[Merged] Immortality & Bayesian Statistics

[PixyMisa]

- At least one study concluded that we can effectively categorize things even when we can't say why. In this case, I'm thinking that a denotation and an analogy will distinguish what I'm talking about, even though I don't think that my attempted definitions do.

We know what you are talking about. You are talking about immaterial souls. They don't exist.

 

[Loss Leader]

- At least one study concluded that we can effectively categorize things even when we can't say why. In this case, I'm thinking that a denotation and an analogy will distinguish what I'm talking about, even though I don't think that my attempted definitions do.

And you're restating your definition of the soul yet again. We all know the concept you are referring to. There is no need to keep defining it (or "denoting" it). There is no need to continue making analogies.

Although nobody here agrees with you that there is a soul or "self" whether attached to a physical body or not, we're all very familiar with the concept. We all grew up in cultures and religions wherein this was a central idea.

You do not have to keep writing the same posts. You can move on to why you think there might be an infinite number of possible souls (or a humongulous number or whatever it is you want to say).

 

[zooterkin]

Dave,
- Intrinsically speaking, yes; extrinsically speaking, it depends (at least) upon time being infinite. If the necessary external factors for producing DVDs exist forever, there is no limit to the number of DVDs possible.

There is a limit to the number of different DVDs that can be produced, in terms of content.

The upper limit is (approx) 2^(15.9*230), taking the largest capacity DVD as being 15.9 GB. Of course, that's just the possible arrangements of bits; most of those would not play as videos, and of those that did, many would be indistinguishable.

That's a large number, but nowhere near infinity.

 

[Jabba]

- The analogy: this self is analogous to the disk of the DVD. It's the same disk after recording as it was before recording. One difference is that this self is what we call "mental."

Sorry, but I have to take issue with this as well. A DVD undergoes a physical change, just as a person's brain does over the course of a lifetime. I think what you mean is that it's still a DVD, not the exact same DVD. Are you the same person you were when you were 14 and first began pondering these questions? Do you still have the same exact knowledge, the same desires, fears, hopes and dreams?

- No, but that's the point. While the content of the disk has changed, there is still a sense in which the disk is still the same disk with which you started. If someone asked you where the disk is with which you started, you wouldn't say that you no longer have it.

 

[zooterkin]

- No, but that's the point. While the content of the disk has changed, there is still a sense in which the disk is still the same disk with which you started. If someone asked you where the disk is with which you started, you wouldn't say that you no longer have it.

And your evidence for any such thing existing in reality?

 

[PixyMisa]

- No, but that's the point. While the content of the disk has changed, there is still a sense in which the disk is still the same disk with which you started. If someone asked you where the disk is with which you started, you wouldn't say that you no longer have it.

The DVD has a physical continuity. It has changed, but in quantifiable and discrete steps. If you were to incinerate the DVD, you would not consider the resulting ashes to be the DVD.

Brains and the minds they produce likewise have a physical continuity. They change constantly, but in quantifiable ways. When you die, the brain decomposes and the mind ceases.

That's just what happens, Jabba. You're mortal. We all are. No abuse of semantics or statistics can alter this fact.

 

[Jabba]

- The denotation: this is the self that those who fear death perceive to be continuous during life, and which they hope is continuous after death.

You need evidence for that, not wishful thinking.

- That's true if I am trying to show that they are correct in their perception, and will be rewarded in their hope. But, that is not what I'm trying to do here.
- Here, I'm just trying to identify what I mean by "self." It doesn't really matter, at this point, if one of these is an illusion and the other is a hope.

 

[John Jones]

- That's true if I am trying to show that they are correct in their perception, and will be rewarded in their hope. But, that is not what I'm trying to do here.
- Here, I'm just trying to identify what I mean by "self." It doesn't really matter, at this point, if one of these is an illusion and the other is a hope.

Hows about 'essentially' proving immortality, and save these side excursions for another endless thread?

 

[PixyMisa]

- That's true if I am trying to show that they are correct in their perception, and will be rewarded in their hope. But, that is not what I'm trying to do here.
- Here, I'm just trying to identify what I mean by "self." It doesn't really matter, at this point, if one of these is an illusion and the other is a hope.

So let me get this straight: You're planning to use Bayesian statistics to prove that you hope there's an illusion of immortality?

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

Dave,
- Intrinsically speaking, yes; extrinsically speaking, it depends (at least) upon time being infinite. If the necessary external factors for producing DVDs exist forever, there is no limit to the number of DVDs possible.

DVDs are a collection of zeroes and ones. They are finitely large. Therefore there is a finite number of ways those zeroes and ones could be arranged. Therefore there is a finite number of potential DVDs.

 

[Loss Leader]

- Here, I'm just trying to identify what I mean by "self."

And you keep doing it. Everybody knows your definition. Will there ever come a time when you move on?

 

[abaddon]

Dave,
- Intrinsically speaking, yes; extrinsically speaking, it depends (at least) upon time being infinite. If the necessary external factors for producing DVDs exist forever, there is no limit to the number of DVDs possible.

Blatantly false. DVDs by definition cannot be infinitely variable regardless of how much time is imagined, even infinite time.

 

[carlitos]

There is a limit to the number of different DVDs that can be produced, in terms of content.

The upper limit is (approx) 2^(15.9*230), taking the largest capacity DVD as being 15.9 GB. Of course, that's just the possible arrangements of bits; most of those would not play as videos, and of those that did, many would be indistinguishable.

That's a large number, but nowhere near infinity.

I'm just highlighting this for Jabba, who skips a lot of posts. 2^(15.9*230) combinations of zeros and ones on a DVD. That's it.

 

[Giordano]

- No, but that's the point. While the content of the disk has changed, there is still a sense in which the disk is still the same disk with which you started. If someone asked you where the disk is with which you started, you wouldn't say that you no longer have it.

I don't like your DVD analogy, as I said originally, but I will accept it for now because it proves my point, not yours. To make it very clear for you:

If I had a DVD copy of "Moonstruck" and suddenly it was replaced with a DVD copy of "The Transformers" I would easily say I no longer had my DVD, although the disks are macroscopically the same. It is not the same disk with which I started.

The DVD "disk" is our "neural system" or brain. Most human brains look much the same at a gross level, just as DVD disks look the same at a gross level. There are 7 billion human brains that look approximately the same on this planet, just like DVD disks (which must also number in the 100s of millions or billions) look approximately the same. The disk is not your (or anyone's) "self" by any means.

The recording on the DVD disk makes it detectably different physically when looked at on a detailed level (arrangement of bumps. etc) from other DVD disks (e.g. Moonstruck vs The Transformers) just as the detailed arrangement of synapsis formation and action potentials in my brain make it different physically at a detailed level from any other brain. Here then, the recording, might be what you call a "self."

Yes, if you are talking about a RW-DVD that continuously records my life: my development and experiences will make a different recording on my DVD than on another's DVD, which will make me perceive differently (the definition of "self") than if I had other development and experiences. Yet this "self" changes throughout life and depends on the physical changes that come with age and experience. If I scramble the physical (a prefrontal lobe stroke) the memories and the "self" changes. I have in fact seen a stroke change someone's "self" at a very fundamental level. This is tightly linked with the associated physical damage to the brain.

In fact, if I melt the bumps on the DVD, I will change the recording on it. See, the disk is NOT the "self," and, in fact can easily be changed if I re-use the same disk to record someone else's life. If the recording (not the disk) is one's "self," it will change each day as you add to the recording. If you change one's memories, you will change one's self (just as if I faced death in prison camp would probably change my view of the world). If you destroy a DVD, you destroy the recording on it. There is no recording without the physical disk, just as your "self" will not survive the death of your brain.


Understand now? Also do you now understand from other posts why the number of possible DVDs is not infinite?

Also, perhaps you will finally explain why the repeated analogs of cards and lotteries on this thread do not prove that card-hands and lottery-ticket numbers are immortal using the very same "proof" you have used to "prove" humans are immortal? If seems to me you never responded to these repeated posts. Why? Do you not have a response?

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

Just for the sake of pedantry, "DVD" stands for "digital versatile disc", so "DVD disc" is a tautology.

 

[Giordano]

Just for the sake of pedantry, "DVD" stands for "digital versatile disc", so "DVD disc" is a tautology.

Sorry! Of course you are right. Perhaps I was trying too hard to distinguish for Jabba the physical disc (or disk) from the recording on it.

"Pedantry." Isn't that a love of feet? Or did I get that wrong too?

 

[John Jones]

Sorry! Of course you are right. Perhaps I was trying too hard to distinguish for Jabba the physical disc (or disk) from the recording on it.

"Pedantry." Isn't that a love of feet? Or did I get that wrong too?

No. A love of feet is ped..... Never mind.

 

[Jabba]

- Some of us think that the lifetime continuation of this self is an illusion.

1) There's plenty of evidence to suggest it is. 2) Do you have any to the contrary?

Re #1 -- I'm not sure that there is any such evidence.
Re #2 -- Not off hand. But if this "self" is just an illusion, it's a mighty effective illusion.

- We may also think that mental is just another form of physical.

1) There's plenty of evidence to suggest it is. 2) Do you have any to the contrary?

Re #1 -- Again, I'm not sure that there is such evidence.
Re #2 -- What we call "mental" is sure different than any other "physical" property I can think of. I agree that it's probably an emergent property, and largely the result of something physical -- but as such, consciousness itself, seems to have shed the characteristics of physicality...

Then what do you hope to prove by asserting that an illusion lasts forever?

- Again, in accepting that what I perceive as a continuing self may be an illusion, I was just trying to "nail down" what I was referring to. I don't think that it is an illusion.

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

Re #1 -- I'm not sure that there is any such evidence.

[...]

Re #1 -- Again, I'm not sure that there is such evidence.

Really? Because there's copious amounts of it, and you claim to have been researching this subject since the 1950s.

 

[Jabba]

I don't like your DVD analogy, as I said originally, but I will accept it for now because it proves my point, not yours. To make it very clear for you:

If I had a DVD copy of "Moonstruck" and suddenly it was replaced with a DVD copy of "The Transformers" I would easily say I no longer had my DVD, although the disks are macroscopically the same. It is not the same disk with which I started.

The DVD "disk" is our "neural system" or brain. Most human brains look much the same at a gross level, just as DVD disks look the same at a gross level. There are 7 billion human brains that look approximately the same on this planet, just like DVD disks (which must also number in the 100s of millions or billions) look approximately the same. The disk is not your (or anyone's) "self" by any means.

The recording on the DVD disk makes it detectably different physically when looked at on a detailed level (arrangement of bumps. etc) from other DVD disks (e.g. Moonstruck vs The Transformers) just as the detailed arrangement of synapsis formation and action potentials in my brain make it different physically at a detailed level from any other brain. Here then, the recording, might be what you call a "self."

Yes, if you are talking about a RW-DVD that continuously records my life: my development and experiences will make a different recording on my DVD than on another's DVD, which will make me perceive differently (the definition of "self") than if I had other development and experiences. Yet this "self" changes throughout life and depends on the physical changes that come with age and experience. If I scramble the physical (a prefrontal lobe stroke) the memories and the "self" changes. I have in fact seen a stroke change someone's "self" at a very fundamental level. This is tightly linked with the associated physical damage to the brain.

In fact, if I melt the bumps on the DVD, I will change the recording on it. See, the disk is NOT the "self," and, in fact can easily be changed if I re-use the same disk to record someone else's life. If the recording (not the disk) is one's "self," it will change each day as you add to the recording. If you change one's memories, you will change one's self (just as if I faced death in prison camp would probably change my view of the world). If you destroy a DVD, you destroy the recording on it. There is no recording without the physical disk, just as your "self" will not survive the death of your brain.

- I'm just saying that the mental, non-physical self to which I am referring is analogous to the physical disk in that it is the same holder of information after it has received the information as it was before it received the info.