wollery
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As I said in the other thread a few weeks ago, it's the puddle argument.
[Merged] Immortality & Bayesian Statistics
- Thread starter Jabba
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So despite clear explanations of retrospective probabilities from other posters, Jabba persists in pursuing an already discredited line of reasoning.
Lovely.
It is partly entertaining. But more so it is insulting, because Jabba has repeatedly shown no indication that he bothers to read what others post, nor cares about facts.
Lovely.
It is partly entertaining. But more so it is insulting, because Jabba has repeatedly shown no indication that he bothers to read what others post, nor cares about facts.
abaddon
Penultimate Amazing
Try this Jabba
OK, let's.
Two people had to do the deed to produce you.
Four had to do the deed to produce your parents.
Eight had to do likewise, and so forth.
Roll that back for 64 generations, to the time of the romans, and over 18 million trillion roman era predecessors had to be busily working at producing you.
Unlikely? Actually impossible, since that is more people than have ever lived, EVER. Not to mention, humans have been around for at least 250k years adding many more generations into the mix depending how far back you want to go. The probability of this having happened is precisely zero. Hence, logically speaking, you cannot exist, since there were insufficient progenitors to give rise to you.
OK, let's.
Two people had to do the deed to produce you.
Four had to do the deed to produce your parents.
Eight had to do likewise, and so forth.
Roll that back for 64 generations, to the time of the romans, and over 18 million trillion roman era predecessors had to be busily working at producing you.
Unlikely? Actually impossible, since that is more people than have ever lived, EVER. Not to mention, humans have been around for at least 250k years adding many more generations into the mix depending how far back you want to go. The probability of this having happened is precisely zero. Hence, logically speaking, you cannot exist, since there were insufficient progenitors to give rise to you.
Ladewig
I lost an avatar bet.
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I just pulled a die out of my desk and rolled it. The result was 5, but the chances of that were not 1 in 6, there were 1 in 100,000. When I picked up the die, a 4 was on top. If any other number had been on top then my shaking the die and rolling it would have produced a different number. How did the die end up in my drawer with a 4 on top? Because the last time I used the die I rolled a 4, and the time before that I rolled a 2 and the time before that I rolled a 3.
ETA: Also, it took two weeks for you to post this nonsense? WTF?
ETA: Also, it took two weeks for you to post this nonsense? WTF?
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Pixel42
Schrödinger's cat
The fundamental error in the argument he is making was explained to him before he even posted it in this thread. It was explained to him when he originally posted the same nonsense in the shroud thread. At no point in either thread has he shown any sign of having read and understood the explanation, let alone responded to it, he just keeps repeating the same fundamentally flawed argument.
Mashuna
Ovis ex Machina
Or humour?
Or AAH?
Jabba, firstly your maths is wrong in 4.6 et seq. You call 20 years a generation, so that 200,000 years ago is 10,000 generations. For some reason you state that at this time you have 400,000 ancestors. You don't state where you got this number from, but by your own argument you'd have 2^10,000 ancestors by then.
Secondly, if you were correct that your ancestors double every generation, then by the 64th generation (as abaddon points out) the number of your ancestors is more than the number of people who have ever lived. As this is impossible, your assumptions must of necessity be wrong - as any genealogist can tell you.
Thirdly, you haven't justified the numbers you've put in to the Bayesian formula you've used. Some might say that you've chosen the numbers in order to show the outcome you want; I couldn't possibly comment.
Fourthly, your entire argument is bunk because once you exist, the probability of your existence is no longer infinitesimally small, it's 1. Immediately pior to your existence 'you' have the same small chance of existing as any of the other possible offspring of your parents at that time. But all the things that happened to bring your parents together have already happened.
If a person at the very beginning of human existence (even supposing that such a time could be quantified) were to sit down and work out the probability of you existing in 2012, they would arrive at a probability of something approaching zero. Because the things that need to happen haven't yet occurred, and might not ever happen.
But in the now, all those chance meetings etc have ALREADY HAPPENED, so the probability of all those things is 1. You are making the mistake of using the perspective of the person at the beginning of human existence instead of the 'you' you are now.
You are the puddle, thinking how amazing it is that the hole is just the right shape to fit the puddle. Is the puddle correct in its thinking?
Now, I didn't do maths past school and my grasp of probability theory might well be wrong - in which case I'll welcome correction from the people here who know a great deal more than I do. That's how we learn.
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Loss Leader
I would save the receptionist., Moderator
You are like the wine that marvels how the wine glass could ever chance to be so perfectly shaped as to contain it.
MRC_Hans
Penultimate Amazing
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Then you are calculating the probability valid for some fine day 10,000 generations ago. And yes, back then the probability for this particular outcome (your existence) was indeed slim.
Someone else probably would, however.
Yada, yada ......
What is precisely wrong is that you are calculating a probability that existed 200.000 years ago.
Try instead to calculate the probability that humanity would exist to-day.
....
Listen, Jabba:
Calculate the probablility of a given sequence of 100 dice rolls.
(It is something to the tune of 1/6E100)
Now take a dice and roll it 100 times, noting each result (should not take you more than half an hour).
The sequence you got was, a priori, improbable against astronomic odds, still, there it is.
Explain it for the dice throws.
Hans
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Humots
Critical Thinker
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- May 29, 2012
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Jabba, you are saying:
1. P(NR|me) = P(me|NR)P(NR)/(P(me|NR)P(NR)+P(me|R)P(R)), and
- P(NR) = .99
- P(me|R) = .05
- P(R) = .01
(2. - 5.) P(me|NR) approaches 0.
So, P(NR|me) approaches 0.
I wonder, what is P(NR|k), the probability that the Non-Religious Hypothesis is true given all background knowledge? Well,
P(NR|k) = P(k|NR)P(NR)/(P(k|NR)P(NR)+P(k|R)P(R))
From your own argument:
- P(NR) = .99
- P(R) = .01
Then for k = all background knowledge:
- P(k|R) = .01 or less, since if the Religious hypothesis is true, most background knowledge (including evolution) is false
- P(k|NR) = .99 or more, since P(NR) + P(R) = 1.0, again from your own argument that R and NR are a binary partition
We obtain
P(NR|k) = 0.99 * 0.99/0(.99 * 0.99 +0.01 * 0.01) = 0.9801 / (0.9801 + .0001) = 0.9999
What about P(R|k), the probability that the Religious Hypothesis is true given all background knowledge?
Using P(R|k) = P(k|R)P(R)/(P(k|R)P(R)+P(k|NR)P(NR))
we get, using the same values,
P(R|k) = .01 * .01 / (.01 * .01 + .99 * .99) = .0001
which is consistent with P(NR) + P(R) = 1.0.
So, what’s wrong with this picture?
Jabba
Philosopher
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- 5,613
- I haven't stopped to count -- nor probably , CAN I count -- the number of qac’s (questions, accusations and comments otherwise) with which you guys have hosed me in this thread (alone) -- but then, I think that I have GOOD ANSWERS to all of them anyway (though, at least for one of them, my answer is, "You're right -- I made a mistake").
- The trouble is that 1) good answers often take awhile to effectively compose, 2) for each one that I offer an answer, I'll probably be swamped with multiple new ones, and 3) answering them all is, therefore, inconceivable! (The Princess Bride, anyone?)
- But then, that one comment I mentioned above for which I would answer, “You’re right” gives me hope of someday being able to actually answer them all anyway.
- In that comment, it was said, “…by the 64th generation (as abaddon (and Agatha) point out) the number of your ancestors is more than the number of people who have ever lived.” Fortunately, that same math should apply to the possible number of qac’s here -- and allow me, or one of my great-etc-grandchildren -- to finally answer THEM ALL.
- In explaining my probability of being here, as I backed up over my ancestors, the inbreeding would have had to start much sooner than I admitted… See what I mean?
--- Jabba
- The trouble is that 1) good answers often take awhile to effectively compose, 2) for each one that I offer an answer, I'll probably be swamped with multiple new ones, and 3) answering them all is, therefore, inconceivable! (The Princess Bride, anyone?)
- But then, that one comment I mentioned above for which I would answer, “You’re right” gives me hope of someday being able to actually answer them all anyway.
- In that comment, it was said, “…by the 64th generation (as abaddon (and Agatha) point out) the number of your ancestors is more than the number of people who have ever lived.” Fortunately, that same math should apply to the possible number of qac’s here -- and allow me, or one of my great-etc-grandchildren -- to finally answer THEM ALL.
- In explaining my probability of being here, as I backed up over my ancestors, the inbreeding would have had to start much sooner than I admitted… See what I mean?
--- Jabba
In the time you took to tell us that you'd eventually get round to answering the criticisms of your post #215, you could have posted the remainder of your supposed proof of immortality, and also answered some of those criticisms.
Honestly, Jabba, do you have any idea how damaging it is to your credibility that you act like this? It was bad enough that you took two weeks to post what should have been in the first post, but now you are doing what you have done in the shroud thread. Instead of answering people, you waste post upon post in telling us that you intend to answer at some indeterminate time in the future, instead of just answering.
Despite your attempt to inject a little levity, you don't have 2^64 questions to answer. You just have five.
1) Where did you get your numbers from?
2) Do you agree with Humots that your maths shows the probability of the non-religious hypothesis to be much more likely than the religious hypothesis?
3) Do you understand that you are calculating the probability of 'you' existing in 2012 as if you were performing the calculation 20,000 years ago?
4) Do you understand why this is a foolish thing to do, given that we are in 2012 and all the things that had to happen to produce you (or any of the 7 billion people in the world) have already happened?
5) Do you understand what people are getting at when they give you analogies such as a puddle thinking the hole is made for it, or the wine thinking the glass is made for it?
It takes one post to answer those five questions. It takes one post to lay out the rest of the argument (again, you should have put your entire argument into your first post). One post. In the words of Nike, just do it.
Honestly, Jabba, do you have any idea how damaging it is to your credibility that you act like this? It was bad enough that you took two weeks to post what should have been in the first post, but now you are doing what you have done in the shroud thread. Instead of answering people, you waste post upon post in telling us that you intend to answer at some indeterminate time in the future, instead of just answering.
Despite your attempt to inject a little levity, you don't have 2^64 questions to answer. You just have five.
1) Where did you get your numbers from?
2) Do you agree with Humots that your maths shows the probability of the non-religious hypothesis to be much more likely than the religious hypothesis?
3) Do you understand that you are calculating the probability of 'you' existing in 2012 as if you were performing the calculation 20,000 years ago?
4) Do you understand why this is a foolish thing to do, given that we are in 2012 and all the things that had to happen to produce you (or any of the 7 billion people in the world) have already happened?
5) Do you understand what people are getting at when they give you analogies such as a puddle thinking the hole is made for it, or the wine thinking the glass is made for it?
It takes one post to answer those five questions. It takes one post to lay out the rest of the argument (again, you should have put your entire argument into your first post). One post. In the words of Nike, just do it.
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jhunter1163
beer-swilling semiliterate
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Slowvehicle
Membership Drive , Co-Ordinator,, Russell's Antin
- I haven't stopped to count -- nor probably , CAN I count -- the number of qac’s (questions, accusations and comments otherwise) with which you guys have hosed me in this thread (alone) -- but then, I think that I have GOOD ANSWERS to all of them anyway (though, at least for one of them, my answer is, "You're right -- I made a mistake").
- The trouble is that 1) good answers often take awhile to effectively compose, 2) for each one that I offer an answer, I'll probably be swamped with multiple new ones, and 3) answering them all is, therefore, inconceivable! (The Princess Bride, anyone?)
- But then, that one comment I mentioned above for which I would answer, “You’re right” gives me hope of someday being able to actually answer them all anyway.
- In that comment, it was said, “…by the 64th generation (as abaddon (and Agatha) point out) the number of your ancestors is more than the number of people who have ever lived.” Fortunately, that same math should apply to the possible number of qac’s here -- and allow me, or one of my great-etc-grandchildren -- to finally answer THEM ALL.
- In explaining my probability of being here, as I backed up over my ancestors, the inbreeding would have had to start much sooner than I admitted… See what I mean?
--- Jabba
Rich:
I am sorry that you will probably report this thread to your friends on the shroudie threads as an example of how you were treated bitterly in the dens of the godless, but, seriously:
You are exhibiting, in this thread, the same kind of hopeful error with which you True Shroud™ posts are riddled.
I am not sure how to tell you any better than this. You are claiming that the likelihood of you being you (or a hand of all aces) happening at all is so infinitesimal that it has to indicate cheating (in the case of the cards) or divine intervention (in the case of you being you).
Here is what you are missing--you are pointing at a hand of cards that has already happened; at a person that has, in fact, already been born, with all of the concomitant "unlikelihoods" in place. Unfortunately, you are shaking the dog at the stick. The likelihood of something that has already been observed to happen, happening, is 1/1. Unity. It has already happened, therefore the chance that it will have already happened is 1/1, set, discoverable, defined as unity.
Now, if you were to open a new deck of cards, shuffle it fairly, put it flat on the table, and before touching it again, predict what hand would be drawn, in what order, then (and only then) are you dealing with a high improbability. Please aldo notice that the high improbability does not depend upon the hand being a memorable hand, or a high-scoring poker hand, but upon the hand being the hand that you predicted. You do not realize it, but what you are doing is shooting at the fence, then drawing a target around the bullet hole.
And none of it has anything to do with immortality.
This dog won't hunt.
Sorry, but that's how it is.
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- I haven't stopped to count -- nor probably , CAN I count -- the number of qac’s (questions, accusations and comments otherwise) with which you guys have hosed me in this thread (alone) -- but then, I think that I have GOOD ANSWERS to all of them anyway (though, at least for one of them, my answer is, "You're right -- I made a mistake").
- The trouble is that 1) good answers often take awhile to effectively compose, 2) for each one that I offer an answer, I'll probably be swamped with multiple new ones, and 3) answering them all is, therefore, inconceivable! (The Princess Bride, anyone?)
- But then, that one comment I mentioned above for which I would answer, “You’re right” gives me hope of someday being able to actually answer them all anyway.
- In that comment, it was said, “…by the 64th generation (as abaddon (and Agatha) point out) the number of your ancestors is more than the number of people who have ever lived.” Fortunately, that same math should apply to the possible number of qac’s here -- and allow me, or one of my great-etc-grandchildren -- to finally answer THEM ALL.
- In explaining my probability of being here, as I backed up over my ancestors, the inbreeding would have had to start much sooner than I admitted… See what I mean?
--- Jabba
Jabba, there are no good answers for you to formulate and present! The very beginning of your proof is in error. This has been explained to you in multiple ways, but almost all of them focus on one point: the probability of an event that has already occurred is 1. If you start a mathematic proof with 1=1+1, there is no way to justify the rest of the proof. That is what you are doing here.
Squeegee Beckenheim
Penultimate Amazing
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Half of what should have been in the first post.
Mashuna
Ovis ex Machina
Maybe Jabba thinks that if he posts enough Princess Bride quotes, people reading the thread will feel like it's going on for ever. That way, he can claim to have proved immortality.
Filippo Lippi
Philosopher
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All part of Jabba's game
- Status