Proof of Immortality, VII

[Jabba]

Won't "now" be different depending on whose perspective you're talking about and when they are talking?

- Yes -- but, the "likelihood" won't change for the next 24 years, at least. And, most likely, everybody's best answer will still be "extremely small."

 

[godless dave]

- Yes -- but, the "likelihood" won't change for the next 24 years, at least. And, most likely, everybody's best answer will still be "extremely small."

Why would it be extremely small? If I hadn't been born in 1970, I wouldn't have been born at all, at any time. There is no other time when I could have been born.

 

[Thermal]

Jabba:

It seems you are still lobbying your upthread poker hand analogy, that we should be suspicious that so many unlikely things have happened to create our here and now (although your use of 'now' seems to be unfolding). Do you think that rephrasing this claim will make thread readers jump up and say 'oh, I get it now. Jabba was right all along?' I don't think leading questions are working here.

 

[JayUtah]

- Yes -- but, the "likelihood" won't change for the next 24 years, at least.

Why? You said anyone's perspective. I choose Abraham Lincoln's perspective. And I have no idea what he will have chosen for his "now." And since your question has too many degrees of freedom, it is ill-formed and has no answer.

And, most likely, everybody's best answer will still be "extremely small."

But that's not a mathematical question, then, is it? If you simply poll for agreement to a question obviously designed to equivocate its operative principles, then you're just creating the illusion of rigor instead of actually being able to provide it. Do you really think your critics can't see what you're trying to do?

 

[Dave Rogers]

- Yes -- but, the "likelihood" won't change for the next 24 years, at least. And, most likely, everybody's best answer will still be "extremely small."

Do you not see, though, how comprehensively this invalidates your entire line of argument? If there are 140,000,000 tickets in a lottery, and you happen to buy ticket no. 27,598,163, that's a 1 in 140,000,000 chance, bit every other ticket is just as unlikely to have been the one you bought. If it's equally unlikely that "now" falls within any specific 100 year period, then it's equally unremarkable that "now" falls within any 100 year period. Your argument therefore equates to the argument that it's impossible to buy a lottery ticket, a conclusion you can invalidate trivially simply. It is, in fact, as practically everybody has been repeatedly pointing out to you, in our role as teachers to yours as the inattentive and demotivated student, an exact statement of the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy.

Dave

 

[JayUtah]

That would be option (b): the question is meaningless, because you have chosen not to adhere to the accepted meaning of the word "now".

And he forgot to underline it or put it in quotes. "What are the chances of 'now' being in some particular interval?" Answer given, and then the inevitable rejoinder: "But that wouldn't be now."

 

[godless dave]

Dude, what are the odds that now is, like now, man? It could totally be some other time in some other dimension, and you and me are smoking a bowl and having this discussion there and then. Whoa.

Jabba, this is pretty much your claim.

 

[JayUtah]

...yours as the inattentive and demotivated student, an exact statement of the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy.

I wouldn't say demotivated. I'd say anti-motivated. In my teaching career I encountered many demotivated students. They sat in the back, asked no questions, didn't turn in homework, failed tests, took their sorry grade and went away. I also encountered a handful of anti-motivated students. These are highly annoying. An anti-motivated student is one who believes he already knows the material and wastes the class time asking pointed questions ostensibly intended to embarrass, entrap, or stump the teacher. They want to show the rest of the class (or whoever) that they are the smartest ones in the room.

In a classroom setting these individuals are toxic. Not only do they refuse to learn, they act in a way that prevents others from losing. Luckily those individuals don't last long in the college setting. They often fail qualifying exams for advancement and generally spout a trail of invective and blame as they depart. They are, for these purposes, ineducable.

This appears to be Jabba. As we've noted, he won't listen and he won't learn, and when that results in an impasse he just blames his critics for being biased or stupid. There are really only a limited number of civil ways such approaches can be handled.

 

[Belz...]

- Yes -- but, the "likelihood" won't change for the next 24 years, at least. And, most likely, everybody's best answer will still be "extremely small."

You have agreed that your existence is cause-and-effect dependant. That means the likelihood is 1. Stop trying to backtrack from that just because you realise that this means you've lost.

 

[JayUtah]

"Now" is 2018-02-15 09:57:36.127.

But now it's then. That's the problem.

Many things are computable in a way that seems to make them a probability. If we define "now" arbitrarily as the one-second interval immediately following the instant at which I type the full-stop at the end of this sentence, it is certainly computable as a "probability" across some definite interval of time. But Dave Rogers has the right answer: that "probability" has no operative significance. We would have had to give it one. That the division results in a very small number in the case I state above does not provide a probability that relates, as such, to anything that inherently matters. And Dave correctly notes that once again it merely restates the Texas sharpshooter fallacy to assert that it does simply by virtue of its having been selected.

If we choose, for some reason, 2018-02-15 09:57:36.000 to 2018-02-15 09:57:37.000 as a one-second interval we're interested in among some larger defined interval, and we choose -- again for whatever reason -- the event of you clicking "Submit reply," to a post of some great, then the probability of that event falling within the predetermined interval would have some significance to whatever context we had had in mind, which gave rise to the designation of the intervals and the event. But if we have defined the interval because it contains the instant when you clicked Submit, then trying to point out that such a one-second interval is a very small target among a number of decades, centuries -- or from the Big Bang to the heat-death of the universe -- is entirely meaningless. Why is it meaningless? Because the selection by that criteria binds the selection to the criteria for the purposes of determining likelihood. It literally does become "What's the likelihood of hitting the target I defined in terms of having hit the target."

Jabba hopes to overcome that obvious flaw by removing the description of the event, but not the implied significance of the event.

 

[MRC_Hans]

- Yes -- but, the "likelihood" won't change for the next 24 years, at least. And, most likely, everybody's best answer will still be "extremely small."

OK; fair enough, if you mean the likelihood of "now" in that way. But then it is easy to calculate, provided you state the resolution of "now":

Here are the likelihoods for various resolutions of "now" (assuming 24 years):

1 year: 1/24
1 month: 1/288
1 day: 1/8760
1 hour: 1/210240
1 minute: 1/12614400

... etc.

So what?

Hans

 

[Monza]

Do you understand that you could not possibly exist before your parents were born?

He may not. Jabba recently confirmed to me on this message board that he existed in the year 1888. I assume his parents were born after that.

 

[Monza]

Do you not see, though, how comprehensively this invalidates your entire line of argument? If there are 140,000,000 tickets in a lottery, and you happen to buy ticket no. 27,598,163, that's a 1 in 140,000,000 chance, bit every other ticket is just as unlikely to have been the one you bought. If it's equally unlikely that "now" falls within any specific 100 year period, then it's equally unremarkable that "now" falls within any 100 year period. Your argument therefore equates to the argument that it's impossible to buy a lottery ticket, a conclusion you can invalidate trivially simply. It is, in fact, as practically everybody has been repeatedly pointing out to you, in our role as teachers to yours as the inattentive and demotivated student, an exact statement of the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy.

Dave

Well put.

Every moment in time will have its day in the sun and be "now". Think of any time and it will have been, is, or will be "now".

 

[JayUtah]

Every moment in time will have its day in the sun and be "now". Think of any time and it will have been, is, or will be "now".

It is rather amusing, I admit, to watch Jabba collide up against his first attempt to consider a continuous sample space. Maybe Mr. Certified Statistician will favor us with his own-words description of the difference between relative likelihood and absolute likelihood. Or maybe he'll just send Befuddled Old Man out onto the stage to sing "The Old Gray Mare" with his pants down around his ankles. "Gee, guys, this is really complicated stuff. But I think we all agree that the number I'm fishing for must be very small."

 

[JoeMorgue]

Jesus Christ are we gonna have to ad "How time works" to "Death exists" and "1 and 2 aren't the same number" to things Jabba doesn't understand?

 

[halleyscomet]

Jesus Christ are we gonna have to ad "How time works" to "Death exists" and "1 and 2 aren't the same number" to things Jabba doesn't understand?

Yes.

Yes we are.

 

[The Norseman]

"Tsuris"? Oy. You're Jewish? Since when do Jews believe in immortality?

He's posted before that he married into a Jewish family but he still self-identifies as Christian.

- Anybody's. The answer is unknowable from your perspective and my perspective (and probably, everybody else's) -- but whatever, it's extremely small!

Yeah! GOD is unknowable from your perspective and my perspective (and probably, everybody else's) so HE'S EXTREMELY SMALL!!

I'm so glad you agree!

I wouldn't say demotivated. I'd say anti-motivated. In my teaching career I encountered many demotivated students. They sat in the back, asked no questions, didn't turn in homework, failed tests, took their sorry grade and went away. I also encountered a handful of anti-motivated students. These are highly annoying. An anti-motivated student is one who believes he already knows the material and wastes the class time asking pointed questions ostensibly intended to embarrass, entrap, or stump the teacher. They want to show the rest of the class (or whoever) that they are the smartest ones in the room.

In a classroom setting these individuals are toxic. Not only do they refuse to learn, they act in a way that prevents others from losing. Luckily those individuals don't last long in the college setting. They often fail qualifying exams for advancement and generally spout a trail of invective and blame as they depart. They are, for these purposes, ineducable.

This appears to be Jabba. As we've noted, he won't listen and he won't learn, and when that results in an impasse he just blames his critics for being biased or stupid. There are really only a limited number of civil ways such approaches can be handled.

Umm... I don't know if I agree fully here. It's obvious when the real anti's come into the thread when they claim knowledge and competence above everyone especially the skeptics (always said with as much condescension and opprobrium as possible).

It literally does become "What's the likelihood of hitting the target I defined in terms of having hit the target."

(Highlight mine.)

However, this is the best summary I think I've read on the subject of the TSF; it is bell-ringingly clear with the clean simplicity and conciseness.

 

[Dancing David]

- Yes -- but, the "likelihood" won't change for the next 24 years, at least. And, most likely, everybody's best answer will still be "extremely small."

That is the most ridiculous statement of all time, the time is always now.
It doesn't matter that you ask some bizarre philosophical question with no meaning.
The time is always now, it has no likelihood. Now always has a 100% likelihood.

 

[JayUtah]

Umm... I don't know if I agree fully here. It's obvious when the real anti's come into the thread when they claim knowledge and competence above everyone especially the skeptics (always said with as much condescension and opprobrium as possible).

That's what Jabba does. But others do it worse, I'll grant you.

 

[Mojo]

I just ran

SELECT GETDATE();

and got this:

2018-02-15 09:57:36.127

So that settles it. "Now" is 2018-02-15 09:57:36.127.

But if now was then, when is it now?

ETA: Third base?