work with open-ended PDFs.

and the likelihood of now being during my segment is infinitesimal (at most).
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Equivocation. Now is relative, and in this case dictated by your Texas sharpshooter. You were instead looking for the probability that your lifetime would occur at some given point (or interval) on the timeline. That is an open-ended, non-uniform distribution. That's an easy thing for a statistician to reckon with.

And further, I've been assuming that Time began with the big bang. Does that really make sense?
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Yes. There is no data to support anything else.

But anyway, here, I'm not asking about the probability of me currently existing. I'm asking about the likelihood of now being during my lifetime...
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And more equivocation. You're trying to hide your tautological likelihood computation behind the word "now," which you can wrench violently about to mean different things as you get trapped. The probability that your observation was made when you existed to make it is 1. The probability that both those coincident events occurred at any given time is given by the PDF I alluded to above, and is entirely irrelevant to the considerations given from within the context of the conditioned event.
 
Jabba said:
- But, that isn't the issue.
- But then, unfortunately, I was wrong, myself, as to the likelihood of now being within my particular years. Will time go on forever?
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Irrelevant. Boy, it'd be great if you actually read the responses to your questions.

- And further, I've been assuming that Time began with the big bang. Does that really make sense? Was there an empty time before the filled time?
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There's no filled time. THERE WAS NO TIME BEFORE THE BIG BANG, remember?

- But anyway, here, I'm not asking about the probability of me currently existing. I'm asking about the likelihood of now being during my lifetime...
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That's the same question in reverse.
 
Jabba said:
- Again, we're passing in the night. It's like one of us is the teacher -- of say, "Factor Analysis" -- and the other the student -- and the student just doesn't grasp the teachers explanation.
- Could be that I'm the student, and only think that I'm the teacher -- but, probably not...:)
- But anyway, my basic claim is that the likelihood of "now" being during my lifetime is a meaningful statistical concept, and is extremely small whatever.
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You are not the teacher. You're not even a passing student, Jabba. You are failing on basic concepts of statistical reasoning. The "passage in the night" is you trying to invent a private version of statistics to suit your desired outcome. You were told by the other statisticians you consulted that you were making such an error, and you are making the same error again.

"The likelihood of now" isn't an operative concept. This particular instant of time has no inherent significance. You are merely trying to give it some because that's when you exist and are observing the passage of time. That's the Texas sharpshooter fallacy again. There is no inherent, magical time at which you were pre-ordained to exist.
 
Jabba said:
- Again, we're passing in the night. It's like one of us is the teacher -- of say, "Factor Analysis" -- and the other the student -- and the student just doesn't grasp the teachers explanation.
- Could be that I'm the student, and only think that I'm the teacher -- but, probably not...:)
- But anyway, my basic claim is that the likelihood of "now" being during my lifetime is a meaningful statistical concept, and is extremely small whatever.
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Do you understand that you could not possibly exist before your parents were born?
 
More like a lighthouse, a fixed beacon of fact shining out from the coastline.

And a leaky hull, with no sail or rudder, sitting on the harbor bottom. The captain's treading water, periodically signaling the lighthouse. "But you do agree that I'm on a voyage to China, right?"
 
Jabba said:
- Could be that I'm the student, and only think that I'm the teacher -- but, probably not...:)
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A better analogy would be a roomful of teachers who patiently explain that "1 + 4 =/= 7" and a slightly dim bulb asks "How about one and four are seven?" and then sticks chewing gum in his hair and crayons up his nose and has to be put back several grades until he learns "his" pronouns.
 
Or it's like a guy on an internet message board that spent 5 years arguing absolute across the board random nonsense while not listening to one damn thing anyone has ever told him and still acting like he's the one in the position of intellectual superiority.

Sorry I'm not good with metaphors.
 
Jabba said:
- Could be that I'm the student, and only think that I'm the teacher -- but, probably not...:)
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You are neither. It's prideful hubris for you to try and claim either title.

To be a student you would need to learn. I have seen no evidence that you have learned anything in your discussions here.

To be a teacher you would need to offer lessons that people learned. Your diatribes have been nothing but delusional tripe, incoherent nonsense that could be produced by putting statistics manual a Ken Ham book in a blender and pouring the resultant mess out onto a table. You have taught no lessons, nor do you have anything of value to teach.

You are not a teacher.

You are not a student.
 
Jabba said:
- Again, we're passing in the night. It's like one of us is the teacher -- of say, "Factor Analysis" -- and the other the student -- and the student just doesn't grasp the teachers explanation.
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There's a good way, actually, to work out who is the teacher and who is the - let's say student, though the concept, as clarified above, isn't really applicable here:

Each side, try to explain the other side's argument in simple terms.

Jabba, your argument, as I understand it, is that the likelihood of you existing at this specific time is so remotely small that materialism is incapable of explaining it; the only possible explanation is that some part of you, which you would describe as the soul, has always existed and always will exist, meaning that the likelihood of you existing at this time is in fact a certainty.

Is that good enough? If so, please sum up the arguments that everybody else is advancing against yours.

If you can't do so, then you are not the teacher.

Dave
 
Jabba said:
Sure, but leave me out of the equation. What is the likelihood that now would be between 1942 and 2042 Gregorian time?
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No, there's no need to go off on some irrelevant tangent just to give you something to talk about besides your abject ignorance of basic statistics. Yesterday you were all hot and bothered about the difference between probability and likelihood, thinking you could one-up your critics with your fantastic knowledge. Now you're asking us for a "likelihood" without telling us the event upon which that likelihood should be conditioned.

Pathetic.

"Oh golly, I'm cornered again. I'd better give my critics some irrelevant task to perform so that they won't keep pressing the issue. Hm, maybe I'll pretend to be befuddled and ask them to repeat themselves. Or maybe I'll ask some irrelevant question. If they take time to answer, it will distract from my failure. If they don't, I can accuse them of being unhelpful and that will be an excuse to ignore them."
 
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- Assuming, for the moment, that time started with the big bang?
 
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Jabba said:
Dave,
- Sure, but leave me out of the equation. What is the likelihood that now would be between 1942 and 2042 Gregorian time?
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Now the question doesn't even make sense. "Now" refers to whatever time the speaker is talking about at the time they're talking about it.
 
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