[Merged] Immortality & Bayesian Statistics

[Slowvehicle]

Apologies to Slowvehicle. I read "flounce" as "bounce" meaning inconsistent. I blame it on the fact I am reading and typing on my phone on a business trip in a hotel bar after an airplane flight that cracked my laptop screen. I am grouchy.

That's OK--it's one of the perquisites of your Certified Genius-ness^TM. No harm, no foul.

 

[Toontown]

It's not sufficient for him to know he exists. He must acknowledge this fact is his formula.

He doesn't. He doesn't even see the problem.

That's your problem. You don't understand that the probabilities in the formula are expectations, not observations. Probability would be useless the way you're trying to not-use it. All your 'probabilities' are 1 because you don't know the difference between a probability and an observation. i.e., you don't know what probability is.

The formula doesn't need to acknowledge that Jabba exists. That's a given. He wrote the formula.

 

[jsfisher]

That's because some part of your brain is beginning to realize that you're dead wrong, and you're going into denial.

No, that's not the reason, not at all. It had more to do with the total lack of logical connection to the thing it was alleged to be explaining. You made two statements with the second alleging in explaining the first. I don't see the connection at all. Thus my comment.

By the way, do you find all this hostility really helps in expressing your ideas?

 

[Toontown]

He "flounced off" again this morning; it lasted about 8-and-a-half hours.

He does not seem to be able to make it stick.

It is creepy, the way you are timing my appearances. Are you keeping a log?

 

[PixyMisa]

That's your problem. You don't understand that the probabilities in the formula are expectations, not observations.

That's your problem. You're not responding to what I'm saying. Or what anyone else is saying.

The formula doesn't need to acknowledge that Jabba exists. That's a given. He wrote the formula.

The formula is based on the assumption that the fact Jabba⁰ exists, as opposed to Jabba^+0.5mm, is relevant. Jabba has failed to show this to be the case, failed to acknowledge it as an assumption, and failed to show any understanding that it is a problem.

So have you.

This alone invalidates both his argument and yours.

 

[xtifr]

That's irrelevant. No matter how separate they are, Their effect is the same. Either one bashes hypothesis A with the mathematical equivalent of a sledge hammer.

How? I explained why I don't believe that's true. Can you actually explain why you think it is? Can you refute my example with the kajillion-sided die? Or are you just going to repeat unsupported claims over and over?

Lets take this a step at a time.

- Do you agree that the chance of any side of a kajillion-sided die coming up is 1/kajillion?
- Do you agree that if you roll the die, one of the sides will come up?
- Do you agree that whatever side comes up, it beat odds of a kajillion to one?
- Do you agree that the hypothesis that some side will turn up has not been "bash[ed]...with the mathematical equivalent of a sledge hammer"?
- If so, how do you distinguish that from hypothesis A?
- If not, why the heck not? Details please.

 

[PixyMisa]

You don't know how to stop digging, either.

Everything you said is gibberish. Allow me to use the same gibberish in lieu of reason, and I can prove any hypothesis I wish.

Example:

H1: You were created by Tinker Bell the fairy, as a joke.

Your problem is that your H1 is known to be false, while Jabba's proposition A is well-established as fact. I didn't say that anything in my argument established the truth of A; I merely said that A is true.

Which it is.

Your other problem is that you never bother to respond to what people actually say.

 

[Toontown]

How? I explained why I don't believe that's true. Can you actually explain why you think it is? Can you refute my example with the kajillion-sided die? Or are you just going to repeat unsupported claims over and over?

Lets take this a step at a time.

- Do you agree that the chance of any side of a kajillion-sided die coming up is 1/kajillion?
- Do you agree that if you roll the die, one of the sides will come up?
- Do you agree that whatever side comes up, it beat odds of a kajillion to one?
- Do you agree that the hypothesis that some side will turn up has not been "bash[ed]...with the mathematical equivalent of a sledge hammer"?
- If so, how do you distinguish that from hypothesis A?
- If not, why the heck not? Details please.

Your questions are irrelevant, being the hastily cobbled trojan horse carrier of an embedded red herring, but I'll answer them and expose the embedded red herring.

1. yes
2. yes
3. yes

4. This is the inevitable red herring you were destined to attempt to slip in. The real H1 assumption is roughly analogous to the assumption that the sentience you are experiencing is the result of a gazillion-sided die being rolled, and a particular side having turned up. Not some arbitrary sentience. The particular sentience you are experiencing. Not some arbitrary side of the die. A particular side of the die.

5. see 4
6. see 4

Now I have a relevant question for you.

1. Why did you try to equate the H1 assumption to the tautology that [some] side will turn up if a gazillion-sided die is rolled?

 

[Toontown]

Your problem is that your H1 is known to be false, while Jabba's proposition A is well-established as fact. I didn't say that anything in my argument established the truth of A; I merely said that A is true.

Which it is.

Your other problem is that you never bother to respond to what people actually say.

Your problem is that you have no problem believing you've beaten giganogargantuan odds.

Your other problem is that proposition A roughly establishes how brains come to exist and what they do, but proposition A does nothing to establish how one of them so conveniently fits into the "you" category, against the giganogargantuan odds implied by the proposition itself.

Your other problem is that it has not occurred to you to ask "Then why do I exist?", given that proposition A (which you firmly believe is unconditionally true) unambiguously requires an eternity of nonexistence, both before a prohibitively unlikely birth, and after an inevitable death.

 

[jsfisher]

...stuff mercifully snipped...

Perhaps instead of enumerating a set of problems from which you believe PixyMisa suffers, you could cool the insults and pointed barbs to focus on some of the issues in this thread.

For example, a well-articulated operational definition for Jabba's Proposition A would be nice. Jabba seems to vacillate on this. Moreover, since Jabba's stated purpose is to prove his own immortality, it would be good to explore whether Jabba would of necessity be immortal if Proposition A be rejected. So far in the many attempts at establishing A, that has not been the case.

It would also be worth establishing how if P(me)=1 (Jabba's existence is a given, after all) then how P(me|x) can be other than 1 for all possible x (i.e. P(x) > 0).

 

[tsig]

Jabba's claim is not my claim. You don't know what my claim would be, were I to present it. Which I won't.
You've all been barking up the wrong tree, espefially Jabba.

Jabba just happened to touch on something meaningful, then immediately proceeded to bark up the wrong tree.

And your grade just went to 50.

But wait, I see you retracted the wrong response. So you've managed to cling precariously to the 67.

Then why bother to post only to tell us what you won't post?

 

[Aepervius]

Jabba,

I don't have an objection to your formula or the values you've plugged into it. As long as P(me|A) is infinitely small or giganogargantuanly small, hypothesis A is getting hammered.

Which leaves the alternative(s). That's where you're going to run into a high likelihood of being wrong.

As for your hard-core opponents, they don't care how badly your formula hammers hypothesis A. Probability, particularly conditional probability, means nothing to them. They have no respect for probability. Some of them practically deny the existence of it.* A few tough sessions at a poker table at uncomfortable stakes against competent opponents could teach them some respect, but your formula alone will have no effect on them.

*One just denied the existence of entire pantheons of universes, using their remote locations for an excuse.

Tit for tat. Conditional probability does not work that way. The problem is A and Me are both independent. As such P(me,A) that is the probability of Me given that we are mortal and do not continue to exists after death (or whatever hypotheses A has Jabba) is the same as Probability Me. It does not prove anything on A.

It would be the same as saying probability Me is the probability of having a black swan if you point at swan at random. Hypotheses A is swan are mortal and live only once. Non A is everything else including swan reincarnate , or swan mind live forever or whatever. Well yuppee do. it is quite obvious that the P(Me,A)=P(Me) and P(A,Me)=P(A) (ETA thanks Jfisher). A and Me are statistically independent.

That is where your reasonning and Jabba's break down.

 

[jsfisher]

...P(Me,A)=P(Me) and P(Me,A)=P(A)...

I think you meant P(A,me)=P(A) for the second part.

That is where your reasonning and Jabba's break down.

One of several places.

 

[carlitos]

Perhaps instead of enumerating a set of problems from which you believe PixyMisa suffers, you could cool the insults and pointed barbs to focus on some of the issues in this thread.

Seconded.

 

[tsig]

I hope you're not saying what it looks like you're saying, and if you are, I am pretty sure, based on your current existence, that you do not conduct your life accordingly. At any rate, where do you see Jabba conflating those probabilities? I don't see him using p=1. I see him using p=1/infinity.

If you're walking along a sidewalk in Chicagoland and you hear the unmistakable sound of a bullet zipping past your ear, do you tell yourself "Ah, no problem. The probability that some arbitrary individual will hear a bullet zip past his ear is certainly 1."

That would be an incorrect use of probability. That would be you conflating the probability that you heard a bullet zip past your ear with the probability that some arbitrary individual will hear a bullet zip past his ear. That would be a bad mistake. Possibly fatal.

Take evasive action immediately. That's you hearing the bullet. Not some arbitrary individual.

The use of conditional probability is a good thing. And it works.

Getting eaten by wolves, bashed with sledgehammers and now being shot at, I didn't know philosophy was so dangerous.

 

[Aepervius]

Getting eaten by wolves, bashed with sledgehammers and now being shot at, I didn't know philosophy was so dangerous.

Not only dangerous but cruel : wait until they start beating a dead horse...

 

[Akhenaten]

Then why bother to post only to tell us what you won't post?

On the off-chance that none of all of us wouldn't be not unimpressed with his non-declamation of the negative aspect of the undefined specification of the inverse reciprocal heretofore described as the metatrinsic fundamental of the statistical hypernormal.

Otherwise known as ~reality.

 

[Garrette]

Not only dangerous but cruel : wait until they start beating a dead horse...

Made me laugh. Thanks.

 

[Garrette]

Tit for tat. Conditional probability does not work that way. The problem is A and Me are both independent. As such P(me,A) that is the probability of Me given that we are mortal and do not continue to exists after death (or whatever hypotheses A has Jabba) is the same as Probability Me. It does not prove anything on A.

It would be the same as saying probability Me is the probability of having a black swan if you point at swan at random. Hypotheses A is swan are mortal and live only once. Non A is everything else including swan reincarnate , or swan mind live forever or whatever. Well yuppee do. it is quite obvious that the P(Me,A)=P(Me) and P(A,Me)=P(A) (ETA thanks Jfisher). A and Me are statistically independent.

That is where your reasonning and Jabba's break down.

In layman's terms, is what you are saying that Jabba is proposing a Bayesian analysis but using a Frequentist interpretation? (In case it's not clear, this is a serious question , even if it is perhaps an uneducated one).

I don't think I'm the first to post this, but I recalled it and looked it up, and it helped crystallize it a bit for me. The question is did it crystallize correctly?

 

[Jabba]

Jabba is conflating the probability of the existence of an arbitrary individual with the probability of his own existence. Is that not clear? He is using the former as if it were the latter.

ETA: By "arbitrary individual" I mean an individual with an arbitrarily chosen set of characteristics, one of a randomly chosen "self" as Jabba might express it.

JS,
- I think you're talking about what is to me the only weak link in my argument -- that I can use the likelihood of me, in particular, existing rather than the likelihood of someone/anyone existing.
- Do you accept my paraphrasing?