tsig
a carbon based life-form
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Would you accept the complementary hypothesis to you are a rutabaga , if the complementary hypothesis had a prior probability of 50%?
[Merged] Immortality & Bayesian Statistics
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Would you accept the complementary hypothesis to you are a rutabaga , if the complementary hypothesis had a prior probability of 50%?
tsig
a carbon based life-form
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Hey, what about us rutabagas?
Squeegee Beckenheim
Penultimate Amazing
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I don't know. First you'd have to say what you believe the complementary hypothesis is and explain the reasoning behind it. You could maybe start a thread on the subject...
Jabba
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- Interesting how complicated things are.
- I should have said, "Given that you're likelihood of existing right now is 1/∞, given the hypothesis that you (singular) have but one short life to live (at most), would you accept the complementary hypothesis if the complementary hypothesis had a prior probability of 50%?
- Agreed, that question is a difficult one to wrap one's mind around, and to be able to answer -- but, I do think that it sufficiently defines itself, in order for you to answer it, once you do wrap your mind around it.
- In addition, this is simply a hypothetical kind of question, so I have no need to support the specific numbers (including ∞) that I'm using.
- And, hypothetical questions are quite useful in trying to clearly understand your opponent's position. In addition, hypothetical questions can help your opponent to clearly understand 'his' own position...
Still insufficient, Jabba.
The probability of me existing now is not 1 over infinity; it is 1.
The alternative hypothesis to me, personally, having but one short life to live is not a singular entity; I might have two lives to live. I might have infinite lives to live. I might have as many lives to live as it takes me to attain enlightenment. I might have exactly 100 lives to live but each of them are as separate species and with completely disconnected consciousnesses so that there would be no way to tell that any of them were still me. Or a thousand thousand thousand thousand other possibilities.
Plus more flaws. You keep wanting to pretend this is a simple thinking game like high schoolers would play when they think they are being deep, but it doesn't work that way.
Edit to Add: An important alternative I forgot is that an alternative is for me not to exist at all.
The probability of me existing now is not 1 over infinity; it is 1.
The alternative hypothesis to me, personally, having but one short life to live is not a singular entity; I might have two lives to live. I might have infinite lives to live. I might have as many lives to live as it takes me to attain enlightenment. I might have exactly 100 lives to live but each of them are as separate species and with completely disconnected consciousnesses so that there would be no way to tell that any of them were still me. Or a thousand thousand thousand thousand other possibilities.
Plus more flaws. You keep wanting to pretend this is a simple thinking game like high schoolers would play when they think they are being deep, but it doesn't work that way.
Edit to Add: An important alternative I forgot is that an alternative is for me not to exist at all.
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Slowvehicle
Membership Drive , Co-Ordinator,, Russell's Antin
Good morning, Mr. Savage:
At the risk of being accused of being condescending, no, I would not "accept the 'complementary hypothesis' " in your hypothetical for at least two reasons.
First, as has been pointed out to you many times this morning, you are failing to define "the 'complementary hypothesis' " in any useful way. It would be very helpful if you would define "the 'complementary hypothesis' " correctly (that is, simply "not -A"), or, failing that, explain what you, personally, mean by the term.
Second, I , for one, utterly reject your first given. As has been explained to you, at this point, the likelihood of my existence is 1/1. I exist. Ding an sich.
Since I reject one of your givens, and since the other is undefined, I, personally, would not, do not, "accept" your hypothetical.
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Slowvehicle
Membership Drive , Co-Ordinator,, Russell's Antin
Good morning, Mr. Savage:
Did you see this in your news feed this morning?
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2010/jul/02/mutation-gene-tibetans-altitude
...something to think about, in the "fine-tuning" arena...
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Let me try a different tack. If you are familiar with D&D, as I used to be, or any of myriad similar games, then you are aware of the twenty-sided die. There are probably dice with more sides than that now, but the twenty-sided will do for this purpose.
Suppose that we are playing a game and a situation arises in which I roll the twenty-sided die, and I must roll a 20 to win (no modifiers, no nothing; just roll a 20). Now suppose that I do, indeed, roll a 20. Huzzah; I live.
But in this scenario, you as the dungeonmaster tell me that I have not rolled a 20 and you can essentially prove it. You say that the probability of my having rolled a 20 is only 5%, while the probability of the alternative (not-20) is 95%. Therefore, not-20.
There are two major problems with your analysis, though. First, The probability of my having rolled a 20 was 5% prior to the roll, but it is 100%.
Second, there is not just one alternative to 20, there are 19, and none of them had any greater a probability than 20 did when I rolled but all of them have a lesser probability now, i.e., the probability that I rolled not-20 is 0%.
You are trying to get a superficial answer to a superficial hypothetical, from which you hope to have gained a rhetorical advantage, and we're not playing that game. If you want to use probabilities then use them correctly. If you want us to change our minds then show us what you can demonstrate, not what you can hypothetically demonstrate.
Suppose that we are playing a game and a situation arises in which I roll the twenty-sided die, and I must roll a 20 to win (no modifiers, no nothing; just roll a 20). Now suppose that I do, indeed, roll a 20. Huzzah; I live.
But in this scenario, you as the dungeonmaster tell me that I have not rolled a 20 and you can essentially prove it. You say that the probability of my having rolled a 20 is only 5%, while the probability of the alternative (not-20) is 95%. Therefore, not-20.
There are two major problems with your analysis, though. First, The probability of my having rolled a 20 was 5% prior to the roll, but it is 100%.
Second, there is not just one alternative to 20, there are 19, and none of them had any greater a probability than 20 did when I rolled but all of them have a lesser probability now, i.e., the probability that I rolled not-20 is 0%.
You are trying to get a superficial answer to a superficial hypothetical, from which you hope to have gained a rhetorical advantage, and we're not playing that game. If you want to use probabilities then use them correctly. If you want us to change our minds then show us what you can demonstrate, not what you can hypothetically demonstrate.
Slowvehicle
Membership Drive , Co-Ordinator,, Russell's Antin
Pellucid. Nominated. "Me 'at's orf to ther Dyuke!"
Slowvehicle
Membership Drive , Co-Ordinator,, Russell's Antin
Good Morning, Mr. Savage:
I let this get by me earlier, and for that, I apologize. This is a wonderful, powerful, frustrating, beautiful, terrible, enlightenment. Things are complicated, and it is interesting.
Keep at it, though--understanding is worth it.
Filippo Lippi
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14 months of evading the question, "where do you get your numbers from?" Jabbajust invents some new numbers.
Probability of honest debate: vanishingly small
Probability of honest debate: vanishingly small
Much obliged. Thanks.
Squeegee Beckenheim
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My likelihood of existing right now is 1/1, given that I exist.
You have to prove your premises before getting answers.
Yes you do.
godless dave
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Jabba, in addition to the other problems that have been mentioned, you are again mixing up two different kinds of probabilities: the probability of an event happening, and the probability of a hypothesis being correct.
Loss Leader
I would save the receptionist., Moderator
This is where everything falls apart. First of all, one divided by infinity is zero. It's not close to zero, it's not a lot like zero. It is zero.
Second of all, the likelihood of my existing right now is a lot higher than zero. It's actually 100%. I exist right now, thus I likely exist right now.
You live in a universe where you did come to exist. That is all the information you have. You cannot possibly tell how likely it would have been for you to exist because you know nothing about how the universe works. If you ran the universe from the beginning, how likely would it be to produce you again? Nobody knows. Nobody can know.
So, either you plug zero into your equation or 1. It doesn't matter. In both cases, the probability of your existence goes to infinity.
No. I'm not going to assign a prior probability without some sort of evidence. Bayesian statistics works when we can retrospectively use our knowledge to ascertain what the prior probability should have been. On 9/10/01, I think most Americans would have put the probability of bringing down the Twin Towers at one in a million. On 9/12/01, we could look back and say that the chance of that attack was 20% or higher. On 9/12, we had information we didn't have on 9/10: Our border security was terrible; our intelligence agencies weren't sharing information; our beliefs about the fireproofing on the interior columns were dead wrong (the fireproofing was done quite poorly); our beliefs about terrorists who knew how to fly airplanes were wrong; etc.
You want us to assign a prior probability when we have no better information now than before. You think you're being generous by offering us 50/50 odds. But we don't know the odds. They cannot be determined.
It is defined well enough to answer. The answer is, "No."
trebor
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I don't know about you but the likelihood that I exist at this moment as I am now is 1/1.
Why are you going right back to claiming you don't exist?
Question for you Jabba: Do you exist?
godless dave
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I think Jabba's claim is that, under the scientific model, you shouldn't exist, and this suggests the scientific model is wrong because you do exist. He sees a discrepancy between what he thinks the scientific model (of the entire universe, apparently) predicts and what we see. His idea is that, at the very beginning of the universe, the odds of you existing 13 billion years later were zero, but you exist, so there's a discrepancy.
What we still don't know is why he thinks that, at the very beginning of the universe, the odds of you existing 13 billion years later were zero.
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Given that we are contemplating that Science is wrong based on one obervation, could it not also be that are observations are wrong? Perhaps Jabba doesn't exist? Could somebody tell me the probability of that? Is it like 50/50 or 1 in 10?
Jabba
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Garrette,
- I didn't say "probability of"; I said "likelihood of." That's what Bayesian statistics calls the probability of an event happening before it happens.
Jabba
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Dave,
- I think that the probability "approaches zero" because I think that there is an infinite 'number' of potential selves/souls. I have to go pick up my grand kids from daycare in a few minutes, or I'd tell you why I think the potential number is infinite...
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