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[Merged] Immortality & Bayesian Statistics

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Jabba said:
Mojo,
- If you think you exist, I'm sure I have the same evidence as you, so I surely don't need to tell you. If you don't think you exist, I certainly don't need to tell you.
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You are claiming that the soul* exists. You have provided no evidence that it does. You therefore do not get to include it as a premise to your argument.




*Try as you might to disguise this by giving it different names, everyone has seen through it.
 
Garrette said:
-10 for misrepresenting what is being discussed. Hint: It is not the existence of the person called Jabba or the person called Mojo. Rather, it is the existence of the Sense of Self (or Same Me, et al) as something other than an illusion.
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It is the existence of the soul, no matter what Jabba tries to call it.
 
David Hume, - A Treatise of Human Nature, 1739

For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception. When my perceptions are remov'd for any time, as by sound sleep; so long am I insensible of myself, and may truly be said not to exist. And were all my perceptions remov'd by death, and cou'd I neither think, nor feel, nor see, nor love, nor hate after the dissolution of my body, I shou'd be entirely annihilated, nor do I conceive what is farther requisite to make me a perfect non-entity. If any one, upon serious and unprejudic'd reflection thinks he has a different notion of himself, I must confess I can reason no longer with him. All I can allow him is, that he may be in the right as well as I, and that we are essentially different in this particular. He may, perhaps, perceive something simple and continu'd, which he calls himself; tho' I am certain there is no such principle in me.​

http://www.units.miamioh.edu/technologyandhumanities/hume.htm
 
Jabba said:
Dave,
- We're probably stuck here, cause I've unsuccessfully given the following answer (probably multiple times) before.
- The difference is that the duplicate would not be the same me -- a duplicate after I die would not bring ME back to life. That's the difference; and, this is the same me that me and my type hope will not extinguish into eternity. This is the ME I've been talking about, and it will be absent from the duplicate -- that is a difference (the difference) between the same me and the "identical" me.
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Jabba, of course the duplicate wouldn't be you.
Keep in mind that ME is simply a part of consciousness which is neither more nor less than an emergent property of a functioning neurosystem.

Separate neurosystem, separate emergent properties.
What is it you don't understand about that?
 
Jabba said:
Jabba said:
Mojo,

- Again, we're probably stuck.

- If the same me is an illusion, it is a real illusion, and an illusion that I've been enjoying for most of 72 years -- and which, according to you, will extinguish (when my brain dies) and will never light again.

- Does your illusion exist? If so, what is your evidence?
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Mojo said:
I'm not trying to base an argument on its existence; you are. Therefore it is you, not me, who needs evidence for it.
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Mojo,
- If you think you exist, I'm sure I have the same evidence as you, so I surely don't need to tell you. If you don't think you exist, I certainly don't need to tell you.
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It appears Dave failed the Jabba test and the mantle has been passed.
 
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abaddon said:
I confess my eyes watered. What on earth is a "real illusion"?
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It's one of those illusions that is not really true.

Jabba will soon be along to 'splain it to us all. It's that stuff that differentiates truth from Jabatoontones. :boxedin:
 
abaddon said:
I confess my eyes watered. What on earth is a "real illusion"?
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Why, it's akin to a real hallucination, of course.

And just the latest evidence that Jabba is extremely confused about what he's attempting to argue.
 
Jabba said:
Mojo,
- If you think you exist, I'm sure I have the same evidence as you, so I surely don't need to tell you. If you don't think you exist, I certainly don't need to tell you.
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I'm quite prepared to accept that you exist. What you are trying to argue, though, is that your soul exists. That is the proposition for which you need to provide evidence.
 
xtifr said:
We're not arguing about whether the copy would be a separate person. We all agree on that. We're asking you to show how having a separate consciousness makes consciousness a special property, when all the other properties of the copy would also be distinct!

The fingerprints would be identical, but the fingers would be distinct, and if one finger got cut, the copy's fingerprints wouldn't reflect that. They wouldn't be the same fingerprints. If one copy went for a jog, the other would not benefit from the exercise. If both copies had a mild case of heartburn at the moment of copying, one taking an antacid would not cure the other. They're separate (though identical) because they occupy different locations in spacetime. It's that simple.

To quote the famous real estate aphorism: location, location, location!

Being teleported is scientifically indistinguishable from destroying the original and creating a copy in a new location.

Simply existing is indistinguishable from destroying the original and creating a copy in the same location.

The only thing that makes the copy a different person is that it's a separate person in a separate location, so its separate brain has a separate set of activities and properties.

Physics, Jabba, physics. Location, location, location!

You said that you agreed that location might affect your theory. Well, it's obvious (and has been all along) to the rest of us that it totally affects your theory, and it's time to address it, as you've been promising to do for pages now.
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xtifr,
- Is the location defined by a Planck Length, space/time instant?
 
Mojo said:
I'm quite prepared to accept that you exist. What you are trying to argue, though, is that your soul exists. That is the proposition for which you need to provide evidence.
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Mojo,
- OK. I still have trepidations about using the word "soul," but I'll give it a try. In trying to 'prove' immortality, I am, in effect, trying to 'prove' that the soul (something we think of as non-physical) exists.
 
Jabba said:
Mojo,
- OK. I still have trepidations about using the word "soul," but I'll give it a try. In trying to 'prove' immortality, I am, in effect, trying to 'prove' that the soul (something we think of as non-physical) exists.
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Like Filippo Lippi, I applaud this move toward honesty, though I do so with caveats.

1. We have known this for months and months and months and months, and various posters have mentioned it several times. You ignored it then, and you ignore it now, making your admission as if it should be a surprise to us and as if we should be awed by your transparency.

2. You are not, in fact, trying to prove the soul exists; you are trying to force us to assume it exists and then use that assumption to say "See? Souls exist."
 
carlitos said:
Why make it so complicated? Define location as "in your chair at 7:00 this morning."
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Carlitos,
- OK. But what I meant to imply (but didn't) was that there was only one instant (in space/time) that defined ME -- that instant was at the inception of my consciousness. The ME, in my question, is not something that is constantly changing.
 
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