[Merged] Immortality & Bayesian Statistics

[Akhenaten]

Are you good enough?

"Ignorance is bliss" not your style?

Can you rise to the challenge?​

It's up for grabs, folks! Who will be next?

 

[Mojo]

Oh darn, now Jabba will have to look up and have trouble understanding "borked."

For some reason I'm now picturing him as the Swedish Chef. It's an improvement on his avatar, and he might even make more sense that way.

 

[godless dave]

No worries. How would you phrase it?

I don't necessarily see a software/hardware distinction with consciousness. I don't think we can rule out that there might be a specific structure in the brain that receives the sensory input and experiences our thoughts and feelings; what Jabba might call the "observer". Even if it's the brain as a whole that produces the ego, I don't think it's wrong to say that the ego is the brain rather than a product of the brain.

 

[Akhenaten]

For some reason I'm now picturing him as the Swedish Chef. It's an improvement on his avatar, and he might even make more sense that way.

 

[Loss Leader]

- I had thought that at least many of you understood what I was referring to.

Everyone understands what you are referring to. It is a cornerstone concept in all of the major religions we encounter in our cultures.

But now, everyone seems to be denying the existence of this sense of continuation -- saying that there is no sense in which the self, or an aspect of the self, remains the same during a lifetime.

Not just now, we never did. Over and over, for dozens of pages, amost everyone in this thread has explained that the continuous sense of self is an illusion created by the working of the healthy brain and nothing else. At one point, you even asked me to aggregate some of those opinions and I put several together in one post. You never responded to them, by the way.

Who, here, accepts that there is such a sense?

Do I accept that my brain creates the illusion of a continuous self? Yes. Do I accept that there is a continuous self? No.

 

[zooterkin]

Or to put it another way, Jabba, if (somehow) 4 = 5, under normal arithmetic were there five Beatles?

What if 6 was 9?

 

[Jabba]

Everyone understands what you are referring to. It is a cornerstone concept in all of the major religions we encounter in our cultures.





Not just now, we never did. Over and over, for dozens of pages, amost everyone in this thread has explained that the continuous sense of self is an illusion created by the working of the healthy brain and nothing else. At one point, you even asked me to aggregate some of those opinions and I put several together in one post. You never responded to them, by the way.





Do I accept that my brain creates the illusion of a continuous self? Yes. Do I accept that there is a continuous self? No.

- I didn't ask if you accepted that there is a continuous self. I asked if you accepted that there is a sense of a continuous self, and I even granted that it may be an illusion.

 

[Loss Leader]

- I didn't ask if you accepted that there is a continuous self. I asked if you accepted that there is a sense of a continuous self, and I even granted that it may be an illusion.

Oh, thank you for being so kind as to grant to us that it may be an illusion. It is an illusion.

However, as I said above, I agree that the healthy waking brain creates the illusion of a continuous self.

In fact, in the very post that you quoted and responded to, I wrote:

Do I accept that my brain creates the illusion of a continuous self? Yes.

I'm not sure how you missed it.

 

[Giordano]

- I didn't ask if you accepted that there is a continuous self. I asked if you accepted that there is a sense of a continuous self, and I even granted that it may be an illusion.

What is the value of this? When I see a motion picture I have the sense of continuous action, but I know that it is 24 still frames a second in reality. I can have a sense but be totally wrong. Is this about your sense (religion), or reality (science)?

 

[Akhenaten]

- I didn't ask if you accepted that there is a continuous self. I asked if you accepted that there is a sense of a continuous self, and I even granted that it may be an illusion.

Oh, thank you for being so kind as to grant to us that it may be an illusion. It is an illusion.

However, as I said above, I agree that the healthy waking brain creates the illusion of a continuous self.

In fact, in the very post that you quoted and responded to, I wrote:

Do I accept that my brain creates the illusion of a continuous self? Yes.

I'm not sure how you missed it.

You weren't holding The Conch when you posted.

 

[jond]

What is the value of this? When I see a motion picture I have the sense of continuous action, but I know that it is 24 still frames a second in reality. I can have a sense but be totally wrong. Is this about your sense (religion), or reality (science)?

An excellent post, sure to be ignored by it's intended audience.

 

[Akhenaten]

- I didn't ask if you accepted that there is a continuous self. I asked if you accepted that there is a sense of a continuous self, and I even granted that it may be an illusion.

Aah, I see. It's only the illusion of immortality that you're essentially trying to prove.

Or is it the essential immortality of an illusion?

The illusory immortality of essential proof?



Geeze, this Bayes stuff is really hard!

 

[Innocuous]

... Whether a process, or illusion or what, my sense is that this self, or this aspect of my self, has remained the same throughout my life and environment and personal changes. That's the self that I think is immortal.

When comparing my living self at any two different times, there will always be some things that are the same. Always. The closer the two times, the greater the continuity - more things will be the same or nearly the same. The further apart the two times, the lesser the continuity - fewer things will be the same or nearly the same.

... But now, everyone seems to be denying the existence of this sense of continuation -- saying that there is no sense in which the self, or an aspect of the self, remains the same during a lifetime.

There are many aspects of me which have never changed over my (post-natal) lifetime. I can't fly. I am smaller than the Moon. I am bigger than a pea. My heart beats regularly. The predominant DNA encoding in my body is the same. These aspects have all remained the same for my lifetime so far.

So, yes, we can define aspects of ourselves that last throughout our lives. But I am certain my examples are not what you think of as the "self". It seems like your self is simply your memories. That is completely understandable - our memories are surely the most important in giving us our own sense of continuity. But we understand memories (somewhat), and we have no reason to believe they persist much beyond death and good reason to believe they don't.

 

[Monza]

Aah, I see. It's only the illusion of immortality that you're essentially trying to prove.

Or is it the essential immortality of an illusion?

The illusory immortality of essential proof?



Geeze, this Bayes stuff is really hard!

Maybe essentially proving immortality means just giving the illusion of proof.

 

[Loss Leader]

It seems like your self is simply your memories. That is completely understandable - our memories are surely the most important in giving us our own sense of continuity. But we understand memories (somewhat), and we have no reason to believe they persist much beyond death and good reason to believe they don't.

Not only that, but evidence shows that the brain rewrites memories to bring them into accordance with one's current ideas. So the memories you have today of an event 10 years ago may be completely different than the memories you had last year of the same event 10 years ago.

ETA: Alan Alda told me this.

 

[Humots]

Jay,
- Would you agree that if (somehow) there was an infinite number of potential selves, the likelihood of my current existence, given what I'm calling the "scientific model," would be zero?

- I did read some of what I was directed to, but must have misread what I did read -- and otherwise, didn't read enough. Sorry about that -- with my typical excuse that I only have so much time to use on my hobby, and was in a hurry...

I've posted on this at least twice. Please try and actually read what I write. For the third time, my answer is no. I assume that your reasoning is that if the sample space is infinitely countable then the probability of each element of the space must be 1/infty=0. But, in fact, that would violate the axioms of probability, because the sum of the probabilities of each element would be 0, and not 1, as the axioms require. When the sample space is uncountably infinite, the probbilities must be unqual, so that they can sum to 1. A couple weeks ago, I gave an example of a valid set of such probabilities in which (furthermore) none of the individual probabiliies were 0.

Jabba, I am directing you to ^^^THIS^^^!

Hurry or not, limited time or not, you should REALLY pay attention to jt512's example, as given here,

because it directly addresses your infinite selves/likelihood zero argument and knocks it flat.

Your excuse is that you just don't have the time to notice the replies that address and disprove your assertions?

If your time and attention are that limited, maybe you should find another, less demanding hobby.

 

[Jabba]

I've posted on this at least twice. Please try and actually read what I write. For the third time, my answer is no. I assume that your reasoning is that if the sample space is infinitely countable then the probability of each element of the space must be 1/infty=0. But, in fact, that would violate the axioms of probability, because the sum of the probabilities of each element would be 0, and not 1, as the axioms require. When the sample space is uncountably infinite, the probbilities must be unqual, so that they can sum to 1. A couple weeks ago, I gave an example of a valid set of such probabilities in which (furthermore) none of the individual probabiliies were 0.

Jay,
- If I understand what you mean, I agree to the extent that1/infity does not equal zero, and the (theoretical) sum of the separate probabilities would equal one.
- Though, if left to chance, the separate probabilities would all be the same...
- Surely, I'm not using the right terminology -- but hopefully, you'll know what i mean anyway.

 

[jt512]

Jay,
- If I understand what you mean, I agree to the extent that1/infity does not equal zero, and the (theoretical) sum of the separate probabilities would equal one.
- Though, if left to chance, the separate probabilities would all be the same...
- Surely, I'm not using the right terminology -- but hopefully, you'll know what i mean anyway.

If the sample space is countably infinite, then the probabilities of each element of the sample space CANNOT all be the same. The probabilities of each element can all be the same only if the sample space is finite. But in neither the finite nor the infinite case is it necessary for the probabilities to all be equal. Surely the probabilitiy that your mom had sex with your dad and conceived you was greater than the probability that she would have had sex with some subset of other men with whom she could have had sex and conceived some other child, yet your being born was still random insofar as you were just lucky that the Jabba sperm was the one in the right place at the right time to fertilize the Jabba egg.

 

[Giordano]

Jay,
- If I understand what you mean, I agree to the extent that1/infity does not equal zero, and the (theoretical) sum of the separate probabilities would equal one.
- Though, if left to chance, the separate probabilities would all be the same...
- Surely, I'm not using the right terminology -- but hopefully, you'll know what i mean anyway.

You are not only not using the right terminology- you are not using the math right. Are you sure you remembered the statistics you took?

1/infinity is either undefined, or zero, not some very tiny number. This is basic math.

Do you mean that each "self" is assigned at random? if so, why do identical twins more often see things alike than do strangers?

Terminology is very important in math and in statistics; stop casually allowing your use of an incorrect term. You yourself said words are important. You need to find and use the correct ones.

 

[Giordano]

I thought the probabilities of the different "selves" cannot be the same, but I trusted to jt512, correctly, to explain it better than I could. Thanks!