[Merged] Immortality & Bayesian Statistics

[dafydd]

I was under the impression that the universe already contained various forms of energy.

 

[John Jones]

- How about if I added energy to time and material?

How about it?

I don't expect a meaningful explanation from you regarding how one would sum energy, time, and mass. I've studied some physics and calculus in my time, so don't try to fool me.

ETA: I can hardly believe you actually replied after these 15 months.

 

[Akhenaten]

ETA: I can hardly believe you actually replied after these 15 months.

You realize that Jabba only responds to what appears to be the least critical post, then still ignores the real concern in that post but tries to build a fake consensus around it?

It's been the defining pattern of both this and the Tablecloth thread. The only reason that thread finally ground to a halt was that there were no posts being made that even Jabba could pretend were anything less than scathingly critical.

Congratulations! You've become the least critical poster.

I'll bet you never saw that coming.

 

[Giordano]

At first I thought that Jabba was asking what if he added energy to his own posting style. I thought that would be good, and might help his posts if any energy was lacking in them so as to explain his style. Now I see that Jabba meant that adding energy would allow for the production of infinite CDs! I am still amazed by Jabba's lack of understanding of science, yet he hoped to prove immortality by using science! I guess the less you know the easier it seems.

 

[John Jones]

​

Congratulations! You've become the least critical poster.

I'll bet you never saw that coming.

Oh My Freaking Gosh!

I never did see that one coming.

 

[Slowvehicle]

Oh My Freaking Gosh!

I never did see that one coming.

We will wake you early, for you are to be the Queen of Spring.

 

[Loss Leader]

- The reason I keep trying to make sure that you guys understand what I mean by "self" is that while you keep assuring me that you do, you also keep saying things that you wouldn't be saying if you really understood what I meant...

- I'm trying to show what I mean by "self," and why there should be an infinite # of potential selves.

Once again, we all know what you mean by "self." You mean a soul that is fundamental, unchanging and transcendent of the body it is trapped in. Nobody is confused by this. Everybody here has lived their entire lives immersed in religions and cultures where such a "self" is taken as a given.

The fact that nobody here believes such a self exists does not mean we don't understand it.

But, please, don't let that stop you from defining it over and over again at the expense of ever making any headway in your argument.

- How about if I added energy to time and material?

No. Just ... just no.

First of all, the expenditure of energy is assumed. You can't do anything without energy. So, we all were taking energy into account already.

Second, the amount of energy in the universe is finite.

Third, even if you had infinite energy, you'd still only have a finite amount of material to work with. So, the entire system remains finite.

Fourth, you're actually contradicting yourself again. The soul or "self" requires energy to exist. That energy is supplied by food we eat when we're alive. When the body dies, the intake of energy stops. There is no way for a soul or "self" to survive.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Okay so someone who thinks that mental activit continues after death has to explain something to me.

If mental activity can continue after death, how do you explain brain damage?

If a part of your brain is damaged you can lose a part of your mental functioning. So how exactly would damage to your entire brain, i.e. death, allow for any part of that same functioning to continue?

And what if while I'm alive I suffer brain damage. When I die does my spirit or my ghost or my angel get that damaged part of my mental process back? Are there ghosts and angels suffering from Alzheimer or in the afterlife?

Do lobotomized people have lobotomized ghosts? Does Phineas Gage's angel have its left frontal lobe back?

 

[Frozenwolf150]

Okay so someone who thinks that mental activit continues after death has to explain something to me.

If mental activity can continue after death, how do you explain brain damage?

If a part of your brain is damaged you can lose a part of your mental functioning. So how exactly would damage to your entire brain, i.e. death, allow for any part of that same functioning to continue?

Because idealism.

 

[Garrette]

Okay so someone who thinks that mental activit continues after death has to explain something to me.

If mental activity can continue after death, how do you explain brain damage?

If a part of your brain is damaged you can lose a part of your mental functioning. So how exactly would damage to your entire brain, i.e. death, allow for any part of that same functioning to continue?

And what if while I'm alive I suffer brain damage. When I die does my spirit or my ghost or my angel get that damaged part of my mental process back? Are there ghosts and angels suffering from Alzheimer or in the afterlife?

Do lobotomized people have lobotomized ghosts? Does Phineas Gage's angel have its left frontal lobe back?

Asked repeatedly by various posters in various forms. Jabba refuses to acknowledge the questions. One assumes that perhaps he realizes that these points are fatal to his argument (not that other points are not also fatal to his argument, but they are less clearly so and therefore Jabba can dance around them. He cannot dance around these).

 

[xtifr]

Second, the amount of energy in the universe is finite.

This is true, and adequately addresses Jabba's question.

Third, even if you had infinite energy, you'd still only have a finite amount of material to work with. So, the entire system remains finite.

Actually, if you have sufficient energy, you can make all the material you want because of mass/energy equivalence. I admit that creating a proton or neutron out of pure energy is a fairly non-trivial exercise, but given an infinite amount, it would become downright trivial. In fact, you'd probably have an infinite number before you knew it.

I bring this up only because Jabba seems so desperate to find an infinity to divide by, and I want to make sure he doesn't latch onto a false one, since it'll take weeks or months to pry it back away from him. And I'm actually still idly curious where he thinks he's going with all of this*, so I kind of hope he can be kept as close to on-track as possible. (Which, I admit, appears to be: not very.)

*I have some pretty good guesses, but it's all still so vague that I can't completely quell my natural curiosity.

 

[pakeha]

...If a part of your brain is damaged you can lose a part of your mental functioning. So how exactly would damage to your entire brain, i.e. death, allow for any part of that same functioning to continue?...

It wouldn't.

 

[AdMan]

- How about if I added energy to time and material?

You mean, "How about if I make stuff up about how I would like the universe to work?"

 

[Garrette]

This is true, and adequately addresses Jabba's question.


Actually, if you have sufficient energy, you can make all the material you want because of mass/energy equivalence. I admit that creating a proton or neutron out of pure energy is a fairly non-trivial exercise, but given an infinite amount, it would become downright trivial. In fact, you'd probably have an infinite number before you knew it.

I bring this up only because Jabba seems so desperate to find an infinity to divide by, and I want to make sure he doesn't latch onto a false one, since it'll take weeks or months to pry it back away from him. And I'm actually still idly curious where he thinks he's going with all of this*, so I kind of hope he can be kept as close to on-track as possible. (Which, I admit, appears to be: not very.)

*I have some pretty good guesses, but it's all still so vague that I can't completely quell my natural curiosity.

All of which makes the lottery winner and poker hand analogies all that more revealing. If there are infinite potential souls (I'm not going to use "self" anymore; we know what Jabba means, and I no longer care to enable his intentional deceptiveness), then there are infinite potential winning lottery combinations and infinite potential poker hands. Lotteries aren't limited to the integers from 1 to 50 or 1 to 74; they can comprise irrational numbers or different names for kittens. Likewise with poker; decks of cards are not limited to 13 values of four suits. There can be infinite suits with infinite values.

Any given winning lottery ticket and any given poker hand is not merely analogous in improbability to Jabba's soul; it is identical. According to Jabba's logic, the probability of absolutely everything at all coming into existence or coming into a specific combination is 1 over infinity.

This, of course, is where he is intentionally headed. He wants to say that everything is Impossible Unless God (the IUG hypothesis, for short). Unfortunately for his argument, and identically to every other point he has brought up, he has not thought this through. If his ideas are correct, then what he will have actually proven is determinism, not specialness and not God. Things are as they are because there is no other possibility at all, and there is no more reason to call my consciousness special than there is to apply that label to my farts.

 

[Jabba]

- 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.

Even past the heat death of the universe? You must have a different definition of forever than the rest of us. That would explain this thread.

- How about if I added energy to time and material?

How about it?
I don't expect a meaningful explanation from you regarding how one would sum energy, time, and mass. I've studied some physics and calculus in my time, so don't try to fool me…

John,
- I assumed that by “heat death of the universe,” you were accepting the end of energy. Consequently, I added “energy” to my hypothetical. I was saying that given the time, material and (now) energy needed we could keep making new DVDs forever. Or, in better words, my hypothetical becomes, “given an infinity of time, matter and energy, we could keep making DVDs forever.” There would then be an infinity of potential disks.
- I’m claiming that a self is a mental analogy to the disk part of a DVD. In that respect, the self that begins the experiencing is the same self that ends it – for that lifetime.

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

There would then be an infinity of potential disks.

No there wouldn't. There would be an infinite number of discs of finite variety.

 

[godless dave]

Just as we do not have infinite mass or energy to make DVDs, we do not have infinite mass or energy to create infinite selves.

Moreover, at the time a self is created, there are not infinite possible selves because each human self depends on two pre-existing humans mating, and there are only a finite number of humans available to mate.

 

[Akhenaten]

<snip>

Or, in better words, my hypothetical becomes, “given an infinity of time, matter and energy, we could keep making DVDs forever.” There would then be an infinity of potential disks.

"Given an infinity of ham, bread and butter we could keep making ham sammiches forever." There would then be an infinity of potential ham sammiches.


What a monumentally stupid observation.

 

[Slowvehicle]

John,
- I assumed that by “heat death of the universe,” you were accepting the end of energy. Consequently, I added “energy” to my hypothetical. I was saying that given the time, material and (now) energy needed we could keep making new DVDs forever. Or, in better words, my hypothetical becomes, “given an infinity of time, matter and energy, we could keep making DVDs forever.” There would then be an infinity of potential disks.
- I’m claiming that a self is a mental analogy to the disk part of a DVD. In that respect, the self that begins the experiencing is the same self that ends it – for that lifetime.

Good Morning, Mr. Savage!

My opening observation, this fine morning, is that, when you include contrafactual conditions in a hypothetical, it becomes less and less useful as an example of factual reality. If "time" were, in fact, "infinte", and if "material" were, in gact, "infiinite", and if "energy" were, in fact, infinite, it would, in that case be theoretically possible to build an infinity of DVDs.

The fact that "time" does not appear to be "infinite" (can you demonstrate otherwise?) makes your hypothetical contrary-to-fact, and therefore not very useful for contemplating reality.

The fact that "material" does not appear to be "infinite" (can you demonstrate otherwise?) makes your hypothetical contrary-to-fact, and therefore not very useful for contemplating reality.

The fact that "energy" does not appear to be "infinite" (can you demonstrate otherwise?) makes your hypothetical contrary-to-fact, and therefore not very useful for contemplating reality.

Not to mention, where will you keep alll the infinity of DVDs you will have made? Is "space" the next thing you will assume to be"infinite"?

Not to mention:

Would not the DVD be an analogy for the physical part of the soul, that is, the neurosystem of which consciousness is an emergent property?

Not to mention:

Adding "for this lifetime" to your attempt at an explanation simply (once again) assumes the conclusion you are trying to prove.

Why is it that you are loath to present your evidence that the soul does, in fact, exist?

 

[Jabba]

Once again, we all know what you mean by "self." You mean a soul that is fundamental, unchanging and transcendent of the body it is trapped in. Nobody is confused by this. Everybody here has lived their entire lives immersed in religions and cultures where such a "self" is taken as a given...

- I think that you do understand, what I mean by a "self" that at least appears to continue through a lifetime, and in that sense is the same self that started the whole thing. Many of your colleagues have made comments that sound like they don't understand what I mean by the "same" self.

- In effect, I'm trying to show why that self is, in fact, equivalent to a soul -- with the souls implication of being immortal. The self I'm talking about carries no such implication on its own.
- That's why I don't start off assuming a soul.