[Merged] Immortality & Bayesian Statistics

[Loss Leader]

- That being "cleared up," I'll now try to show that the self that I'm talking about is real and will in fact continue after bodily death. I will begin my argument with trying to show that there should be an infinity of potential such selves.

When? When will you do that? This is maybe the hundredth time you've said that you're going to tell us something and then stopped before you actually tell us anything. So, please for the love of Purim, please actually in your next post show that there should be an infinity of potential such selves.

Please.

 

[dafydd]

** I get to call you "old-timer" because I'm 71. You 'n me, we have but a short time to be here, and a long time to be gone.

Little birdie, little birdie
Come sing to me your song
Got a short time to be staying here
Got a long time to be gone

 

[Garrette]

- No. Before I try to do that, I want to know if you and I are talking about the same "self" to begin with. The existence of the "soul" is my conclusion. To be able to appreciate my conclusion, you need to understand my premises -- and, I don't think that you understand what I mean by "self" (the primary concept in my premises).

Compare the parts I highlighted above with the part you highlighted below.

- Pakeha doesn't. And by saying "'self' or 'soul'," you don't seem to either.

In the first quotation (which came chronologically second), you separate self as the premise from soul as the conclusion, yet in the second quoted post (first chronologically) you make it quite clear they are the same.

You, Jabba, are the confused one, and these posts indicate as well as any other that (a) your ideas and posts are fluid while you don't realize it, and (b) what little continuity there is in your argument is completely circular.

 

[sackett]

Little birdie, little birdie
Come sing to me your song
Got a short time to be staying here
Got a long time to be gone

Cappy wants a nine-dollar shawl.
And it's Cappy wants a nine-dollar shawl.
Well I come up the hill
With a twenty-dollar bill
And it's "Baby, where you been so long?"

 

[Giordano]

Actually, I probably don't have a very long time left in this world, or to be here on this forum.

I am not worried if this is the only life, but I try to amuse myself while I am here.

Which is another reason I participate in Jabba's thread.

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

- That's the point. The kind of self that I'm referring to would be looking through two sets of eyes. You and I are on different pages. The "self" to which you're referring, and the one to which I'm referring, are not the same.

Yes, everybody knows what you're talking about. Nobody agrees with you that such a thing exists. Can the conversation move forwards now, please?

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

What page are you on?

Page 1. Still.

 

[Agatha]

No, not in the way Jabba's talking about. He literally means that one consciousness would share 2 brains. Those two brains would be like 2 robots being controlled by 1 computer - that computer being the "self". Unlike you and I who experience the world looking out of 2 eyes (I assume, unless you've had a terrible accident or a birth defect, in which case I apologise for my crass insensitivity) there would be a "self" who experiences the world looking out of 4 eyes. The two different brains experiencing different stimulus would be irrelevant, because it would be just the one "self" experiencing both sets of stimuli.

I think it's reasonable to say that nobody, other than Jabba, believes this to be anything other than utterly preposterous.

- Squeegee has it right.

Jabba, you appear to be contending that everything we know about consciousness and neurobiology is wrong. That's an awfully big claim to make without any evidence. Will you be posting any evidence to support your assertion within the next year or so?

 

[Jabba]

** I get to call you "old-timer" because I'm 71. You 'n me, we have but a short time to be here, and a long time to be gone.

Sackett,
- If you're like me, you feel naturally friendly towards other "old" people, so I'm glad to hear that you're still around (in general, but also specifically), so far...
- I fear oblivion because I want, very much, to stay around. But also, surely, I fear oblivion because I, and most other animals, must have a natural survival instinct.

 

[Jabba]

Actually, I probably don't have a very long time left in this world, or to be here on this forum.
I am not worried if this is the only life, but I try to amuse myself while I am here.

Which is another reason I participate in Jabba's thread.

Giodarno,
- Why do you say that?

 

[Jabba]

When? When will you do that? This is maybe the hundredth time you've said that you're going to tell us something and then stopped before you actually tell us anything. So, please for the love of Purim, please actually in your next post show that there should be an infinity of potential such selves.

Please.

- I'll probably start tomorrow.

 

[xtifr]

- That's the point. The kind of self that I'm referring to would be looking through two sets of eyes. You and I are on different pages. The "self" to which you're referring, and the one to which I'm referring, are not the same.

So wait. Rather than show that immortality is more likely than the commonly accepted scientific ideas of self, you're going to show that immortality is more likely than some preposterous counter-scientific notion of self?

Well, gee, I guess you win!

Of course, such a claim, even with irrefutable proof, will not help convince anyone that immortality is probable. Merely that it's more probable than some even more ridiculous notion.

Contrariwise, if you're going to demonstrate that some preposterous notion of self leads to a conclusion of immortality, then you still haven't done anything useful, since nobody's going to accept your premise without evidence of some sort.

1. All men are birds.
2. Albert Einstein was a man.
3. Therefore, Albert Einstein was a bird.

You can prove anything if you start with the wrong premises.

eta: unless you can somehow prove your bizarre idea of self, it's entirely irrelevant to anything you claimed you were going to do in the original post.

 

[Giordano]

Giodarno,
- Why do you say that?

Please don't worry. A few years ago I was diagnosed with a chronic disease. I would rather not reveal what it was for the sake of privacy. I am likely to die of it, but I really don't know when. Probably I will bedevil those here for years, but by very long time, I meant decades... I feel fine right now.

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

- I'll probably start tomorrow.

When you do start, please do so by actually laying out some new thoughts and/or evidence, rather than just repeating what you've already said in this thread. The idea is for the conversation to actually move forwards.

 

[Filippo Lippi]

- I'll probably start tomorrow.

Little Orphan Jabbie

 

[Jabba]

Please don't worry. A few years ago I was diagnosed with a chronic disease. I would rather not reveal what it was for the sake of privacy. I am likely to die of it, but I really don't know when. Probably I will bedevil those here for years, but by very long time, I meant decades... I feel fine right now.

- Good.

 

[Humots]

No, not in the way Jabba's talking about. He literally means that one consciousness would share 2 brains. Those two brains would be like 2 robots being controlled by 1 computer - that computer being the "self". Unlike you and I who experience the world looking out of 2 eyes (I assume, unless you've had a terrible accident or a birth defect, in which case I apologise for my crass insensitivity) there would be a "self" who experiences the world looking out of 4 eyes. The two different brains experiencing different stimulus would be irrelevant, because it would be just the one "self" experiencing both sets of stimuli.

I think it's reasonable to say that nobody, other than Jabba, believes this to be anything other than utterly preposterous.

- Squeegee has it right.

So you are saying that your "self" can exist in two brains at the same time, looking out two sets of eyes?

Why is this property important? Are you saying that at some point in time, your "self" exists in two brains at once?

Are you perhaps suggesting this as a mechanism for reincarnation - that your "self" is present in two brains, one dying and one new, and when one brain dies, the "self" continues in the new brain?

What is your evidence that this occurs? There are reports of NDEs and OOBs (not that I find them remotely creditable) but are there reports of Present in Two Bodies (PTBs)?

 

[Loss Leader]

So wait. Rather than show that immortality is more likely than the commonly accepted scientific ideas of self, you're going to show that immortality is more likely than some preposterous counter-scientific notion of self?

Yeah, I'm not sure where in his equation he is. He appears to still be on the probability that he specifically would exist given the scientific model of the universe. But now "he specifically" has somehow gotten tied up in a very unscientific definition of the soul. So now he's calculating the probability that something that can't happen in our scientific model of the universe would happen in our scientific model of the universe.

I know where he's aiming: he needs the possibility of his existence to be 1/inf. But he's tied himself up in some pretty impressive knots getting there.

Ironically, he's now actually gotten around the problem that 1/inf. is zero by just putting his chance of his "soul's" existence at zero to begin with.

 

[AdMan]

- I'll probably start tomorrow.

Can you please stop telling us that you're going to do something and just do it?

Christ, it's been 16 months, and you're no closer to your stated objective in the OP than on day one!

 

[PixyMisa]

- Then, you and I are not talking about the same self.

Jabba, EVERYONE understands you. You are talking about immaterial souls. THEY DO NOT EXIST.

Your hypothetical is not logically consistent, because immaterial souls are, by definition, not generated by the brain. Your position is not just physically impossible, but logically impossible.