[Merged] Immortality & Bayesian Statistics

[Monza]

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

Hi Jabba! This situation has been discussed before. It seems everyone here does understand what you are saying. It is just that your conclusion is wrong and it is proving difficult to get you to see why.

The "self" is an emergent property of the physical brain. It is not something that exists elsewhere and then gets "attached". You can have a brain without a "self" but not a "self" without a brain. Just like you can have cars without traffic, but not traffic without cars.

If you really could 100% replicate a brain, then the resulting "self" within each would be identical to the other. Keep in mind that the brain is constantly changing. That is, its physical make-up is never static. Neurons are always firing and chemical bonds are always being formed and destroyed. This is due to various stimuli, such as what the brain is experiencing through the senses and through thought. For two brains to be 100% identical for more than a single instant of Planck time, all stimuli would have to be 100% the same. In reality it is impossible.

But let's say you could do this. In this thought experiment, two brains are in separate but identically controlled environments. They are subject to exactly the same stimuli such that they are always 100% identical in every detail over a period of time. Each brain would have an emergent self. These selves would be identical. That is, brain A would think it is "Larry" and brain B would also think it is "Larry". They are exactly identical with exactly an identical sense of self. But they are separate. One brain cannot control the other. They are not psychically linked. Just two pieces of matter that are identical. They think alike and act alike.

Now we decide to vary the stimuli between the two such that the most minor of differences exist, the two selves would start to diverge. Each would still think he is "Larry", and each would be right. It's just now each Larry is a little bit different from the other. They would be similar but no longer identical. Brain A can move to Boston and become a cab driver and brain B can move to Phoenix and become a bartender. Both are guys who think of themselves as Larry, each has always been "Larry". They had identical experiences up to a point and then diverged. They each have memories of the past, but their own memories are now influenced by their experiences since then. If Larry A was an alcoholic or suffered some head trauma, his memories (even his personality) could be markedly different now from Larry B. They would be like identical twins.

Who you are now is the result of your DNA and the result of your experiences throughout your life. Any experience that causes you to see, hear, smell, feel, or think results in physical (yes, physical) changes to your brain. If anything had been different, the resulting physical change to your brain would be different. OK, wearing a red shirt this morning rather than a blue one results in a very minuscule difference to your emergent self. But what if your parents had died when you were three and you were adopted by a mean German couple who moved you to Bonn? The Jabba under that scenario would be different than the Jabba you are now. He'd speak German and might be more disciplined in his work. But under each of these two scenarios, the emergent Jabba would feel that he has always had a "consistent" Jabba self. It's not really true, hence the fact that a consistent self is just an illusion. We can only actually experience one outcome of these various and finite possibilities, so whatever that outcome we see ourselves as ourselves.

tl:dr mode:
The important concepts here are (1) the "self" is an emergent property of the physical brain, (2) the physical brain is always changing, and (3) there is a difference between same and identical.

 

[Giordano]

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

Still thinking we misunderstand you, and if only we did understand you we would agree with you? No, we do understand you very well, and as explained before, you are simply wrong. As explained to you multiple times, there is no "self" separate from the physical brain, no matter what you assume, or want to believe. As brought up here already, there is indeed a recipe for your "self" which is based on your genetics and experience, and it is finite, such like a recipe based on noodles and chicken: there may be many possibilities, but they are finite nonetheless.

It is particularly noteworthy that you yourself cannot define this "self" that never changes (and which is crucial to your idea of life after physical death). It is not our memories, or experiences, or physical state, but it is something very vague, although it must not be physical to allow for your model of reincarnation. It may be a believed by some, but it has never been shown to exist in reality. Just as people believe that a flipped coin that shows heads 12 times in a row is more likely to next come up tails. They are wrong despite their belief. Not surprisingly, even among those who believe in a "self" they disagree strongly what happens to it once you die. Have you ever considered the "self" simply doesn't exist?

As to brain duplication; this has been explained to you before in many different ways, with no obvious effect. Why don't we move on?

 

[Giordano]

Jabba,

I ask you again a very simple question: are there more people on Earth today than 100 years ago? If so, where did the new selves come from? If their "selves" were created brand new, even according to your own theory, why must anyone be reincarnated? Why recycle "selves" if new "selves" are a limitless resource that can be created brand new?

 

[tsig]

Welcome to the background radiation of the Rich Savage Experience^TM...

Yep, welcome to the merry go round where we go round and round and get nowhere, occasionally someone grabs the brass ring and gets a free round that is a reply from Jabba but they usually prove vacuous.

 

[Giordano]

Yep, welcome to the merry go round where we go round and round and get nowhere, occasionally someone grabs the brass ring and gets a free round that is a reply from Jabba but they usually prove vacuous.

Very well put, but I am not certain that ring is brass. Maybe some other substance...

 

[Garrette]

Very well put, but I am not certain that ring is brass. Maybe some other substance...

Lumeniferous ether? Ectoplasm? The stuff of which the place where potential selves reside is made?

 

[xtifr]

Still thinking we misunderstand you, and if only we did understand you we would agree with you? No, we do understand you very well, and as explained before, you are simply wrong. As explained to you multiple times, there is no "self" separate from the physical brain, no matter what you assume, or want to believe.

More importantly, there is no "self" separate from the physical brain in the standard scientific model! If you, Mr. Savage, wish to rebut the standard scientific model, you have to start with what it says, not what you wish it said.

In the standard scientific model, the number of possible selves is limited by the number of possible physical arrangements of particles in the universe—a finite number. (It is, in fact, much smaller than that, since not all possible arrangements of particles will contain a self-aware brain, but the bottom line is that the number of possible selves in the standard model is far, far smaller than infinity. Infinitely smaller, in fact. )

 

[pakeha]

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

No, Jabba.
This is where you went wrong:
" Each new consciousness inherently creates, produces, brings with it a brand new specific self. "
Self= consciousness.

 

[John Jones]

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?

Asked and answered.

I wish you would note and acknowledge that there has been a sea change in this discussion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_change_(transformation).

You've lost.

 

[John Jones]

Anyone:

Raise your hand (or your objection) if you don't understand any of Jabba's arguments after these last 18 months of him promising Bayesian proof of immortality.

I understand what he's trying to prove. He has utterly failed, but I get it.

 

[Loss Leader]

- 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.

Terrific. That still doesn't mean there are an infinite number of possibilities.

 

[PixyMisa]

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

PERSONAL IDENTITY IS A FUNCTION OF THE BRAIN. IF YOU HAVE TWO BRAINS, YOU HAVE TWO IDENTITIES.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Alright this has charted completely new universes of farcical. This has stopped boardering on silly and has fully invaded silly and set up a puppet government in silly's capital.

Your "sense of self" is nothing more then neurological functioning of your physical brain.

Period. End of discussion.

 

[Slowvehicle]

Good Evening, Mr. Savage!

...I honestly do not know if you have actually put me on ignore, or if you have simply decided to allow yourself to pretend that I am no longer posting. Either way, I wish you would ponder the fact that your own behaviour, in this and the Shroud^TM threads is, if nothing else, a demonstration that the"self" (or "soul", or "representation", or "consciousness", or whatever mot du nuit you want to apply tonight, that may or may not bleed over into tomorrow) you are talkiing about is not, in fact, continuous and unchanging, but dies "alter when it alterations finds".

I encourage you to go back and read some of your early offerings in the original Shroud^TM thread. While you have never scrupled to hold yourself to the strictest literal truth (I am minded of your post at one of the sidonist threads, complaining about how bitterly you were being treated here), you did, at least in the early days, engage with postes to some extent. Now, even you admit that you select only the "most important" question to answer (for sufficiently non-cirtical values of "important").

This is what I wish you would see: whether this represents a defensive reaction to being told you are wrong when you are wrong (which does happen often); or whether this represents, for you, a learning curve about how to pretend you are getting something resembling the reactions you had blithely expected to engender; your approach to posting has, in fact, altered. You do not post in the same way you did two and more years ago.

In other words, your "continuous" "self" has, in fact, changed, altered, grown. You, yourself, are an example of the thing you deny happens. Your sense of continuity, that is, your sense that the changes have all happened to the same "self" is, in fact, the "illusion" of which you have been told.

Your "self' is an emergent property (a by-product, if you will) of the neurosystem that developed under the instructions of your heredity as affected, or molded, by the experiences to which it has been subjected. Were either of those two factors different, a "self" other than the one you now experience would have emerged.

If you were to experience a significant trauma to your neurosystem (I do not recommend, for instance, getting hit by a teen-ager fleeing the scene of a failed drug deal) the functioning of your neurosytem would, to a grater of lesser extent, be altered. "You" would not be "the same" (and yes, I am speaking from experience).

Be that as it may, unless and until you present evidence (you know the mantra) for the existence of this thing you try not to call the"soul" as something other than a by-product of a functioning neurosystem, there is no reason to keep asserting that whatever it is "must be" "immortal"--as evidence indicates that "consciousness" ceases to be when the neurosystem of which it is an emergent property ceases to function.

Instead of trying to find some way that you can pretend that I (for instance) agree with you that what is not (the "immortal soul" you want to assert) is less unlikely than what is (observable reality); why not just present your strongest piece of evidence for the existence of the "soul", and its "immortality"?

Don't explain why you "believe", or "want to believe" or "wish it made sense to believe" that "you" are "immortal". Drop the reincarnation dead end. Just present what yo-u think is practical, empirical, physical, objective evidence that the "soul" exists. Don't try to finesse a logic chain--just present evidence.

It is likely that posters will still disagree with you; that your evidence will be subjected to scrutiny, even disagreed with--but I venture to surmise you will be applauded for at least engaging the discussion at a potentially fruitful level.

The again, I drink coffee out of Disneyland mug.

 

[Jabba]

- 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?

 

[godless dave]

- 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?

None so far from me. Some might quibble with "continuous" but I don't.

 

[Slowvehicle]

- 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?

Good Morning, Mr. Savage!

I suppose I should simply post in invisible font....

No evidence? Pity.

BTW: I, personally, would prefer a term other than "continuous"...but I can't think of one I'd be happier with, off the top of my head.

 

[Garrette]

- 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?

The reason I can agree with this post is that you began with the word "apparently."

The reason I cannot agree with your apparent intent regarding my agreement is that you plan to remove "apparently" after you garner enough agreements, so that what was only "apparent" erroneously becomes "actual" in your argument.

 

[godless dave]

I am curious why you're re-stating the scientific model of consciousness this late in the thread.

 

[Jabba]

- 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?

None so far from me. Some might quibble with "continuous" but I don't.

- Good.
- Apparently, if we replicate the DNA of a person (as seems to happen with identical twins), we do not get the same self (in the sense above) in two different persons. Disagreements?