Cont: Proof of Immortality VIII

Jabba said:
Mojo,

- You're right in your first, and (I think) second paragraph -- under H there's no multiplier.
- But under ~H, the multiplier is 1 -- which is why ~H is not automatically less probable than H.

- Regarding your third paragraph, I have 'conceded' that the probability of my existence -- either brain or self -- is 1, but I have not conceded that the likelihood of my existence -- either brain or self -- is 1.
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You've already calculated the probability of your existence under ~H to be .0064 and you've shown that the probability of your existence under H is 1.

You did calculate it to be .0064, didn't you? You were asked about it several times.
 
Let's try a parable. Jabba will ignore this, misunderstand it, or misconstrue it, but hell this thread has been the best creative writing course I've ever taking so...

Now I hate to revisit the "lottery" metaphor because Jabba and a couple of the thread nannies tend to misconstrue it and run with it the wrong direction but I want to use it to clarify the "Bayesian Overload" theory.

You've been offered a chance to play an amazing new lottery.

In this lottery you have a 1 in 10,000 chance of winning a great fortune. You have a 99,999 in 10,000 chance of winning a "consolation prize" of nominal value.

Your number between 1 and 10,000 is generated for you by a random number generator will accept as true and fair for our purpose. You then walk into the room where the lottery is held. Before you is the method of play, a fair scratch card with a random number of 1-10,000, a drum of 10,000 balls, a 10,000 sided die (that would be something), whatever, doesn't matter. You have a mathematically sound 1 in 10,000 chance of winning. We'll assume for our purposes that the lottery is not rigged and ran fairly.

And your potential prizes are there. On the table, in a Plexiglas locked box, is a huge stack of money, jewels, gold bars, bearer bonds, all yours if you get that 1 in 10,000 number.

There's also off to the side a huge bin, a triwall or something, filled to the brim with the consolation prizes; various cheap plastic novelties, little stuffed animals, party favors, Cracker Jack/Kinder Egg/Christmas Cracker level toys, 5 dollar gift cards to chain restaurants, stuff like that. If you don't win the main prize a lottery official will, as you leave, reach into the pile and toss you a prize at random. Nothing in the consolation stack is bad mind you, it's just of nominal value and interest at best.

So 1 in 10,000 chance of great riches, 99,999 in 10,000 chance of a meaningless bit of fluff.

So here's my question (to Jabba ostensibly):

Can you increase or decrease your chances of winning the lottery by adjusting the number of items in the consolation prize pile?

No, you cannot. The probability of getting the grand prize is set at 1 in 10,000. The number of consolation prizes in the stack only changes the odds of which individual consolation prize you get, not your odds of getting a consolation prize period.

Could one argue that since you have a specific probability of getting any one individual specific consolation prize, say a gift card for a free appetizer at Olive Garden, and that the probability of getting each individual consolation prize has to be bigger than 0% that you could add so many consolation prizes to the consolation prize pile that this would somehow tip the balance and alter the probability of getting the grand prize?

Of course not, that's insane. The lottery would have the exact same probability of winning the grand prize if there were zero or infinite consolation prizes because the odds of winning the grand prize or separate and distinct from the odds of winning a specific consolation prize.

But that is essentially what you are doing on a far, far grander and even more ludicrous scale. You're trying to change the actual probability that you're gonna die by inventing alternatives to it and arbitrarily assigning those alternatives a made up probability.

You assign a value to "You're gonna die." Even ignoring that the universe is not some mathematically perfect thought experiment and things like "An organic being has a finite lifespan and will at some point die" are essentially 100% for any practical purpose you than try to tip the scales even further by listing more and more alternatives to you die, trying to get those alternatives to add up to a probability.

Even if you could make up a hundred billion trillion zillion million million googleplex legitimate "alternatives" to you dying and assign each one of those alternatives a non-made up probability, your odds of dying would stay exactly the same.
 
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Jabba said:
- Yes.
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Jabba,

You act as if you didn't just respond in a way that is a direct admission that your entire argument is broken.

YOU JUST ADMITTED YOU ARE WRONG. And yet you're gonna plow ahead as if nothing about the discussion has changed same as the last 500 times you go argued into a corner.
 
Belz... said:
So it requires two separate entities to exist rather than one. Which one is more likely, you think?
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That, though, is what caveman1917 is criticising; his argument is that, if two different parts or attributes of a single entity have an existence that is in some way conditional upon each other, then it's fallacious to argue that their joint existence is any less probable than the separate existence of one of them. That in itself is a fallacious statement, of course, because the conjunction fallacy only applies to cases where the simultaneous existence of two entities is claimed to be more probable than that of one entity independent of the other; it doesn't, for example, address the claim that it's equally probable for a person to have a head, and both a head and a torso, as he loves to pretend it does.

More important, though, is that ~H requires a specific instance to be chosen from each of two populations, of which one is the exact same one that must be chosen under H. Since the other entity must also be chosen from a large population, it's virtually certain that the probability of this specific Jabba, rather than some other variation of Jabba, existing, must be lower under ~H than H.

And since virtual proof is the standard we're supposed to be aiming for...

Dave
 
Belz... said:
Yeah but he's wrong and his torso analogy is ridiculous: the whole body is a system. The soul is an added, independant thing that's joined with the body, so it's not a fallacy to look at their separate likehlihoods.
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And the fact that Jabba is specifically using the various "probabilities" he's made up out of nothing to compare and contact the chance his body and "self" are going to exists and at what time as the main core of his argument.

Jabba is literally trying to argue that increasing variables reduces probability.
 
JoeMorgue said:
And the fact that Jabba is specifically using the various "probabilities" he's made up out of nothing to compare and contact the chance his body and "self" are going to exists and at what time as the main core of his argument.

Jabba is literally trying to argue that increasing variables reduces probability.
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At this point, though, he'd have to give the soul a probability ABOVE 1 in order to make ~H more likely than H, which is endlessly amusing.
 
Belz... said:
At this point, though, he'd have to give the soul a probability ABOVE 1 in order to make ~H more likely than H, which is endlessly amusing.
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Well I'm still of the mind that following Jabba down his absurd "Equations" rabbit hole was a bad call to make.

His numbers are all made up nonsense. His "equation" is just a mathematical Gish Gallop, yet another case of Jabba trying to set us off on side pointless side fetch quest while the central core of his argument is still a pile of leaves that has convinced itself it's a pile of straw that aspires to one day be part of a strawman.

And it's the thing that's attracted the most thread nannies.

You can't make a 3 potatoes, an air filter for a 85 Jeep CJ, and a cup of sugar equal a spacestation by fixing the equation'sPEMDAS.
 
Mojo said:
Remember, Jabba: under H, "selves" don't exist as discrete entities (as you have recently admitted). Talking about the likelihood of it existing under H is not even wrong.

If the likelihood of your brain existing is the same in H as it is in ~H then the likelihood that you are observed to exist cannot be greater under ~H than it is under H, because under H once your brain exists, you exist. It's a single event, not a conjunction of two events as you are trying to portray it.
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Mojo,

- You're right -- it isn't even wrong, cause it's right..

- In ~H, the existence of my self does not depend upon my brain. In H, it does. That makes the likelihood of my self's existence under ~H much greater than it is under H.
 
Jabba said:
- You're right -- it isn't even wrong, cause it's right..
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There are NO SOULS under H!

In ~H, the existence of my self does not depend upon my brain.
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But without a body it can't observe itself, can it?

In H, it does. That makes the likelihood of my self's existence under ~H much greater than it is under H.
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You've already agreed that under H the likelihood of your self is 1. You can't go higher than 1. What part of that is giving you trouble?
 
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