- I would believe that the box probably did contain a cake, because the prior probability that the box contained a cake was 99%...
- And if I thought that $10 was a great deal for a cake, and was sure that I could open the box without getting bitten or letting a snake out, I'd probably risk the $10 and buy the box with whatever it contained...
So, you've failed to understand my point regarding validity. In any case, your end argument would be invalid even if all your givens are true.
Let us turn to p and ~p. You have set up two conditions: Either you are mortal in a random universe or you are immortal in a random universe. You are, however, wrong about the definition of ~p. If P is "I am mortal in a random universe," then ~p is any possibility other than that you are mortal in a random universe.
The universe could be nonrandom. It could be that, were we to run the universe from the beginning, it would necessarily produce you. Just because you are a small part in the universe doesn't mean you are not necessary. So, you need evidence that the universe is random and not wholly deterministic if you want to rule that out.
It could be that the universe is only half an hour old, having been created fully formed including all people with all their memories earlier this morning. If this is so, then there's nothing really amazing about you existing right now. No number of coincidences created you.
It could be that the universe is finite and that you, while not immortal, are destined to live for 51% of the life of the universe.
You have said that ~p = immortality because that's the condition you want to think about. But that's not how you define a negation.
So, what you have proven, if anything at all, is that it is very likely that something other than your mortality in a random universe is happening.
The only way that your immortality could be the only negation of mortality in a random universe is if every other choice were impossible. Can you rule out as impossible that the universe was formed half an hour ago? Can you rule out as impossible that we live in a deterministic universe?
I don't think you can. And this becomes the most seriously insurmountable problem of your philosophy. You only have one data point: you now exist. What can be ruled out? Can we tell if you were a random occurrence or a necessary one? Not unless we run the universe over from the beginning? Can we tell if the universe was fully formed as it is half an hour ago? Certainly not from within the universe.
You may argue that these are not the scientific model, and you would be right. But we're not arguing whether p is p. We're talking about whether "immortality" is sufficient to form the set of all ~p. Remember, immortality is just as unlikely as the universe being a half-hour old.
Is immortality an impossible condition? I think it is. It' certainly an impossible condition to test. There is no mechanism known by which a "soul" could survive the death of the body. There is no mechanism known by which a "soul" can be separated from the body. The impossibility of immortality, however, is not fatal to your argument. Your argument already died by being an invalid conclusion drawn from a logical error.
So then we fall back on the information we can at least test. What is testable is that in a very large, very old, seemingly random universe, you came to exist. With that as the only information we have, we cannot say very much. Certainly your existence right now is consistent with the workings of a random universe.
Does the fact of your existence give us any reason to discard what we can testably verify about the universe? It does not. Is Gena Davis' Oscar inconsistent with her being a generally bad actress? No. Is Barack Obama's presidency inconsistent with the fact that fewer than one in 300,000 million Americans is President? No. Your existence is consistent with the way in which we have learned the world works.
So, we have high confidence in P, being that you appear to exist in a universe that appears random. We have low confidence in ~P, being everything else. Even if we had high confidence in ~P, you have not given us any reason to prefer one subset of ~P (your immortality) over any other subset.
An untrue premise combined with an illogical definition to produce an admittedly invalid conclusion - you have failed to establish the truth of your concept.
