dafydd
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Only if the deck is fixed. Don't tell me, the sky daddy fixes our deck.
[Merged] Immortality & Bayesian Statistics
- Thread starter Jabba
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Only if the deck is fixed. Don't tell me, the sky daddy fixes our deck.
Akhenaten
Heretic Pharaoh
Abaddon has just explained it for you. You quoted it, for Thoth's sake!
The answer is 1.
The first is bleeding obvious and the second is metaphysical navel gazing.
I doubt that "our current, consensus scientific theory of reality" gives a rodent's rectum about either of them.
"the probability of actually existing events existing"???
You have got to be kidding.
No, that's not saying the same thing "in other words". That's saying something completely different.
The probability of you existing is 1. It beggars belief that you can't understand something so obvious.
Nonsense.
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dafydd
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I think that he is. He seems to be bored and has nothing else to do.
dafydd
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Not complete nonsense, the deck could have been stacked or somebody is cheating. Nothing to do with imaginary immortality.
Akhenaten
Heretic Pharaoh
True enough.
I was just anticipating that his answer to this:
will be, "Goddidit!"
dafydd
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He's starting at the wrong end. Proof of the existence of a god would be welcome, but after millennia and not a shred of proof, I don't fancy his chances.
Slowvehicle
Membership Drive , Co-Ordinator,, Russell's Antin
Mr. Savage:
I sort of expect you to disrespectufully ignore me here, as you have done on the Holy HankyTM thread. However:
You have continued to ignore the hole in your "special snowflake hand of cards" reasoning, to with:
The chance of drawing 4 aces is exactly the same as the cance of drawing any other PRE-SPECIFIED hand of 4 cards. A hand of 4 aces only seems "special" because of the rules of many card games. Work it out--the probability of drawing any PRE-SPECIFIED hand of 4 cards is exactly the same as the probability of drawing any other PRE-SPECIFIED hand of 4 cards.
Your consciousness seems special to you because it is, after all, yours.
pakeha
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Ladewig
I lost an avatar bet.
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So, Jabba,
What exactly is the point of this thread?
1) Are you here to enlighten us with your theory?
2) Are you here to ask for criticisms of your theory?
3) Are you here because talking to people who have studied math, science, and philosophy is a quick and efficient way for you to learn about these fields?
4) Are you here because no one down at the bar will have an informal bull session with you about immortality?
5) Are you here because you wrote this up as a paper and could not get it published?
6) Are you here because JREF never deletes threads for content, so this is one of the few places that lets you post this stuff?
7) Are you here simply because you want to be immortal?
I am asking because I cannot imagine repeatedly posting on a board with over a thousand active posters and not having a single one of them agree with any part of my philosophy.
Please don't accuse me of argumentum ad populum. I am NOT saying everyone disagrees with you therefore you are wrong. I am asking why you chose this board and this style to present your ideas. And re-present them in the very same manner. Did you really think things would be different?
So why are you posting this stuff? What exactly is your point?
Are you just trying to pull our legs or vex us in some way?
ETA:
Even if your reasoning were valid and 3.3 were incontrovertible evidence against us having one finite life, that does not prove that immortality is the only other possibility or that it is a even a good or likely possibility.
For instance, the assumption that we all have one finite life can be proven wrong by our having two finite lives.
What exactly is the point of this thread?
1) Are you here to enlighten us with your theory?
2) Are you here to ask for criticisms of your theory?
3) Are you here because talking to people who have studied math, science, and philosophy is a quick and efficient way for you to learn about these fields?
4) Are you here because no one down at the bar will have an informal bull session with you about immortality?
5) Are you here because you wrote this up as a paper and could not get it published?
6) Are you here because JREF never deletes threads for content, so this is one of the few places that lets you post this stuff?
7) Are you here simply because you want to be immortal?
I am asking because I cannot imagine repeatedly posting on a board with over a thousand active posters and not having a single one of them agree with any part of my philosophy.
Please don't accuse me of argumentum ad populum. I am NOT saying everyone disagrees with you therefore you are wrong. I am asking why you chose this board and this style to present your ideas. And re-present them in the very same manner. Did you really think things would be different?
So why are you posting this stuff? What exactly is your point?
Are you just trying to pull our legs or vex us in some way?
ETA:
Even if your reasoning were valid and 3.3 were incontrovertible evidence against us having one finite life, that does not prove that immortality is the only other possibility or that it is a even a good or likely possibility.
For instance, the assumption that we all have one finite life can be proven wrong by our having two finite lives.
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dafydd
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I vote for that.
Perhaps you need to go back and read what Bayesian statistics is.
It doesn't matter how unlikely something is, once it has happened, it's happened, and the probability is now one.
Er, what explanation?
dafydd
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Sky daddy waving magic wand.
godless dave
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It's been said before, but I'll say it again.
"Extremely small" is not equal to zero. They are not close enough to be considered equivalent.
"Extremely small" is not equal to zero. They are not close enough to be considered equivalent.
Could this be because you don't actually understand what you are trying to explain?
Your particular consciousness exists. As does mine, and approximately seven billion other people's. Clearly, the events that gave rise to our individual consciousnesses have occurred. The probabilities of our individual existences is 1. For each and every one of us.
All the available evidence is on the side of any particular individual consciousness being an emergent property of the person's brain, and that it ceases with brain death.
Say what? The probability of actually existing events existing is 1. Because they exist.
Not 'in other words'; you are looking at two completely different points in time, and the events between the two points of time change the calculated probability of 'you' as various events occur or don't occur.
Everybody's prior probability would be similarly small, if it was possible to calculate it at a point in the past without knowledge of actual events. But given that we are not currently in the past, why are you making that calculation, and what will you use it for?
If it was possible to make a meaningful guess in 13 CE at the probability of you existing in 2013, that would give you one figure. Jump forward 10, 20, 50, 100, 1000 years or more, and that figure would be continually changing as various events occurred or did not occur.
But it isn't possible, because someone in 13 CE would have no way of being able to gauge the probability of anything about 2013, not even if humans would still be on the planet. So any probability they would calculate could only ever be a wild-ass guess, and not in the least meaningful for you to use as part of your musings on immortality.
You aren't going to come up with a useful figure. If you pretend that some other person is calculating it at some point in the past with no knowledge of the future, the figure is as meaningless as any kind of fortune-telling. If you calculate it now, the figure is 1 because you do exist.
And what is that plausible explanation - a non-standard deck? If so, what does that have to do with the seven billion people in the world? Is it your contention that we are all cards, or fair decks, or we are all non-standard decks stuffed with aces (which are, after all, just squiggles of ink to which our culture gives value)? I hate to break it to you, Jabba, but people are not cards or decks of cards. Your analogy, if analogy it is, doesn't seem to relate to anything which you've said about consciousness.
Brian-M
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Here, use this.
Thanks! They should put it in the list of smilies.
Brian-M
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NO!
Let's say that you have a lottery that draws 8 balls from a total of 45, and your theory is that these numbers were randomly selected.
The numbers actually drawn are: 42, 5, 31, 27, 20, 37, 3, 38
Now let's apply your logic to the theory that these numbers are randomly selected. You said "The probability of a theory being true involves the probability of actually existing events existing -- given the theory".
The probability of these exact numbers being drawn in this exact order is easy to calculate.
1 chance in (45 * 44 * 43 * 42 * 41* 40 * 39 * 38)
equals
1 chance in 8,691,104,822,400
equals
1 chance in 8,691,104,822,400
So by your logic the chances of the outcome of this lotto draw being random is less than one in eight trillion, and we should therefore conclude that either the draw was non-random or that the laws of probability are wrong.
The probability of existing events existing under a given theory has nothing to do with the probability of the theory being true, especially when dealing with random or chaotic processes.
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Toontown
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"Death is nothing to us. When we exist, death is not; and when death exists, we are not." - Epicurus, 2 millenia ago
Smart guy. Also hypothesized that everything that exists is essentially atoms moving and interacting in space.
To paraphrase: you will die, but there will never be a "you" that experiences being dead. The only possible experience is that of sentient existence.
Will there ever be another "you"? Only The Shadow knows. But you do have that one data point.
Will the wind ever remember all the names it has blown in the past? The old man, with his crutch, and his wisdom, whispers "no...this will be the last..."
...but what does some old man know. The wind cries "Jabba!"
So, define "immortality" as never being dead, and you're there. It is clearly a logical error to think of a dead body as a being. There are beings. There are dead bodies. But there are no dead beings.
As for the improbability of your individual sentient existence: you can't use that to prove immortality to others. To others, your particular existence is no more improbable than the existence of a random grain of sand on Mars. But to you (and only to you), your sentient existence is an entirely different and infinitely more meaningful matter. It's the one and only reason anything at all means anything at all - to you. But only to you.
Bottom line: what you can prove to yourself is quite different from what you can prove to others. Don't even try. Your sentient existence is not like a poker hand. You can't beat anyone with it. Everyone else has the same hand. That's why they're here.
Smart guy. Also hypothesized that everything that exists is essentially atoms moving and interacting in space.
To paraphrase: you will die, but there will never be a "you" that experiences being dead. The only possible experience is that of sentient existence.
Will there ever be another "you"? Only The Shadow knows. But you do have that one data point.
Will the wind ever remember all the names it has blown in the past? The old man, with his crutch, and his wisdom, whispers "no...this will be the last..."
...but what does some old man know. The wind cries "Jabba!"
So, define "immortality" as never being dead, and you're there. It is clearly a logical error to think of a dead body as a being. There are beings. There are dead bodies. But there are no dead beings.
As for the improbability of your individual sentient existence: you can't use that to prove immortality to others. To others, your particular existence is no more improbable than the existence of a random grain of sand on Mars. But to you (and only to you), your sentient existence is an entirely different and infinitely more meaningful matter. It's the one and only reason anything at all means anything at all - to you. But only to you.
Bottom line: what you can prove to yourself is quite different from what you can prove to others. Don't even try. Your sentient existence is not like a poker hand. You can't beat anyone with it. Everyone else has the same hand. That's why they're here.
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Brian-M
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Jabba
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Probability of R/Supportive Data
- I was trying to do something – I was trying to remove the God connotation from the R hypothesis. I can’t really remove the religious connotation – it seems intrinsic. But God is not. The trouble is that the word “religious” connotes a god – it does not necessarily require a god. And, in this case, it doesn't...
- There is plenty of supportive data – it’s just that this supportive data may not be CREDIBLE. And in your opinion, it isn’t…
- If you agree, I’ll try to move on past technicalities.
- Here’s hoping that you’re still out there somewhere…
Jay,
- I was trying to do something – I was trying to remove the God connotation from the R hypothesis. I can’t really remove the religious connotation – it seems intrinsic. But God is not. The trouble is that the word “religious” connotes a god – it does not necessarily require a god. And, in this case, it doesn't...
- I’m pretty sure that technically you’re wrong.
- There is plenty of supportive data – it’s just that this supportive data may not be CREDIBLE. And in your opinion, it isn’t…
- If you agree, I’ll try to move on past technicalities.
- Here’s hoping that you’re still out there somewhere…
Jabba
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Probability/Suspicion
Slowvehicle,
- I do address this issue a couple of times. The easy one can be found in post #489:
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…
...
Slowvehicle,
- I do address this issue a couple of times. The easy one can be found in post #489:
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…
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