[Merged] Immortality & Bayesian Statistics

[tsig]

Dave,
- Let's try this. Would you be resurrected?

Not if I had any choice in it. Having lived one life why would you want to do it again?

 

[Giordano]

Jabba,

Doesn't worry you that you have to cite your own posts so often for citations?

 

[Giordano]

Jabba,

I really don't know how much clearer one can make it. If you duplicate a brain you have two brains. One may be identical to the other, but they are not the same (one) brain. If I have a set of 6 glasses, are they identical, or the same glass? (If they are the same glass, how can my guests drink out of identical glasses from the set at one time)? I also think the SM would predict that exactly physically duplicated brains have the identical illusion of "self" immediately afterward, but would diverge soon given their separate experiences as time progressed.

Do you think the second brain would be a zombie with no self/soul?

 

[Akhenaten]

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Dave,
- I wasn't sure what problem you had pointed out "yesterday."

You won't be too sure what problem he's pointing out tomorrow either. Is this supposed to be some kind of news?

- How's this? You're saying that reproducing your DNA after your death would not resurrect you.

It's exactly like you pretending that Dave said something that he didn't say at all.

I'm sensing a pattern.

 

[Akhenaten]

OK, let's use the mold analogy. If you have a mold for something, and you cast something using that mold, then you do it again using the same mold, do you have two things or one?

- You have two things.

Congratulations. You only needed to be asked this question 178 times before answering it.

- But, reproducing your DNA will not reproduce your sense of self. Your sense of self does not have a mold.

But weren't you using "mold" as an analogue for "prior representation"?

 

[Akhenaten]

xtifr,
- If I understand what you're saying, it didn't say what I was saying, and what I said wasn't a tautology. Mostly, I was trying to explain what I meant by "prior representation."

​

- Maybe I should call it a "mold." There was no "mold" for your self, or for the self of anyone else, prior to your, or their conception -- IF there is no chemistry such that identical batches of it would produce your sense of self, and only your sense of self.

I think you should call it a soul and stick with that. You'd be just as wrong as ever but it would save a hell of a lot of "MISCOMMUNICATION".

 

[Akhenaten]

Sure it does. If you reproduce my DNA, you will get a self that is - initially - exactly like mine was when I was born. Two identical selves from the same mold.

Dave,
- Let's try this. Would you be resurrected?

No, you'd get something like "Geeze you remind me of Grandma sometimes."

Which is the best that most of us can hope for, Jabba, although your pointless quest for something else will probably deprive you forever of the happiness that this simple observation brings.

 

[Jabba]

No.

Something made to the same specifications as me is a copy of me. It's not me.

- In other words, there is no mold for you.

 

[Akhenaten]

Not if I had any choice in it. Having lived one life why would you want to do it again?

I'd be making sure I played my "You win a free night out with Katie Perry" card a lot earlier in the game.

 

[John Jones]

- In other words, there is no mold for you.

Pick a topic and stick to it.

This is supposed to be about you proving immortality via Bayesian statistics.

At this point, I'd accept just about any decent evidence that immortality even exists.

 

[godless dave]

- In other words, there is no mold for you.

Yes, there is. "Me" is the first person made from that "mold". If you could clone me, the clone would be the second person made from that mold. It would start off identical to how I started off (but would quickly diverge, as others have pointed out).

What makes me me is that I am this person, the person whose self is inside a skull in east central Minnesota, typing at this keyboard.

 

[Akhenaten]

No.

Something made to the same specifications as me is a copy of me. It's not me.

- In other words, there is no mold for you.

There was though.

In your own ill-thought-out terms there was a mold for each of us, but it's only usable once.

 

[godless dave]

In your own ill-thought-out terms there was a mold for each of us, but it's only usable once.

Excellent point.

 

[Slowvehicle]

I agree. I was oversimplifying.

Irresistible, innit?

It is, however, very difficult to draw fine distinctions, with crayon as the medium.

 

[Slowvehicle]

Dave,
- Let's try this. Would you be resurrected?

Good Morning, Mr. Savage!

I do not pretend to speak for godless dave, nut I will answer this, for me:

Since "I" is the consciousness that is an emergent property of my own neurosystem, and since "I" did not exist before a certain stage in the functioning of my own neurosystem, and since "I" will not survive the dissolution of my own neurosystem; even if it were possible to replicate my own neurosystem exactly, the new replica would not be my own neurosystem, but a replica of my own neurosystem, and the consciousness that emerged from the replica of my neurosystem would be, at best a "replica" of (if you will) "I".

"I" would not be "resurrected" in the replica of my own neurosystem. At best, a replica of "I" would emerge form the replica of my own neurosystem.

 

[carlitos]

tl:dr version for Jabba.

That we live on, at all, through our descendants, is a blessing. Enjoy it and stop with this nonsense. There is no there there.

 

[Giordano]

- You have two things.
- But, reproducing your DNA will not reproduce your sense of self. Your sense of self does not have a mold.

Let me try yet again: reproducing my DNA will not reproduce even my physical brain- identical twins have the same DNA but are physically distinguishable, including their brains, if you look hard enough. Do you remember that you have been told this multiple times? The same DNA does not produce identical brains even before the brains have different experiences. DNA is a guide, not a straightjacket.

 

[Akhenaten]

Pick a topic and stick to it.

This is supposed to be about you proving immortality via Bayesian statistics.

At this point, I'd accept just about any decent evidence that immortality even exists.

I think the problem from the outset has been that Jabba never truly thought enough about what it was for which he was claiming immortality.

Since it's Analogy Month, I'll suggest that it's a bit like someone spending years arguing that all dragons have wings or that Leprechauns only ever wear green.

 

[Giordano]

- In other words, there is no mold for you.

Please give up on the "mold" analogy- it is a particularly bad one. There is no "mold" in biology as that word is typically intended. Molds help produce vases commercially, not people. So there was no mold for anyone.

If you mean that my (or Dave's) consciousness was physically constrained in certain ways, yes it was, by our inheritance from our parents (just as my skin color). This accounts for why I share some interests with my parents. But, I and Dave's consciousness was further altered by our experiences. This accounts for why I have some unique interests that neither my Dad or Mom had,

 

[Giordano]

I think the problem from the outset is that Jabba never truly thought enough about what it was for which he was claiming immortality.

Since it's Analogy Month, I'll suggest that it's a bit like someone spending years arguing that all dragons have wings or that Leprechauns only ever wear green.

All dragons do have wings. But there are no dragons. But if there were dragons, they would have wings. Ever since my motorcycle accident this has made more and more sense to me.