Cont: Proof of Immortality VIII

jond said:
The likelihood of the self and the brain under H, is the same. Whatever number you want to use. If the brain is a given the likelihood of the self is also a given...
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jond,
- That, simply, is not true. If the brain is a given, the self is also a given -- but, the likelihood of the self is not.
 
Immortality is trivially implied by Presentism, the philosophy of time that understands the past and the future as being semantically reducible to empirical relations observed in the present.

If the prevailing culture of science abandoned its non-empirical metaphysical belief in temporal realism, then a view sympathetic to the intuitions of the immortalist could well become the default view.
 
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Jabba said:
jond,
- That, simply, is not true. If the brain is a given, the self is also a given -- but, the likelihood of the self is not.
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You already lost when you showed that the likelihood of H is 1 while you calculated the likelihood of ~H as .0062.

You did calculate it, didn't you? How did you arrive at 10-100?
 
Mojo said:
The likelihood of the "self" is only an issue under hypotheses in which "selves" exist. As far as H is concerned, the likelihood that you exist is equal to the likelihood that your body exists. The series of events leading to the existence of your body is the same in H as it is in ~H.

On the figures you have provided (wherever you pulled them from) the likelihood of your existence under H is 10-100; under ~H it is 6.2 X 10-103.
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Mojo,
- What do you think is the likelihood of your current existence under H?
 
Jabba said:
That, simply, is not true. If the brain is a given, the self is also a given -- but, the likelihood of the self is not.
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You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.

More precisely, please stop gaslighting, begging, and pontificating when you should be reasoning and responding. You haven't demonstrated the least correct understanding of any of the principles you've espoused to support your proof. You've been told by countless statisticians that your understanding is so far wrong they can't even begin to tell you where it's wrong. Simply waving your hands and yelling "likelihood" at everyone who points out your errors doesn't magically make you smart or right.

Further, as we have all noted, the central element of your proof is a number you simply plucked out of thin air. You know that's what you did, and you don't want to admit you did because you know your critics will rightly take you to task for having done so. They're right that it's probably the most conspicuous error today in your proof. You can't point to a single factor of existence that distinguishes the immortal soul in your model from what your critics point to as materialism. Even in your model it doesn't exist in any functional way outside its connection to a body, or from incarnation to incarnation. It just exists on paper as the McGuffin around which you've built a house of cards. What's worse is that this nebulous, poorly thought-out, fanciful non-entity is statistically responsible in your proof for reducing the likelihood of your existence given materialism to this teensy number you pulled out of your kiester. It has that effect on the math only because you insist it must, not because you've calculated that it should. That's not how math works.
 
jsfisher said:
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.
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js,
- I'm not sure that I'm using the terminology appropriately, but I do think that's what I meant.
 
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Dave Rogers said:
It's your argument; stop trying to offload the work.
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It's not so much getting others to do his work for him. It's about tricking people into validating his method. He thinks he can just guess at this or that likelihood and come up with solid answers. He has even said in one of his walls of text that if there's no rational way to know the value of some variable, you can just make up a value. Now we've all told him that's not how inference works. But Jabba doesn't want to think about whether his method is right or wrong because he's way too invested in it. He doesn't want to accept the proposition that he's just that wrong. He's willing to talk about how to fiddle with the knobs and antennas and hopefully get better reception, but he's not willing to face the fact that he's looking at the clothes washer, not the TV.

Cajoling others into playing his same game removes their ability to claim that the game is rigged. If somebody works his equation and comes up with a number, the discussion leapfrogs into whether that's the right number, not whether the model is correct.
 
JayUtah said:
Cajoling others into playing his same game removes their ability to claim that the game is rigged. If somebody works his equation and comes up with a number, the discussion leapfrogs into whether that's the right number, not whether the model is correct.
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It is sort of oddly manically brilliant. When every single aspect of every single part of your argument is 100% wrong from every possible angle, trying to discuss any specific aspect of it is nearly impossible because there's no frame of reference.

When someone says 1+2 = 7, you correct the math.

When someone says a potato is a fruit, you correct the terminology.

What do you do when someone says 1+2 = a potato? What do you correct? The potato or the 1+2?
 
Jabba said:
I'm not sure that I'm using the terminology appropriately....
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You aren't. What's worse, you think that merely mentioning certain words in a discussion magically endows that discussion with clarity and reason. You don't know what a likelihood is, but you seem all too eager to browbeat your critics simply by mentioning it and insinuating that they don't understand. We can tell you're bluffing, Jabba.

...but I do think that's what I meant.
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Then, as jsfisher says, you need to try again because if that's what you meant then your proof fails forthwith in a straightforward way. You need to come to grips with the fact that it does not take a bearded professor or other form of wizard to spot the errors in your proof. You don't get to pretend that you're accidentally so genius that only the best and brightest can refute you. I see this all the time in fringe argumentation. People think they've made some grand discovery, but only the best minds in the field can understand it -- and if necessary, refute it. They seek out those best minds, and then read all kinds of nefarious intent into the understandable unwillingness of those minds to dignify with their attention what any reasonably informed person can tell is abject twaddle.
 
JayUtah said:
I see this all the time in fringe argumentation. People think they've made some grand discovery, but only the best minds in the field can understand it -- and if necessary, refute it. They seek out those best minds, and then read all kinds of nefarious intent into the understandable unwillingness of those minds to dignify with their attention what any reasonably informed person can tell is abject twaddle.
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Ouch.
 
Jabba said:
jond,
- That, simply, is not true. If the brain is a given, the self is also a given -- but, the likelihood of the self is not.
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The brain generates the self. Nothing else is required. The self is not a separate entity, it is a process the brain does. This has been your problem from day one, and until you stop treating the self as a separate entity under the materialist model, you will always be fighting a straw man.
 
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