[Merged] Immortality & Bayesian Statistics

[Hokulele]

Nominated! The task is, after all, herculean, not sisyphean.

Well said!

Eloquently stated, and guaranteed to be ignored! Well done!

My nomm was ninja'd!
Not for the first time.

Thank you all, kindly.

My thoughts on the self were dramatically affected a number of years ago when I had to go in for a (minor) surgery. It involved general anesthesia, the kind where you are instructed to count backwards, slowly, from 10, and an entire chunk of your life is completely missing. Although most people refer to sleeping as "losing consciousness", it is nothing at all like that experience. Even while asleep, your brain is doing self-tasks and maintenance. When you are put under, "you" no longer exist. At all. It is a creepy feeling, but it really does bring home the fact that "you" are a fragile process, and completely dependent on that hunk of meat between your ears.

 

[Humots]

- Apparently, we each have a sense of self, or individual consciousness, that is separate from other selves and is continuous for the life of our individual brains. If this sense of self is strictly physical, weakens with illness and age, goes on leave when we sleep, departs forever when we die and is illusory anyway -- so be it. It is still something that we all apparently have – certainly, I do. What are the disagreements so far?

Maybe I'm being picky, but note the use of the word "departs". As in "goes elsewhere"?

 

[pakeha]

- IOW, this self, or aspect of the self, is not the result of chemistry.

Of course it is, Jabba.
Remember?
Emergent property of a neurosystem?

 

[zooterkin]

If we replicate the DNA of a person and use it to create another person, we get two selves. Which, incidentally, is redundant.

In practice, too, they wouldn't even be identical, if I understand biology sufficiently well. DNA is more of a recipe than a blueprint, and the outcome is heavily susceptible to environmental influences. Identical twins (and other clones) may have the same DNA, but they are often distinguishable by eye, and have different fingerprints, and will have differences in their brains.

 

[Garrette]

- IOW, this self, or aspect of the self, is not the result of chemistry.

You do not understand. Whether you are incapable of understanding or unwilling to understand I leave out of the discussion, but you have had it explained to you repeatedly in many different ways by many different people with many different analogies, and all you can do is repeat the same flaw as if that is what we are saying.

You are wrong. You have no argument. There is no self separate from the consciousness. The consciousness is not separate from the physical brain. The odds of any given self in the Scientific Model does not equal one over infinity.

You have failed because you are wrong.

 

[Aepervius]

Of course it is, Jabba.
Remember?
Emergent property of a neurosystem?

*shrug* he is trying to re-interpret anything we say as positive for his own hypothesis , as opposed to, rework his hypothesis in view of new evidence.

 

[Slowvehicle]

- IOW, this self, or aspect of the self, is not the result of chemistry.

Good Grief, Mr. Savage!

No. This is not correct.

Drink 5 Cafe Royales , in 20 minutes, on an empty stomach. NOW tell me your perception of your "consciousness" is not the result of chemistry.

Spend 40 days in the wilderness without food or water. NOW tell me your perception of your "consciousness" is not the result of chemistry.

Breathe air with a high concentration of carbon monoxide. NOW tell me your perception of your "consciousness" is not the result of "chemistry".

Life is chemisitry. The rest is just physics...

 

[Akhenaten]

Dave,
- I accept that having a finite number of sperm and eggs available limits the amount of actual selves possible.

But then you want to multiply the number of available sperm and eggs by some X factor that you regard as being infinite, despite being utterly incapable of either defining the nature of this factor or providing evidence of its existence.

But if we have no preceding "representation" (in the form of specific DNA that will produce us specifically), who "comes out" will be unlimited.

But we do, Jabba. Have a look at some photos of your parents. Voila! Preceding representation.

To expand slightly on that thought; is it possible that your parents could have given birth to Nelson Mandela? If not, then the number of possible outcomes is less than infinity, now isn't it?

If yes, then I have some supplementary questions for you.

In that sense, we each come from nothing and are brand new.

In what sense? You've just acknowledged that we come, not from nothing, but from a sperm and egg fusion. No, we aren't brand new but rather we're the end result of all that has gone before us, all the way back to pond scum.

And, it's totally miraculous that we're here.

In what way is it any more miraculous than that Plasmodium are here.

Do Plasmodium have preceding representations?

 

[Giordano]

- IOW, this self, or aspect of the self, is not the result of chemistry.

The has been told to you already many times, but I will repeat it: the same DNA DOES NOT produce the same brains, even physically. Identical twins have much the same DNA, but physically distinguishable brains, just as two houses built to the same blueprint have small differences that allow them to be told apart due to choices during construction. Brains of identical twins differ (slightly) physically because development makes random choices that are different in spite of the same DNA.

This is not even approaching the physical differences that occur because of different experiences, even before identical twins are born but reside in different parts of the womb. Get it? Try to remember it this time.

 

[Mojo]

- Apparently, we each have a sense of self, or individual consciousness, that is separate from other selves and is continuous for the life of our individual brains.

Which is why the essential equipment of an anaesthetist always includes a fresh brain to install when the patient is to be brought back to consciousness.

 

[Mojo]

- IOW, this self, or aspect of the self, is not the result of chemistry.

 

[Akhenaten]

- But, you said that it wouldn't be you if we replicated your brain.

And you said you had proof of immortality.

 

[carlitos]

Which is why the essential equipment of an anaesthetist always includes a fresh brain to install when the patient is to be brought back to consciousness.

 

[carlitos]

As mentioned before, we can't replicate brains. So, rather than engage in some stoned college student pseudo-philosophical wank, could we perhaps confine the discussion to reality?

 

[Akhenaten]

Dave,
- Are you saying that if we replicated the DNA and the specific matter that you were made of, the self we produced would be you?

Why are you the only one who thinks this is what the LCP has said?

Although in asking this question I'm bound to acknowledge that you might not know that this is the case since you clearly haven't read anyone else's posts.

 

[PixyMisa]

- IOW, this self, or aspect of the self, is not the result of chemistry.

Jabba, if you have a marble, and you duplicate it so that you have two identical marbles, how many marbles do you have?

(I've highlighted the correct answer to make it easier for you.)

 

[Akhenaten]

- Maybe a better way to present my claim in this case is that while there is a preexisting "recipe" for consciousness in general, there is no preexisting recipe for your particular self. Each new consciousness inherently creates, produces, brings with it a brand new specific self.

Where do the old selves go when we die, Jabba?

- I say such a thing based upon the assumption that if we were somehow able to replicate the specific brain and DNA of a specific self, we would not replicate the self in that new brain.

Apart from your assumption being based on an impossibility, you've been told eleventy-seven billion times that this is trivially obvious. One self per brain; no exceptions.

We would not have one self looking out two sets of eyes.

You don't say.

 

[John Jones]

Thank you all, kindly.

My thoughts on the self were dramatically affected a number of years ago when I had to go in for a (minor) surgery. It involved general anesthesia, the kind where you are instructed to count backwards, slowly, from 10, and an entire chunk of your life is completely missing. Although most people refer to sleeping as "losing consciousness", it is nothing at all like that experience. Even while asleep, your brain is doing self-tasks and maintenance. When you are put under, "you" no longer exist. At all. It is a creepy feeling, but it really does bring home the fact that "you" are a fragile process, and completely dependent on that hunk of meat between your ears.

Agreed. You have no sense of the passage of any time.

 

[godless dave]

Interesting. I've been under anesthesia three times and for me it was like very deep, dreamless sleep.

 

[Akhenaten]

- Apparently, we each have a sense of self, or individual consciousness, that is separate from other selves and is continuous for the life of our individual brains.

Yes. And when our brains die that self ceases to exist.

-
If this sense of self is strictly physical, weakens with illness and age, goes on leave when we sleep, departs forever when we die and is illusory anyway -- so be it.

/thread

-
It is still something that we all apparently have – certainly, I do. What are the disagreements so far?

You know that there are none. Or at least you would if you'd bothered to read the thread.