• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

[Merged] Immortality & Bayesian Statistics

Status
Not open for further replies.
Jabba said:
Humots,

- Thanks for that last question. The answer is easy, and is probably worth some merit. I started a Doctorate in Educational Psychology at NYU in 1969.
-The course has two areas of study: Child Development and Research Methods. We (Lauren (my wife) and I) couldn't afford to live in the "City" itself -- living instead in Jamaica Queens, from where I'd take the subway to class everyday. Being a country boy at heart , I got sick of the long, often rush hour, rides to and from Greenwich Village -- and having connections upstate, transferred to SUNY at Albany. Probably a bad idea.
- I finished all my course work -- and then some -- but flunked the essay portion of our comprehensives. I did fine on the two multiple choice tests -- getting the best score in our group (8 Doctoral students) in Research Methods. I could have taken the test again, but we had a three year old at home, and little money, and I had to drop out.
- In our Doctoral studies, we had to choose a "language" in which to specialize. The appropriate "languages" for our course were "Computers" and "Statistics." I chose Statistics, and ultimately received an actual certificate stating that I was, indeed, proficient in that field.
- Since that time, when I think warranted by a discussion, I tend to point out that I am actually a certified Statistician...
- I can't remember all of the different classes involved (and it would take me awhile to find my transcripts), but probably the two most advanced were Factor Analysis and Bayesian Statistics.

- So, th-th that's my story, and I'm s-s-s-stickin to it!

--- Jabba
Click to expand...


Oh Dear

I am actually a real educational psychologist. As in I finished my course and we did very low level statistics. I am not a certified statistician. I fail to see how you can be less qualified in this area than I and call yourself this tommyrot nonsense.
 
Last edited:
Another Plausible Hypothesis

- 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
 
People ascribe more meaning to some patterns (such as four aces) than they do to other patterns (such as a three, a jack and two nines). This is neither surprising nor new.

What does it have to do with immortality?
 
Last edited:
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.

Sorry, I know that rather undermines the crux of your entire argument before you've even posted the whole thing, but if I were to wait for you to actually get round to posting your argument then I'd be dead before I got to say anything.
 
Filippo Lippi said:
I expect that Jabba is too busy slagging us* off** to his mates to bother with any of that evidence stuff.


* Jref posters, the big meanies
** again
Click to expand...
Probably hence his "Savage Treatment in Randi Land" posts.

scarlettinlondon said:
Oh Dear

I am actually a real educational psychologist. As in I finished my course and we did very low level statistics. I am not a certified statistician. I fail to see how you can be less qualified in this area than I and call yourself this tommyrot nonsense.
Click to expand...
Have you seen his shoud thread? :rolleyes:
 
Jabba said:
Wollery,
- No. It means that I took the numerous statistics courses required and did well in them.
--- Jabba
Click to expand...
Your original description you said, "proficient".

It also said that the courses were a requirement of your research degree, but that you could choose to do those courses or computing courses, which means they were electives, so it's extremely unlikely that they were designed for mathematicians or students of maths based subjects.

How many courses did you take, what level were they, and why did they have separate certification?

Not to mention that they were 40 years ago.

By the way, for the record, I have a PhD in Astrophysics, which involved attending high level courses in statistics. This does not make me a statistician, it makes me an astrophysicist who knows a bit about statistics.

Similarly, you aren't a statistician, you're someone who knows a bit about statistics.

When you go and do a degree in statistics and work in a field that requires regular use of statistics then you can call yourself a statistician. Until such time please stop embarrassing yourself.
 
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...
Ah, this nonsense again.

How do you know that you are an ace, Jabba?

How do you know that any of the packs are all aces?

How do you even know that there's more than one pack?
 
Well, if a googolplex people lived their lives, ya, you'd probably have some 150+ year people, maybe even some 200s. With 70 of those "living" as extremely ancient, winnowing strips of flesh that happened to thin out exactly perfectly evenly so nothing completely broke or burst open.

I don't think it's possible for that to continue absolutely indefinitely no matter how lucky. Of course, with that many people, some may get some telomere mutation or some such that allows much longer, or even indefinite life extension, but said extension would not be due to normal processes under consideration statistically here.


Perhaps the OP was being sarcastic about the use of statistics?
 
Last edited:
wollery said:
Ah, this nonsense again.

How do you know that you are an ace, Jabba?

How do you know that any of the packs are all aces?

How do you even know that there's more than one pack?
Click to expand...

And seeing that this seems to be angling towards some sort of anthropic principle, wouldn't a more valid analogy be that you're blindfolded while a friend turns cards over, and he shows you any card he considers interesting?
 
Maybe the immortality of this thread itself, in which everyone waits eternally for the OP to arrive, is what he has in mind. In which case, it's working so far.
 
Well, I have my Star Wars The Old Republic authenticator token right on my keychain, so we can have some fun with as-good-as-random numbers. (If you have one for WoW, same idea, really.) So I whip out my keys and press the little button...

21402148​

Well, that was frikken unexpected. What are the ODDS that exactly this number would pop up? It's one in a hundred million, innit?

And what's with all the powers of two in it? What are the odds I'd get a number with everything being a power or two, or a zero, which I figure it's two to the power minus infinity?

Well, I wrote a small program to count them, and there are 390625 such numbers possible. Out of a hundred million. That's a probability of 0.0039. Clearly it's less than 5% chance for it to come by chance, so it has to mean something!

Err... no. Some number had to come out, and finding some oddity about it means nothing unless it was predicted to happen. If another number had come out, I'd have just latched on it as being too nearly symmetrical, or containing too many 3's and 6's, or whatever else.
 
Recovering Agnostic said:
And seeing that this seems to be angling towards some sort of anthropic principle[...]
Click to expand...

That's exactly it. Seeing as Jabba is reluctant to get to the point, I'll spare everybody another 2-day wait for the next instalment, and sum his argument up.

Human life is all kinds of special. The chances of something that special arising by pure chance is small. Therefore we have souls, God exists, and Jesus is my saviour.
 
HansMustermann said:
Well, that was frikken unexpected. What are the ODDS that exactly this number would pop up? It's one in a hundred million, innit?
Click to expand...

No. It's 1 in 99,999,999. :p

Err... no. Some number had to come out, and finding some oddity about it means nothing unless it was predicted to happen. If another number had come out, I'd have just latched on it as being too nearly symmetrical, or containing too many 3's and 6's, or whatever else.
Click to expand...

To expand on this a little, let's imagine that to determine a number we roll 10 dice. This will generate a number between 10 and 60. What are the chances of getting a significant number? If you don't define what you mean by "a significant number" beforehand, then the answer is "very high".

So, let's say we roll 10. Well, that's the lowest number possible, and can only be achieved by rolling all 1s. That's significant.

60? Highest number possible.
35? Slap-bang in the middle.
11? The lowest-possible prime number.
59? The highest-possible prime.
12? Exactly double the highest score possible on 1 die.
13? Well, that's unlucky, isn't it?
16? The lowest square number.
25? The only odd number whose last digit is the same as its root.
36? The only even number whose last digit is the same as its root.
49? That's a square.
22? The first digit is the same as the last. That can't be coincidence, can it?
33? Ditto.
44? Ditto.
55? Ditto.
23? Everyone knows about the number 23. They even made a film about it.
57? The same age as a can of baked beans.

...and so on. I'm sure that if we tried we could come up with some "significant" aspect of every number between 10 and 60. Because it's very, very easy to attach significance to things after the fact. That doesn't mean that it's not your human brain being, well, human.
 
...and since it's very improbable that each of us special snowflakes exist right now, and immortality is very improbable as well, then we must be immortal.

Hmm, I think Jabba has missed a step or two in his chain of reasoning.
 
that
Agatha said:
...and since it's very improbable that each of us special snowflakes exist right now, and immortality is very improbable as well, then we must be immortal.

Hmm, I think Jabba has missed a step or two in his chain of reasoning.
Click to expand...

The odds that I, in all my splendorous, specialness should exist right now are so impossibly improbable, proves there must have been a god to do such a work.
 
Jabba said:
-

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

--- Jabba
Click to expand...
Because the people who are suspicious don't understand statistics and because people are programmed to see patterns even in random events.

Does this end this thread?
 
Last edited:
tsig said:
that

The odds that I, in all my splendorous, specialness should exist right now are so impossibly improbable, proves there must have been a god to do such a work.
Click to expand...

Everyone who knows me knows I am exceedingly improbable, even more than most other people, so I will be even more immortal than most.

Is this proof going to involve the improbability drive from Hitchikers's Guide?
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Back
Top Bottom