[Merged] Immortality & Bayesian Statistics

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Yes, we've read that. Every single person is a hand of aces who has overcome tremendous odds just to be born. All seven billion of us are special snowflakes. Just because some [unlikely but explicable] things happen, does not mean that [any impossible thing] is a possibility.

Even if, as you claim, you have "essentially" proven that your individual existence is so unlikely as to be thought impossible (which you have not), your maths says absolutely nothing about reincarnation, continuity of consciousness, the moon being made of green cheese, the stars being LED lights stuck to a dome, people sharing consciousnesses, or indeed about any other random thing. The only thing your equation addresses is the chance of any one particular consciousness arising (as an emergent property of a particular person's brain) at a particular time. Nothing else is factored into your equation, so nothing else can be calculated by it.

Also, your maths puzzle at the top of scene one is silly, as any fule kno, relying as it does on falsely equivocating what the guests paid in total ($27) with what the guests paid to the hotel ($25) . There is no missing dollar.
 
Jabba said:
- Here's my entire argument -- as written a couple of years ago.
http://messiahornot.com/ACT2Scene1.php
http://messiahornot.com/Act2Scene2.php
Click to expand...

There are many things in there that don't make sense, but here's the first one that jumped out at me:

Since you will only live for about 100 years, there is another, infinitesimally small, probability that has to be factored in – the probability that now would coincide with your existence.
Click to expand...

This doesn't make sense at all. The time when you come into existence depends on the time the sperm and egg meeting each other, which depends on all the other factors you mentioned.

And then there's this point which we've discussed over and over and over:

In other words, if you have a plausible hypothesis other than the ‘null
hypothesis’ and you get results you wouldn’t expect given that the null hypothesis were correct
Click to expand...

We don't get results we wouldn't expect if the null hypothesis were correct. We get exactly the results that are predicted by the null hypothesis.
 
godless dave said:
never mind
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Dave,
- Just in case others had your question, I did present the whole argument near the beginning.

Jabba said:
- Anyway, you can find my whole story over at http://messiahornot.com/ACT2Scene1.php, and http://messiahornot.com/Act2Scene2.php -- but not to worry, I'll present it right here one step at a time.

Scene 1:

Say that you find a deck of cards in the closet and decide to play some solitaire or something.

You sit down at the table and turn over the first card. It's an ace of spades. You place the ace back in the deck, shuffle the cards and once again, turn over the first card. This time, it's the ace of diamonds. Hmm. So, you try the same thing again. This time, you get the ace of spades again.

'Wait a minute…' You do it one more time, and this time, you get the ace of hearts.

If you’re paying attention, you’re growing suspicious about this deck you found in the closet. You’re starting to suspect that you don’t have the ordinary deck that you had assumed. But, why is that? Why are you suspicious?

You’re suspicious because the probability of drawing that 'hand' is so small if the deck is a normal deck.

Let’s try that again. But, this time, the first card you draw is a 3 of diamonds, the second is a
Jack of spades, the third is a 9 of clubs and the fourth is a 9 of hearts. In this case, you probably are not suspicious.

But, of course you realize that the prrobability of drawing that hand, given a normal deck, is just as small as the probability of drawing that previous hand…

So, what’s the problem here? Why are you not suspicious of this deck, when you were suspicious of the first one?

It turns out that there are two factors causing you to be suspicious of that first deck -- and one is missing in regard to the second deck. There is nothing about the second hand that sets it apart in such a way as to suggest another plausible hypothesis… If there were, you’d be suspicious of that second deck as well. It’s as simple as that…

--- Jabba
Click to expand...
 
Jabba said:
Dave,
- Just in case others had your question, I did present the whole argument near the beginning.
Click to expand...

I'll post the answer to that again, then.

Squeegee Beckenheim said:
Jabba said:
Why are you not suspicious of this deck, when you were suspicious of the first one?
Click to expand...

Because human beings have an in-built biological tendency to see significance where there is none, and to see patterns where there are none.
Click to expand...

That still completely demolishes your argument. The fact that more than a year has passed doesn't change that at all.
 
Jabba said:
- Here's my entire argument -- as written a couple of years ago.
http://messiahornot.com/ACT2Scene1.php
http://messiahornot.com/Act2Scene2.php
Click to expand...


It's all gibberish. You first assume that your existence at this point in time is an infinitely improbable event when, in fact, the probability is 1:1. Whenever you exist, that's when you exist. You then assign probabilities to scenarios for which there is: 1) no evidence whatsoever; and 2) no cogent physical theory that even allows those scenarios.

Surely you must understand that making up numbers does not cause something impossible to exist.
 
Frozenwolf150 said:
I know I'm late to the thread, but I figured this was the place to ask. Even assuming immortality were possible, why on Earth would it be desirable? I can't imagine a worse possible fate or existence than immortality. You would have to bury all your friends and loved ones, it would be nigh impossible for you to form any lasting relationships, your memories would all blur together after a while, and as the eons pass you would become the only unevolved piece of crap still hanging around while the world has moved on.
Click to expand...

Jabba is using a very different definition of immortality. He claims that we all die and that we are all reincarnated as other humans - forever. We have no memory of previous lives but our consciousness continues past our death. This consciousness is then installed into a fetus and viola! immortality.

At this point, you have noticed several flaws in such a theory and are about to ask questions about those flaws. I advise against it. I, like several other posters, am caught in the quicksand of this thread. You have a chance to escape. Flee. Flee, I tell you. Run away and never look back.
 
Jabba said:
Dave,
- Just in case others had your question, I did present the whole argument near the beginning.
Click to expand...

Fascinating.


Jabba, you have spent 52 pages laying out your "argument" and not a single solitary poster has agreed with a single solitary intermediate or final conclusion. Your solution to this problem is to start at the beginning and simply present again, all the reasoning and premises that led to 52 pages of disagreement.

I have to ask
(1) do you think the next 52 pages will be different from the previous 52 pages? If so why?
(2) what is the goal of this thread?
(3) why do you think the JREF is the best place for this this discussion?
(4) why do you refuse to answer the simplest questions?
 
Jabba,

To satisfy my curiosity, and because I think it may clarify things, could you answer a few easy questions.

1. Do you think you understand the position of the people who have been arguing against you for the past year?

2. Could you summarize in your own words the position you feel you are arguing with? If so, please do. The bit I'm really interested in is "Every single person is a hand of aces who has overcome tremendous odds just to be born."

3. Why do you think the forum believes this demolishes your argument? Why do you believe the forum is wrong?

It's just that I can't see how you could argue as you do unless you don't understand what Agatha, for example, is actually saying. This is a perenial problem with "On Consciousness" threads, but in this case, I struggle to see why there can't be mutual understanding at least.
 
shuttlt said:
It's just that I can't see how you could argue as you do unless ....
Click to expand...

See. That right there is the part that fascinates me.

I have no interest in proving Jabba wrong.
I have no interest in how Jabba reached these conclusions.
But I am overwhelmingly intrigued by why Jabba argues in this manner in this thread. I cannot get my head around it.

I know it is not my place to ask, but can we have a time-out in this thread and instead of talking about who is right, talk about what is going on in this thread? I would love to see the answers to the questions in the previous two posts.
 
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Ladewig said:
Jabba is using a very different definition of immortality. He claims that we all die and that we are all reincarnated as other humans - forever. We have no memory of previous lives but our consciousness continues past our death. This consciousness is then installed into a fetus and viola! immortality.
Click to expand...
So how is that any different from the way things happen now? It's just a useless proposition.

At this point, you have noticed several flaws in such a theory and are about to ask questions about those flaws. I advise against it. I, like several other posters, am caught in the quicksand of this thread. You have a chance to escape. Flee. Flee, I tell you. Run away and never look back.
Click to expand...
But I was bored and looking for something to do. :(
 
Jabba said:
- Oops. I forgot to mention quantum mechanics as evidence for 1) personal consciousness being something more than neurobiology, and 2) some sort of immortality being quite possible.
Click to expand...

Pfft!

Start another thread about QM & Immortality. It will be fascinating to read another chapter in the encyclopedia of topics Jabba doesn't understand.

In the mean time, I shall report you for rule 11 if you don't stick to your claim for essentially proving immortality.
 
Ladewig said:
Jabba is using a very different definition of immortality. He claims that we all die and that we are all reincarnated as other humans - forever. We have no memory of previous lives but our consciousness continues past our death. This consciousness is then installed into a fetus and viola! immortality. ...
Click to expand...

Jabba, is this a fair summary of your argument?
 
godless dave said:
There are many things in there that don't make sense, but here's the first one that jumped out at me:
Quote:
Since you will only live for about 100 years, there is another, infinitesimally small, probability that has to be factored in – the probability that now would coincide with your existence.


This doesn't make sense at all. The time when you come into existence depends on the time the sperm and egg meeting each other, which depends on all the other factors you mentioned...
Click to expand...
Dave,
- There are two different ways to think about this. For the moment, I'll try to explain just the one I'm using.
- Why is it now? If "now" -- according to the one, finite lifetime opinion -- happened to be any other time (in eternity?) -- you wouldn't be existing.
 
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Jabba said:
Dave,
- There are two different ways to think about this. For the moment, I'll try to explain just the one I'm using.
- Why is it now? If "now" -- according to the one, finite lifetime opinion -- happened to be any other time (in eternity?) -- you wouldn't be existing.
Click to expand...


Perhaps you should adopt the way of thinking about it that everyone else uses.

The way you're thinking about it makes as much sense as a hip pocket in a sock.
 
Humots said:
Note: this is simply a statement of the definition of conditional probability:

P(H|Data) = P(H and Data) / P(Data)

I think you may be confusing two different uses of the word "hypothesis".

Hypothesis: John Doe died in 2000

Hypothesis: a = G M / R^2

The first hypothesis is about an event.

The second hypothesis is a scientific model.

I don't believe that probability can be applied to both hypotheses in the same way, but I may be wrong. My knowledge of Bayes' Theorem is mostly about the math, not about its applications.

Consider the following statement (Higgs boson confirmed):

"Physicists announced on July 4, 2012, that, with more than 99 percent certainty, they had found a new elementary particle weighing about 126 times the mass of the proton that was likely the long-sought Higgs boson."

Does this mean that
- the Standard Model has a 99 percent certainty of being valid, or
- evidence that supports the Standard Model has a 99 percent chance of being right?
Click to expand...
Humots,
- I'm not sure of some of what you're asking, but my (at least) quick interpretation of their claim is that their results show a 99% probability that the "null hypothesis" (that their population of results fall within the non Higgs Boson population of results) is incorrect.
 
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