[Merged] Immortality & Bayesian Statistics

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Jabba said:
<snip for focus>- I agree that any totally specific hand in the game of poker is just as unlikely as a royal flush in spades -- it's just that, in the game of poker, a royal flush in spades is the best hand you can get, and suggests another possible explanation than chance. If it happens that your foolish opponent getting the royal flush is friends with the foolish dealer, and both have been accused of cheating in the past, you would be justified in suspecting something other than chance in determining your opponents hand... Whereas, a specific, equally unlikely but losing hand would not suggest any other plausible explanation than chance.
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This is exactly the very same "special snowflake" argument you have been making all along--that each of us is a special hand of 5 Aces (or a Royal Flush, or {on Tuesdays} a Fizbin Kronk), so unlikely to have happened that something (or someone), must have guided the deal; therefore (and here it gets a bit fuzzy) "essentially" immortality (or "reincarnation", which appears to be the same thing).

However, the only way to establish the prior probability of an event is to establish it before the event itself. An event that has happened has, in fact, happened.

The only reason it looks all gosh/wow-gobsmacking unlikely is that you have imbued certain hands with meaning, while ignoring the identical likelihood of other, equally improbable hands that just happen not to have been assigned any special significance.

In your mind, what (or "who"?) plays the part of your dishonest friend and her dishonest accomplice? Do you think that you have indications that 'god' has "cheated" before?

Jabba said:
- I'll try to cut to the chase. I think that you have, indeed, identified the heart of this matter. I believe that the other live issues are the result of ineffective communication.
- Please bear with me. I think that clearly identifying our basic disagreements is the real key to effective debate. Do you accept a prior probability of .01 for "Y"?
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I cannot speak for others, but as for me and my house, we essentially do not accept the essentially highlighted.
 
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Humots said:
I found an example at The_Name_Game, did some global replacements and got:

Haha, Haha, bo-baha,
Banana-fana fo-faha
Fee-Fi-mo-maha
Haha!

Obviously I need to find more productive uses of my time.
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You have fallen among dacoits, and been lured from the path of righteousness by the UnReal McCoy.

Repent, before it is too late!
 
Jabba said:
- I agree that any totally specific hand in the game of poker is just as unlikely as a royal flush in spades -- it's just that, in the game of poker, a royal flush in spades is the best hand you can get, and suggests another possible explanation than chance.
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As has been pointed out to you umpteen times, the flaw in your analogy is that you are assuming that you are the equivalent of a royal flush. You are not. The analogy breaks down, because there is no equivalent of a royal flush for a consciousness, any more than there is an equivalent of a royal flush for a snowflake.

There are umpteen trillions of possible snowflakes, and billions of actual snowflakes. There is nothing special about any of them. There are umpteen trillions of possible selves, and billions of actual selves. There is nothing special about you.
 
Jabba said:
- So at this point my claim is 1) that the opinion that my "soul" (or "self," or "personal consciousness") has but one, finite, life to live is wrong, 2) that I can essentially prove that it's wrong (by using Bayesian statistics) and 3) that by essentially proving it to be wrong, I will essentially prove that I am immortal.

- The following is the formula I'm using to support my first claim.
- P(X|me) = P(Me|X)*P(X|k)/(P(Me|X)*P(X|k)+P(Me|non-X)*P(non-X|k))

- "X" is the opinion above; "non-X" is the complement of "X." "Immortality," here, includes existing periodically (reincarnation) as well as existing continuously -- or some sort of combination of the two. "Me" is my current existence. "k" is "background knowledge."

<snip>
- P(X|me) = (1/∞*.99)/(1/∞*.99+.5*.01)[/B]
1) I've begun trying to support my use of "1/∞" for the likelihood of my current existence, given X; I'll keep working on that.
2) I don't think that I actually need to use "∞" in the formula -- an unimaginably large number would be sufficient. I'll also work on explaining and supporting that.
3) I don't think that our background knowledge should translate to anywhere near a prior probability of 99% for X, but if the rest of my logic holds, I can be generous about this number.
4) The likelihood of me existing given non-X is especially difficult to nail down -- but, if the rest of my logic holds, this number hardly matters.
5) The prior probability of non-X is just the complement of the prior probability of X.

- I'll start with providing my evidence and logic for #1 unless someone wants me to start elsewhere.
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Jabba said:
Shuttit,
<snip>
- Please bear with me. I think that clearly identifying our basic disagreements is the real key to effective debate. Do you accept a prior probability of .01 for "Y"?
Click to expand...


There is a teensy problem here, Jabba. Your formula doesn't include a term Y. Now I recognise that you are probably using Y for 'non-X', but it's indicative of the disorganised way you are approaching this that you've just introduced a whole new term with no explanation.

Personally, I think before you start with your formula, you need to justify your numbers and define your terms.

1. Please define X (exactly) and non-X.

2. Please explain why the probability of 'you' is not 1, given that you do, in fact, exist.

3. Please explain why you assign a probability of 0.99 for X, and therefore why your probability for non-X is 0.01.

4. Please explain what 'background knowledge' you have used.

5. What observations have you made to ensure that you are taking all the appropriate knowledge into account?

6. Where does the 0.5 come from in your formula?

7. As your formula appears to calculate "the chance of you existing at this precise moment in time, as calculated at some point in the far past", please explain what this has to do with immortality, or consciousness transcending death.
 
Squeegee Beckenheim said:
A few days ago you decided that you were going to start working on answering specific questions rather than getting distracted. Why are you now allowing yourself to get distracted rather than answering the specific questions you had decided you were going to answer?
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I am trying to figure out this thread.
My latest working hypothesis is that there are three to five posters sharing Jabba's sign-in data. They all post in this thread, but none of them reads the others' posts. Their motivation seems to be to taunt or otherwise annoy JREF members.

I am willing to admit that I am completely and utterly incorrect in this theory. Can anyone show me some evidence that would discount my idea?
 
Jabba said:
- Please bear with me. I think that clearly identifying our basic disagreements is the real key to effective debate. Do you accept a prior probability of .01 for "Y"?
Click to expand...

Again, pure fascination for me.

Jabba, can you point to any of your posts in which you tried to understand any of our disagreements? I am not talking about listing them, I am talking about making an effort to do anything other than simply repeat the various parts of your argument.

We understand the basic disagreements.
You are the only one in this thread who thinks these disagreements need to be identified.
 
Jabba said:
Shuttit,


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…

- I agree that any totally specific hand in the game of poker is just as unlikely as a royal flush in spades -- it's just that, in the game of poker, a royal flush in spades is the best hand you can get, and suggests another possible explanation than chance. ... Whereas, a specific, equally unlikely but losing hand would not suggest any other plausible explanation than chance.
Click to expand...

This is the "special snowflake" problem others have referred to, Jabba.

Unless we have reason to believe the dealer is cheating, a royal flush is exactly as unlikely as any other combination of five cards, winning or not.
 
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Jabba said:
- I agree that any totally specific hand in the game of poker is just as unlikely as a royal flush in spades -- it's just that, in the game of poker, a royal flush in spades is the best hand you can get, and suggests another possible explanation than chance. If it happens that your foolish opponent getting the royal flush is friends with the foolish dealer, and both have been accused of cheating in the past, you would be justified in suspecting something other than chance in determining your opponents hand... Whereas, a specific, equally unlikely but losing hand would not suggest any other plausible explanation than chance.
Click to expand...

Getting a winning hand in poker may seem suspicious, but that's because the hand was constructed by a conscious agent who has something to gain from stacking the deck. A specific human being was not.

The lottery is truly a better analogy, because it's random. If the balls show none of your 6 numbers, then you don't suspect that the people at the lottery have fixed it so that you lose. Equally, if the balls show each of your 6 numbers, then you don't suspect the people at the lottery have fixed it so that you win. You know the numbers are random, no matter how they relate to you.

Of course, then some people do get on to thinking that God must have intervened, or whatever, but I hope I don't have to point out the flaws in such thinking.
 
Slowvehicle said:
You have fallen among dacoits, and been lured from the path of righteousness by the UnReal McCoy.

Repent, before it is too late!
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Re-pent? I have not yet begun to pent.

If I pent once, then repent four times, is that a pentagon?
 
Jabba said:
Frozenwolf,
- The numerator would approach zero, but not the denominator. The plus sign in the denominator makes all the difference.
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Then who am I talking to?

Squeegee Beckenheim said:
Yes. The argument is that the probability of Jabba existing is zero. Therefore God did it. Therefore he's got a soul. Therefore he's immortal.

He's avoiding mentioning God, but it's not hard to see.
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What's his probability that God exists?
 
Breakthrough?

Jabba said:
Shuttit,


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…

- I agree that any totally specific hand in the game of poker is just as unlikely as a royal flush in spades -- it's just that, in the game of poker, a royal flush in spades is the best hand you can get, and suggests another possible explanation than chance. If it happens that your foolish opponent getting the royal flush is friends with the foolish dealer, and both have been accused of cheating in the past, you would be justified in suspecting something other than chance in determining your opponents hand... Whereas, a specific, equally unlikely but losing hand would not suggest any other plausible explanation than chance.

- I'll try to cut to the chase. I think that you have, indeed, identified the heart of this matter. I believe that the other live issues are the result of ineffective communication.
- Please bear with me. I think that clearly identifying our basic disagreements is the real key to effective debate. Do you accept a prior probability of .01 for "Y"?
Click to expand...
Pixel42 said:
As has been pointed out to you umpteen times, the flaw in your analogy is that you are assuming that you are the equivalent of a royal flush. You are not. The analogy breaks down, because there is no equivalent of a royal flush for a consciousness, any more than there is an equivalent of a royal flush for a snowflake.

There are umpteen trillions of possible snowflakes, and billions of actual snowflakes. There is nothing special about any of them. There are umpteen trillions of possible selves, and billions of actual selves. There is nothing special about you.
Click to expand...
Pixel,
- Superficially at least, I think that you have also identified the heart of the matter... As I now see the discussion, a lot of you have... I think that while I was trying to be "methodical," you guys had cut to the chase, and I just didn't realize what was happening until now... We'll see.
- In order for my thesis to work, I need to be "special." If I am just "anyone," the likelihood of my current existence, given "X," is (I suppose) 1.00.
- If I'm currently right about this, I'm sorry for my tardiness.

- I do think that I'm special in the necessary sense (as are you) -- and, in the posts to follow, I'll try to show you why I think that. I need to organize my argument, but I wanted to let you know that I think I finally discovered an important point that I had been missing all along...
 
Jabba said:
I need to organize my argument, but I wanted to let you know that I think I finally discovered an important point that I had been missing all along...
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Bloodnok: Well I'm afraid we can't use it. You see, there's a slight technical fault.

Greenslade: What's that?

Bloodnok: The whole thing's useless.
 
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