godless dave
Great Dalmuti
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Cont: Proof of Immortality VIII
- Thread starter Jabba
- Start date
RoboTimbo
Hostile Nanobacon
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
We discussed this. That's not what that phrase means. It means you're so far afield that it's difficult to know where to begin in correcting you.
No, under ~H as you've described it there is no meaningful existence unless you have both a soul and a brain, and your data E is your current existence which obviously requires a brain. The soul has perception, memory, and self-awareness only when connected to a brain. You're now trying to equivocate the meaning of "exist."
Under H as we've described it, all that's required is a brain.
Exactly the opposite, I'm afraid. Occam, and all that.
theprestige
Penultimate Amazing
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
It certainly has its disadvantages. But anyone like Jabba who is willing to flagrantly break the rules of intelligent, civil debate is going to have all kinds of temporary advantages that his critics -- more conscientious than he -- forego. I'm not saying your wrong. I'm saying there are reasons the debate often must go in the way it does.
Fringe arguments are based largely on vanity. There is the vanity of the proponent, which we've discussed at length. But there is also the vanity of the reader. A successful fringe argument such as a conspiracy theory or a religious apology purports to teach the reader something he did not already know. The claimant styles himself as the teacher, ready to elevate the reader's knowledge above the rest of the sheeple. A 9/11 conspiracy theorist purports to know all about airplanes and buildings and fires. An Apollo conspiracy theorist promises to know all about radiation and shadows in photographs. Jabba purports to know all about statistics (in this case) and about old linen (in the Shroud case). In that latter case he was able to convince quite a number of Shroud fans that he was well versed in the sciences and could take those pesky skeptics to task. He wasn't, but the Shroudies didn't care.
The reader who represents the target audience ends up being grateful to the claimant for having enlightened him on the additional facts that make the mainstream or intuitive interpretation seem inadequate. The reader almost never fully understands the sophisticated argument, and isn't likely to try to verify or validate it because it seems to supply intellectual support for something he already believes. That's where vanity plays in. The reader believes he stands above his peers in knowing additional facts and in using those facts to support a nonstandard belief.
Obviously this ploy requires a naive audience, because the proffered explanation is almost always mostly crap. As you note here, Jabba's model is nonsense and further populated with made-up figures. But Jabba's intended audience will never have heard of Bayes' theorem, or have much if any knowledge of statistical modeling and reasoning. That leaves Jabba free to fill their heads with pseudomathematical gibberish that they're told is a proof for immortality. It looks impressive with all that math, resembling the derivations they may have seen in scientific papers or textbooks. They won't understand why it doesn't work, and won't care because it pleases them to believe they've been "instructed" in how statistical reasoning can justify their religious beliefs. And they'll appreciate Jabba for providing that.
Now what happens if no one addresses the statistics? It's certainly one thing to say, as I have in my fatal-flaw post, that Jabba commits a host of elementary logical fallacies that have nothing to do with his statistics errors. That satisfies some. But what happens in this pattern of argumentation is that the claimant then falls back to the purportedly expert argument and accuses his critics of being too unsophisticated to see how the proof really works. They'll say things like the math or the physics doesn't lie -- and properly done, neither does. Jabba has made exactly the argument that while it looks like he has committed fallacy, it's actually accounted for in the math. It isn't, but we still have to show that it isn't. Leaving the straw man untouched lets the claimant continue to pose it as a formidable foe that his critics are apparently not empowered to overcome.
Jabba naturally wants to have the discussion be all about math and niggling details instead of the big picture he knows he can't win. If he remains in the obscure details of statistical modeling, he stands a chance of playing a shell game well enough to convince an outside observer that at worst his critics are not as sure of themselves as they seem. The thread nannies help maintain that incorrect perception. The supposedly "neutral audience" generally won't follow any of that reasoning, as they don't understand practical statistics, but they'll see that Jabba is at least engaged and appearing to hold his own. Often you don't win at this particular game, but it's often just important to reveal the straw man for what he is.
Fashioning the most convincing and concise rebuttal is hard because you don't know whether any given reader will be more impressed by high-level logical reasoning or low-level detailed analysis. The downfall of public debates such as this one is that you can't often have just one or the other form of rebuttal in isolation where it would appeal most strongly to readers of that particular predilection.
Dave Rogers
Bandaged ice that stampedes inexpensively through
Agreed, for the sake of argument.
No, it doesn't. Under ~H, your soul still needs to exist at all, out of all the infinite possible souls there could have been; and it also needs to be your specific soul that incarnates in your specific body - because, as you have repeatedly argued, an otherwise identical body that did not contain your soul would not be you. Therefore, the probability of your self currently existing under ~H is the product of three probabilities: that of your current body existing (which is the same as the probability of the same body existing under H), multiplied by the probability of your specific soul existing, multiplied by the probability that your specific soul incarnating in your specific body.
Since not all possible souls exist, and since of all the billions of souls that exist only one is yours, the likelihood of your existence under ~H is in fact a factor of at least nine orders of magnitude less than the likelihood of your existence under H - probably very many orders of magnitude more than that.
That is supposing, of course, that your Bayesian argument has any validity at all, and that we accept, under ~H, your repeated statement that a body identical to your current one would not be you.
Dave
Mojo
Mostly harmless
No, it's not even wrong because it is nonsense.
No, you have stated that the brain is a given under H. Understand? If the brain is a given, then so is anything that depends on it.
You are claiming that the likelihood of your existence under ~H is much greater than 1.
Monza
Alta Viro
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In the perfect copy analogy, you continually claimed that the copy wouldn't be you, even though he shares all of your memories, preferences, physical attributes, etc. But someone who lived, say in the 19th century, who doesn't have your memories, likes/dislikes, feelings, thoughts, body, or even gender, is actually you?
Jabba
Philosopher
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js,
- P(E) is also 1. But, P(E|H) is still 10-100. By P(B)=1, I just meant that the brain is a given. By P(E)=1, I meant that the self is also a given. I don't know if that's official terminology...
- Whatever, B and E are both givens, whereas in P(E|H) H is a given, but E is not.
- This is confusing stuff, and some of my terminology probably makes it more confusing.
Jabba
Philosopher
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jt,
- In regard to this particular issue, I think that I see your point. In this particular case E happens to be me -- but, in every(?) other issue E is not me, and could have not occurred.
jond
Illuminator
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Why on earth not? Under H, the brain generates the sense of self, you have agreed to this. It is one and the same with the brain. If the brain is a given so is the self, it’s what brains do!
jond
Illuminator
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You have, for 5 years, been insisting that you are talking about your current existence. Anything else is irrelevant.
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
No, it's a number you made up so that the answer would come out the way you wanted.
It's deliberately equivocal terminology. Under materialism there is no difference between the brain and the self. You're trying to sneak in an extra event while evaluating materialism so that you can pretend it's very improbable for that second event to occur. Otherwise your proof failed the very second you conceded that the brain and the self are identical under materialism. Since we have that confession on record, you're done.
You are confused. No one else is. As usual, you are trying to obfuscate and equivocate around a clear error by deliberate word games. Your critics are not fooled.
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
Your proof does not deal with "every other issue." Your proof requires the specificity that comes from your existence aside from any other. That's the only way your conflated random variables are supposed to give you the tiny little numbers your proof relies on.
Belz...
Fiend God
No, you said that the brain generates the self and that the brain is a given under H. Since you need the brain under H for the self to observe itself, that means that P(E|H) is 1.
Of course it is. You cannot observe yourself without the self, which is generated by the brain, which is a given under H. Ergo the likelihood is 1.
None of this is confusing. It's only confusing because you want a different outcome and you can't get it because your logic is flawed.
RoboTimbo
Hostile Nanobacon
No, it most assuredly is not a random small number you made up. It is 1.
The "self", as you are calling it, is a process of the brain. If the brain is a given, the "self" is also a given. It is 1.
Then you are entirely out of your depth, as has been evident for years.
Under materialism, the probability is 1, as you've shown. Your made up nonsense is .0062, according to some math that you claim to have done.
1 > .0062
Nope, not confusing at all, except to you. That's why you're wrong where you think you're right. You simply don't understand.
I accept your concession that you were horribly misled by teenage angst and now realize you've been wrong all these decades.
jsfisher
ETcorngods survivor
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P(E) is the probability of event E (your sense of self in this case). P(E) = 1 means event E is a certainty.
P(B) is the probability of event B (the existence of your brain in this case). P(B) = 1 means event B is a certainty.
If that is not what you meant, you need to try again.
jt512
Philosopher
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That's the case of E you have been using. So, you have now conceded that your argument has been incorrect (that's a huge step). Your observing E cannot be evidence for H over ~H or vice versa.
Since you have admitted that your argument fails with E being your own existence, you can, if you wish, reformulate your argument using some other evidence. I don't think it will help, but you can no longer justify continuing your argument with E being your own existence.