tsig
a carbon based life-form
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In that case your AP just went by the boards.
[Merged] Immortality & Bayesian Statistics
- Thread starter Jabba
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In that case your AP just went by the boards.
Squeegee Beckenheim
Penultimate Amazing
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That point, otherwise known as "the beginning".
OK.
The existence of any kind of life, let alone life which has the intellect and spare time to do philosophical navel gazing is simultaneously both amazing and mundane.
Almost the entirety of the universe is hostile to our kind of life, so yes it's amazing that we are here, but on the other hand here is the only place we can be. Once life began on the planet, it could have evolved in many different ways but had it evolved in a way where humans didn't arise, we wouldn't know about it. We don't know of all the kinds of life that may well have evolved on other planets, we don't know of the many thousands of species which went extinct without leaving any trace of their existences, and we don't know if we'll be joining the list of extinct life forms or when.
To call our existence amazing or miraculous is to spray a random barn wall with millions of bullets, only one of which is marked "flora and fauna on Earth in the 21st century", then find that bullet and draw a huge target around it and say "look! How amazing that us in this time hit the absolute centre of that target!!"
In other words, we are only as special as we think we are.
I don't like miraculous, though, since there's an implication of something supernatural inherent in the word.
Try. It might be fairly said that if a person cannot explain or convey a concept, that person probably does not understand it sufficiently.
Special compared with what? Are we special compared with cats? Fruit flies? Grasses? Bacteria? If not, why not?
Squeegee Beckenheim
Penultimate Amazing
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Bacteria is the one, really. We may think we're big and clever, but bacteria do it much better than we do. By weight, there are more bacteria on Earth than any other type of life. Possibly every other type of life combined. Bacteria are more adaptable than we are, they've been around for far, far longer than we have, and they will continue on far, far longer after the human race is a distant memory.
We think we rule the Earth, but that's a sad fantasy. This is the single-celled organisms' planet. Always was, always will be.
dafydd
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You're at it again. Why not just state the reason and argument for your belief now?
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Loss Leader
I would save the receptionist., Moderator
I don't see any way that you can calculate probability from one data point. You exist. If we were to run the universe from the beginning, would you exist or not? We can't know. As far as we know, the odds of you existing in a universe where you exist are 1:1. Nothing about probability can be derived from that.
I am wearing a blue shirt. That's all you know about me. I am wearing a blue shirt. Now, what are the odds that I would have selected a blue shirt this morning? You cannot know. You don't know how many shirts I own, you don't know how many of them are blue, you don't know what criteria I used to choose my shirt. The fact that, lets say, only 5% of shirts in the world are blue doesn't matter. 100% of my shirts might be blue. Since I'm at work, 100% of my button-down shirts could be blue. Without more data, all that you can say is that we live in a universe where it is possible that my shirt is blue.
Good luck getting any farther than that.
Ladewig
I lost an avatar bet.
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quelle surpris
quelle dommage
Magic 8 Ball says " Without a doubt."
........................
Jabba is a better poster than I.
Because if I were presenting a theory that essentially proves immortality, I could not help but end every post with "Dance, my little puppets. Dance."
.
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Squeegee Beckenheim
Penultimate Amazing
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Jabba's not presenting a theory that essentially proves immortality. He keeps saying he's going to, and keeps posting tiny snippets of what he claims is such a theory, but he has yet to actually post his theory. Because doing so would not be effective debate, like this thread is.
Slowvehicle
Membership Drive , Co-Ordinator,, Russell's Antin
You winz one internetz.
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HighRiser
Graduate Poster
Would you accept that until you describe how you arrive at the 50% assumption, that it's a meaningless number?
dafydd
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I'm hoping for a long one. Why fifty percent? What are the chances of my auntie growing a pair of cojones and becoming my uncle?
Akhenaten
Heretic Pharaoh
Mojo
Mostly harmless
Sorry about my long absence, Jabba; real life took precedence and will continue to make demands.
Regarding this question, I have an objection before my answer:
Objection: There is not just one complementary hypothesis. If you provide one irrefutable instance of reincarnation, for instance, then you have not proven that a consciousness is immortal, only that that one particular consciousness returned that one time. So to make your question at all meaningful, you would have to be far more specific.
That said, here's my answer anyway: No. If I roll a 1 on a six-sided die, would you ask me to believe I actually hadn't since there was an 83% probability that I would not have done?
1. You haven't explained exactly what the complementary hypothesis to 'you have but one short life live at most' means. It's not enough to suggest that your complementary hypothesis is 'everything that's not encompassed in the sentence above'. You need to be exact.
2. Where on earth do you get a probability of 50% from?
2. Where on earth do you get a probability of 50% from?
Mojo
Mostly harmless
Slowvehicle
Membership Drive , Co-Ordinator,, Russell's Antin
Mr. Savage:
At the rsik of being told that I am being condescending, would you mind explaining what you are trying to say? I honestly cannot tell.
Please note that if you call "...but one short life to live, at most...", "A" (your 'hypothesis'), then "not-A" (the 'complementary hypothesis') is, "...not but one short life to live, at most...".
You are going to get a lot of resistance at that point, because you seem to be claiming that "not-A" must be "immortality", when "not-A" could include all sorts of things:
-"...one long life to live, at most..."
-"...two short lives to live, at most..."
-"...a indeterminate number, but less than ∞, of short lives to live, at most..."
-"...one short life, and one long life, to live, at most..."
...and so on. "Not-A" is exactly that: just...not "A".
You also have the not-inconsiderable problem of empirical, practical evidence--people are observed to live a life, then die. How are you getting around that?
ETA: ninja'ed by essentially everyone. Sorry.
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Akhenaten
Heretic Pharaoh
I must admit, as much balderdash as has been posted in this thread, I now find myself faced with a question so devoid of reason that a complete rethink is required.
IOW:
Would you accept the complementary hypothesis to you having but two human-sized legs, at most if the complementary hypothesis had a prior probability of 50%?
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