[Merged] Immortality & Bayesian Statistics

[Toontown]

My existence is emotionally significant to me, but that's not what I was asking.

What is the significance to the discussion in this thread? My existence isn't pre-selected.

I wasn't talking about emotion. I was talking about conditional probability.

If you don't believe you are pre-selected, then you don't believe the unique brain hypothesis. One brain, one place, one time, or never see the light of day is pre-selection.

 

[godless dave]

If you don't believe you are pre-selected, then you don't believe the unique brain hypothesis. One brain, one place, one time, or never see the light of day is pre-selection.

I don't see pre-selection anywhere in there.

I exist because of a unique set of circumstances, but my existence is only selected for consideration after the fact. If the circumstances had been slightly different, someone else would have existed and I wouldn't.

 

[Pixel42]

If you don't believe you are pre-selected, then you don't believe the unique brain hypothesis. One brain, one place, one time, or never see the light of day is pre-selection.

Pre-selected by whom? When? How? For what purpose?

 

[Toontown]

I don't see pre-selection anywhere in there.

I exist because of a unique set of circumstances, but my existence is only selected for consideration after the fact. If the circumstances had been slightly different, someone else would have existed and I wouldn't.

It doesn't matter when or if you discovered that the prerequisites for your presumed unique brain existence had been met. If you are a unique brain, then the prerequisites existed all along, in the form of the required brain, at the required spacetime coodinates.

 

[Slowvehicle]

I wasn't talking about emotion. I was talking about conditional probability.

If you don't believe you are pre-selected, then you don't believe the unique brain hypothesis. One brain, one place, one time, or never see the light of day is pre-selection.

Missing the point, as does Mr. Savage, that the issue is not predicting that "a" personality (or brain, or whatever) will exist, but predicting that "the personality that is Rich Savage" will exist.

And explaining how multiple "Rich Savages" is the same thing as "immortality".

 

[godless dave]

It doesn't matter when or if you discovered that the prerequisites for your presumed unique brain existence had been met. If you are a unique brain, then the prerequisites existed all along, in the form of the required brain, at the required spacetime coodinates.

So what? That's not pre-selection.

 

[Toontown]

Pre-selected by whom? When? How? For what purpose?

Is this another semantic nitpick? If so, then I admit it may have been better to have said "prerequisite" instead of "pre-selected".

If by chance you are suggesting that the prerequisite conditions of Godless Dave's sentient experience had to be consciously chosen by some being in order to qualify as prerequisites, then I don't even care to discuss that.

 

[W.D.Clinger]

- Below, “SM” is the current consensus “Scientific Model”; “NSM” is any possible explanatory model other than the “SM.” “k” is existing knowledge minus the implications I perceive in the fact of my own existence. Here’s the formula:
- P(SM|me) = P(me|SM)*P(SM|k)/P(me|SM)*P(SM|k)+P(me|NSM)*P(NSM|k)

I don't know where Jabba got that equation, and I'm not going to express any opinion on its correctness, but it's easy to derive some consequences of that equation.

If I'm parsing that equation aright, the first term on its right hand side consists of a product divided by itself. If that product is nonzero, as it presumably is, then that first term simplifies to 1 and the entire equation simplifies to

P(SM|me) = 1+P(me|NSM)*P(NSM|k)​

Probabilities can't be less than zero or greater than one, so the second term on the right hand size must be zero. Hence

P(me|NSM)*P(NSM|k) = 0​

and

P(SM|me) = 1​

In summary: Jabba's equation basically implies the current consensus "Scientific Model", and basically rules out any alternative explanation.

 

[godless dave]

Is this another semantic nitpick? If so, then I admit it may have been better to have said "prerequisite" instead of "pre-selected".

That's a little more than a semantic nitpick.

 

[Toontown]

So what? That's not pre-selection.

You know what pre-selection is not, but you won't tell me what it is?

And I'm supposed to believe you know what pre-selection is?

 

[Pixel42]

Presumably Toontown thinks that every puddle was pre-selected, because otherwise each one beat giganogargantuan odds to come into its uniquely shaped existence. And Jabba thinks every puddle is immortal.

 

[Toontown]

So what now? Another 30 pages of irrelevant one-liners and pointless stonewalling?

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

It doesn't matter when or if you discovered that the prerequisites for your presumed unique brain existence had been met

The when certainly does matter. If you only decide that the end result is you, after the fact of you existing, then that's not a prerequisite. It's a postrequisite.

For it to be a prerequisite, it has to happen before the event.

That's why predicting the lottery numbers before they're drawn is impressive, whereas reading them after they've been drawn is less so.

 

[godless dave]

You know what pre-selection is not, but you won't tell me what it is?

And I'm supposed to believe you know what pre-selection is?

It means that, before the events happen, you have selected a particular possible outcome.

 

[Toontown]

Presumably Toontown thinks that every puddle was pre-selected, because otherwise each one beat giganogargantuan odds to come into its uniquely shaped existence. And Jabba thinks every puddle is immortal.

At the moment, the sum of all the random puddles in the universe means nothing to me.

 

[Toontown]

It means that, before the events happen, you have selected a particular possible outcome.

That's a very narrow definition, actually a subset of the concept.

I take it, then, that if you are hit with a brick, you won't bother to try to determine if someone may have thrown the brick at you, unless you had previously selected having a brick thrown at you as a possibility?

Presumably you would simply consider the brick as but one more random event of unknown genesis among a day of random events.

 

[godless dave]

That's a very narrow definition, actually a subset of the concept.

I take it, then, that if you are hit with a brick, you won't bother to try to determine if someone may have thrown the brick at you, unless you had previously selected having a brick thrown at you as a possibility?

Why would you assume that?

Now, if I were walking past a building being demolished, and thousands of bricks were raining down, I might not bother seeing if the particular brick that hit me was thrown. I would provisionally assume that the same process that caused all the other bricks to fall was also responsible for the one brick that hit me.

 

[Toontown]

The when certainly does matter. If you only decide that the end result is you, after the fact of you existing, then that's not a prerequisite. It's a postrequisite.

For it to be a prerequisite, it has to happen before the event.

That's why predicting the lottery numbers before they're drawn is impressive, whereas reading them after they've been drawn is less so.

There is only one lottery ticket that brings the money.

If the unique brain hypothesis is true, then there is only one brain that brings "you".

It doesn't matter when either of those realizations come to you. You could have a lottery ticket randomly generated, not look at the numbers, and never have a clue that you had won until the numbers were drawn and you looked. May I presume that you would then be unsurprised, since you didn't actually pick the numbers or know what they were?

This entire timing business is nothing but a red herring and a waste of time.

 

[godless dave]

There is only one lottery ticket that brings the money.

If the unique brain hypothesis is true, then there is only one brain that brings "you".

Your analogy is flawed.

There is only one brain that brings me. A slightly different brain would be someone else. To make an analogy to lottery tickets, we would have to have a lottery where every ticket wins.

 

[Toontown]

Why would you assume that?

I would assume that for the purpose of reducing your position to the absurdity that it is.

Now, if I were walking past a building being demolished, and thousands of bricks were raining down, I might not bother seeing if the particular brick that hit me was thrown. I would provisionally assume that the same process that caused all the other bricks to fall was also responsible for the one brick that hit me.

So, if you were walking past a brick building being demolished, then you would select being hit by a brick as a possibility. But, with thousands of bricks raining down, that wouldn't exactly be a low-probability selection, would it.

Wow...

But what if you're just walking along, not even thinking about bricks, and a brick hits you? Since there is no preselection, what might prompt you to distinguish the brick strike from the other myriad random events, special puddles, and whatnot that you've been observing all day?