Cont: Proof of Immortality VIII

Jabba said:
- I don't know -- or, don't remember -- the right words to use, but so far, I think that I understand the concepts better than most (if not all) of you guys.
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Jabba,
I find this remark very disappointing. Shall I review your difficulty with every step so far with the simple "Is this nickel fair?" problem, beginning with the very first step?

You continue to not know what you do not know, and you actively resist correcting that.
 
Jabba said:
- I don't know -- or, don't remember -- the right words to use, but so far, I think that I understand the concepts better than most (if not all) of you guys.
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You do know that this is a contradictory statement, if you can't use the words then how do you even pretend to understand the concepts.
 
Dancing David said:
You do know that this is a contradictory statement, if you can't use the words then how do you even pretend to understand the concepts.
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That one's easy because it's a common trope in fringe claims. "I may not know all the right words, or have studied the subject formally, but I have a very intuitive understanding of this subject, and that's better than rote book learning." The clash between intuition and knowledge pervades a lot of genres of fringe advocacy, but is most clearly seen in alternative medicine. This is just Jabba's "holistic thinking" argument with a new coat of paint on it. Over at TalkStats he tried to draw a distinction between his new-age approach and that of the "official" (his scare quotes) statisticians, suggesting -- just as he did here -- that one has to have his particular brand of statistical intuition to understand the genius of his proof.

What typically happens in this pattern of argument is that the claimant first tries to establish a foundation of genuine expertise by fiat alone. Jabba claims to be a "certified statistician." He clarifies that this was a qualification in ordinary statistics obtained in the customary way (albeit, we've discovered, a qualification that has no academic or professional value). All that he then says about statistics is then supposed to be heard under that color. If anything seems untoward about the proof itself, you're supposed to refer back to the claim of expertise; Jabba knows this stuff and you don't, so if you have a problem then it must be your lack of understanding.

That works for a while, and works indefinitely as long as it's never challenged. When it's challenged, the claimant typically extends the bluff for as long as possible and then, if the challenge persists long enough, he changes horses and specially pleads a different form of expertise that he alone is master of and which produces better results.

Jabba usually resorts to this right after he's been clearly cornered and right before the brief hiatus that preceeds the next fringe reset.
 
Jabba said:
- Yeah. If the sharpshooter fallacy doesn't apply, all we need is a real number for P(~H), and P(H|E) is too small to take seriously.
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"Yeah. If there was no gravity, I could carry this piano up a stairwell all by myself."
 
Jabba said:
- From Jay:
Fatal flaw 4: You don't understand what evidence is.



And as with all fringe theorists, you try to drive a speculative wedge into the inductive gap in order to shift the burden of proof. You have explicitly said that all you need is a "reasonable alternative" to hold by default after you've purported to claim the prevailing theory is so unlikely as to be all but impossible.

- Yeah. If the sharpshooter fallacy doesn't apply, all we need is a real number for P(~H), and P(H|E) is too small to take seriously.
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What would prevent P(~H|E) being “too small to take seriously”?
 
zooterkin said:
Indeed; Jabba once again demonstrates that he has no grasp how small (or large) some of the significant values in the universe are.
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He has also persistently failed to grasp that the ‘hypotheses’ he has defined as H and ~H are not actually complementary hypotheses.
 
He has failed to grasp a lot of things. Hence the requirement to deal with the fatal flaws all at once, in a single post, if only at the highest level. When Jabba can confine the discussion to one or two things on the table at that moment, he can sort of talk around the assumptions he's making elsewhere. When you see the whole argument together, it becomes apparent that practically every element is some sort of assumption or brush-off. Jabba says his argument makes sense at the "big picture" scope. So far he has assiduously avoided having that statement tested.
 
JayUtah said:
He has failed to grasp a lot of things. Hence the requirement to deal with the fatal flaws all at once, in a single post, if only at the highest level. When Jabba can confine the discussion to one or two things on the table at that moment, he can sort of talk around the assumptions he's making elsewhere. When you see the whole argument together, it becomes apparent that practically every element is some sort of assumption or brush-off. Jabba says his argument makes sense at the "big picture" scope. So far he has assiduously avoided having that statement tested.
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I think jabba knows the highlighted all too well. That's why he's avoiding doing so consistently since the beginning, in every thread he's participated in.
 
Belz... said:
I think jabba knows the highlighted all too well. That's why he's avoiding doing so consistently since the beginning, in every thread he's participated in.
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Context has never been Jabba's friend. From the Shroud thread, he tried to argue that supposedly coincidental evidence constituted appropriate "circumstantial" evidence of the Shroud's authenticity. He tried to detach the question of how probative circumstantial evidence could be in a different thread. And it was agreed that circumstantial evidence was indeed useful evidence -- until people saw how he intended to use it. Then they said, "Well, no, not like that."

Similarly he has tried to argue from this thread that anecdotes are evidence. And he started a new thread on that, deprived of the context from which the question arose. There was a lively discussion about how anecdotes are used in science, but then when it became evident what he meant by the question, the conclusion was again reached: "Well, no, not the way you're planning to use it."

Jabba relies upon focusing on small elements of his argument in isolation, in hopes that if they make sense in isolation he can promote them to work in the context he needs. So while subjectively determined values are sometimes useful in statistical inference, when we see it all in the Big Picture the answer is, "No, not like you're trying to use it."

I'm reminded of the Simpsons episode where Burns and Smithers go to the Mayo Clinic or some such place, and Burns is diagnosed with a plethora of illnesses. Burns asks the doctor, "Are you sure you haven't just made thousands of mistakes?" This is where we are. Jabba has made dozens of mistakes, but only wants to focus on one at a time with the goal of showing that each individual mistake can be weasel-worded around in isolation, but the whole argument at the high level just doesn't fly.
 
JayUtah said:
I'm reminded of the Simpsons episode where Burns and Smithers go to the Mayo Clinic or some such place, and Burns is diagnosed with a plethora of illnesses. Burns asks the doctor, "Are you sure you haven't just made thousands of mistakes?" This is where we are. Jabba has made dozens of mistakes, but only wants to focus on one at a time with the goal of showing that each individual mistake can be weasel-worded around in isolation, but the whole argument at the high level just doesn't fly.
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It's amazing how often the people in this thread come to the same points of reference in trying to explain Jabba's nonsense.

From 17th September of last year: http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=11987540&postcount=2172
 
Jabba said:
Somewhere, back there (you guys can find it faster than I can), I showed how I arrived at P(E|~H).
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We all remember exactly how you arrived at it. You made up a series of numbers from whole cloth, with no reference to any data, and multiplied them together. And we all recognise that this operation is mathematically equivalent to just making up the final number.

Dave
 
Jabba said:
Somewhere, back there (you guys can find it faster than I can), I showed how I arrived at P(E|~H).
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Do you realise quite how ridiculous this is? (Leaving aside the actual process of how you generated the numbers themselves, as Dave Rogers pointed out, the fact that you are not able to simply present the justification on demand reinforces the conclusion that you just don't have a clue.)
 
JayUtah said:
He has failed to grasp a lot of things. Hence the requirement to deal with the fatal flaws all at once, in a single post, if only at the highest level. When Jabba can confine the discussion to one or two things on the table at that moment, he can sort of talk around the assumptions he's making elsewhere. When you see the whole argument together, it becomes apparent that practically every element is some sort of assumption or brush-off. Jabba says his argument makes sense at the "big picture" scope. So far he has assiduously avoided having that statement tested.
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But even attacking one fatal flaw at a time gets him nowhere if he ends up saying (as he always does) “well, I can’t overcome it, but if you ignore that particular fatal flaw my argument is sound.” Even a single fatal flaw sinks him.
 
He hasn't left the building, he's skulking off-stage listening to his imaginary jury demanding yet another encore. He's just deciding which of the two songs he knows to play this time.
 
jsfisher said:
"Jabba has left the building"


...but he'll be back.
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js,

- I've been trying to quote our discussion back through page 31 (of this chapter) at least. There must have been almost 40 entries. But, I lost the whole copy...

- My claim is that you have been treating this as a debate (naturally enough) -- when, if you could treat this as a "teaching moment," we might be able to make some progress.
- It did take me a while to realize that you knew much more about Bayesian Statistics than I did (sorry about that). But, when I saw that you did, I changed my perspective and was honestly trying to just understand, exactly where you were at odds with my reasoning. I started asking a lot of questions.

- So now, if possible, please try to treat me as a student, who has brought to you a crazy mathematical conclusion, and you just want to help me understand why/where my conclusion is wrong. So far, I can't figure that out, even though it would seem like I must be wrong -- since none of the experts in the relevant math and science have come to the same conclusion...
- So please, see if you can treat me as a "slow" student that you really want to help -- with direct answers to slow questions.

- So, what should I be doing re the PDF? How does that fit into the problem?
 
Jabba said:
js,

when, if you could treat this as a "teaching moment," we might be able to make some progress.
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So in other words, you don't know what you think and are proposing or you can't accept the fact that your concept is incoherent.

Face it Jabba, you can't use mathematics to prove an incoherent preposition.
 
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