[Merged] Immortality & Bayesian Statistics

[Giordano]

Re #1 -- I'm not sure that there is any such evidence.
Re #2 -- Not off hand.

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

- 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.

Again, why doesn't your same "proof" of human immortality also "prove' that specific card-hands and lottery-ticket numbers must also be immortal?

They appear to use your own mathematics and your 'proof."

What is different? Surely your can point this out, or perhaps you can't and that is why you fail to respond repeatedly to these questions?


Then please explain how an illusion, even a persistent one, belongs in a mathematical "proof."

 

[carlitos]

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

Then you're either ignorant or a liar. You've gone 70+ years without finding out what does what in the human brain?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurology

 

[Giordano]

- 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.

I can see my physical DVDs; they are mostly on a shelf near me. I can hold them in my hand, touch it with my fingers (not a good idea in general), and give them to someone else. Once I give a DVD to others they see the same movie that I did; not their own movie (unless they physically re-record it). Can you or I do any of that with the "self?" Do you really think that the "self" is where information is held? Why if I damage my physical brain do I loss parts of that information if, as you claim, my "self" should remain unaltered?

Or are DVDs more like the physical brain on which I can record data? Why does physical damage to the brain lead to changes in the "self" while we are alive? Why can the chemicals in pharmaceuticals alter the "self?"

I would prefer to not talk about poor analogies; but if you want to, then your analogies says the opposite of what you would like to believe!

 

[Giordano]

- 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.

Exactly, you are seeking to create an identification of "self" that is defined as lasting forever (for some), then to stick that definition in your proof of immortality. You simply cannot do that. You cannot prove anything by first assuming that thing in your proof. If I define Pi as being essentially equal to 3, then I can not use that definition in a mathematic proof that the circumference of a circle of diameter 2 is 6.

 

[Giordano]

- 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.

I have showed you repeatedly that the physical DVD is not the same after it has received the information as before. In fact, it is very different, based on how it reflects light or looks close up. So it is not a good analogy, yes? Even if you think our "self" stays the same throughout life., as others have said, why am I attracted to girls now, when I used to think that they were repellant? Why have my tastes in foods change? Or can't you define an unchanging "self" that doesn't make use of these very basic personality traits? Isn't that your problem in saying a "self," but not my memories, or physical attributes, or physical things, etc. will be reincarnated?

 

[Giordano]

Again, there are more people ("selves") on this planet now than were 100 year ago. Where did the extra "selves" come from? If, as I think you believe, these extra were created de novo (or, as I asked before, is this only your view of the "scientific model"?) why must some selves be reincarnated? Doesn't your "proof" require that the existence of a Jabba "self" would be very unlikely if there was no pre-existing Jabba "self?" If many of us were created de novo, why not you? Why not everyone?

 

[Slowvehicle]

- 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.

One of these things is not properly analogous to the other.

ETA: The very capable Giordano has ninja-ed me thoroughly.

 

[pakeha]

- 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.

How can a self be nonphysical if it is defined as mental, referring to a mental process?

 

[John Jones]

Mister Savage,

Have you been paying attention to anything these last 15 months?

You have not taken a single successful step toward "essentially" proving immortality via Bayesian statistics.

Please correct me if you can.

 

[Loss Leader]

Re #2 -- Not off hand. But if this "self" is just an illusion, it's a mighty effective illusion.

In fact, it is an effective illusion. However, there are many, many examples of effective illusions. Those people in your living room are just a collection of lines on your TV, being redrawn over and over. That elephant that flies is just a collection of still pictures changing very fast. The existence of the federal government isn't much more than a consensual hallucination which, if people stopped believing in it, would disappear.

So, a collection of physical processes gives you the illusion of having a "self." So what? We know how the illusion is performed. We even know where in the body the illusion is performed (about two inches behind your eyes). We can interrupt the illusion. We can observe people who do not entirely have this illusion (such as alien limb syndrome). We even have cases where the whole illusion is reset from start.

Why would the fact that the self is an effective illusion change the fact that it is an illusion nonetheless?

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...

You just contradicted yourself in the same sentence. Either the self is a property of the physical body or it is not. Are you arguing that a self is created physically but then somehow becomes transcendent of the body? In that case, how does the self land in another body? That body would have its own self attached to it.

Your ideas are muddled. They're not just in opposition to reality, they're in opposition to each other.

- 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.

You contradict yourself again. As has been pointed out, you compare the "non-physical self" to the "physical disk." That makes no sense.

In any case, you're just restating what you've said over and over for pages. You believe in a transcendent soul. We understand that is your belief. Why do you keep explaining it?

Charitably, my guess is that you have no idea what might come next, nor how you would support it.

 

[Humots]

- 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 what study is that, Jabba? Link please. Hearsay is inadmissable for a reason.

 

[Humots]

S

- 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.

Wouldn't that mean that your "self" is strictly a holder of information independently of and separately from the information it holds?

That would make all selves the same, just the way all DVD's are the same except for the data stored on them.

All selves are identical! Isn't that Zen or something?

 

[Garrette]

And what study is that, Jabba? Link please. Hearsay is inadmissable for a reason.

I would not be surprised if such a study exists, though it in no way helps Jabba's case. Still, I suspect his citation is in the Sam ultra-secure location as his list if scientists who would support him.

 

[Giordano]

You know, I hate helping out Jabba in his confusion, especially when he clearly does not understand what he claims he is proving and is so rude, but I got to try:

Jabba, aren 't you seeing the "self" as the recorder, and not as the DVD? The recorder is what filters information according to its "perspective" and stores the filtered information on the DVD. Of course, our concept of self, unlike the DVD recorder, is heavily affected by the information it receives and changes the way and nature of the information it records in response. But I already said a DVD recording is a bad analog; maybe my analogy is a little less bad than Jabba's.

 

[Frozenwolf150]

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.

The same goes for human brains. We have a sizable memory capacity, roughly 1/4 of the size of the Internet based on the number of neurons. To use up all that memory capacity, you'd have to learn a new word every second of every day, and live to be a million. However, it's still a finite capacity and therefore has a finite number of variations.

Common single-sided DVDs have a memory capacity of 4.7 GB, for comparison.

 

[John Jones]

- At least one study concluded that we can effectively categorize things even when we can't say why. [...]

I'll go on record as calling that a prevarication, and your self a prevaricator unless you can provide supporting evidence.

Do you have any evidence, you prevaricating prevaricator who prevaricates?

 

[Loss Leader]

- At least one study concluded that we can effectively categorize things even when we can't say why.

Categorization is an aid to thought - allowing people to neatly place concepts so they can find them again. But it occurs independent of the thing being catagorized. A platypus is a platypus, whether you call it a mammal, a marsupial, or Kevin. It has no real-world meaning.

So, what possible good does it do you to just label some concept other than giving you a way of talking about it? It doesn't mean the concept is self-consistent. It doesn't mean the concept exists. It doesn't mean the category you've placed it in is the right one.

But please, do go on defining the soul another two dozen times.

 

[Giordano]

Loss Leader is absolutely correct. Categorizing doesn't mean anything! I personally place unicorns in the category equine. Does that mean they are real, or actually not in the category caprine? If they are not real, it is, in fact, easier to categorize them.

 

[Jabba]

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

- Slow down Abaddon. I'm not saying that DVDs are infinitely variable; I'm saying that given the time and material, we could keep making new DVDs forever.

 

[Mojo]

- Slow down Abaddon. I'm not saying that DVDs are infinitely variable; I'm saying that given the time and material, we could keep making new DVDs forever.

No, as Zooterkin has pointed out, there is a limit to the number of different DVDs that can be manufactured. After a given number of them had been made we would inevitably just be making the same ones again, not "new" ones.

ETA: and for your DVD analogy to be valid, you would need there to be an infinite number of possible DVDs, unless you are now claiming that there are a finite number of possible souls "selves" but potentially multiple (in fact potentially infinite numbers of) identical "selves". And if there are, potentially, an infinite number of your "self", then using your "Bayesian" argument the probability of you existing is infinity (the number of potential copies of Jabba) over a finite number (the number of potential different "selves").