[Merged] Immortality & Bayesian Statistics

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Jabba said:
- But Dave, you say that an exact recreation of your DNA and the first three years of your life would produce a copy of you rather than you. Those same specs would not specify you in the sense that they would distinguish between you and your copies -- by referring to your specs, we could not pick you out of a crowd consisting of you and your copies.
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It's precisely because the specifications would not distinguish between me and the copies that they specify "me". All the "me"s would be indistinguishable from each other. You could take one of the copies and say the specs specify him and be just as correct as if you said it specified me.

It's like in the second or third Matrix movie where Agent Smith starts replicating himself. Me, me, me, me. Me, too.
 
Jabba said:
- But Dave, you say that an exact recreation of your DNA and the first three years of your life would produce a copy of you rather than you. Those same specs would not specify you in the sense that they would distinguish between you and your copies -- by referring to your specs, we could not pick you out of a crowd consisting of you and your copies.
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Precisely. A crowd consisting of you and your copies would be a crowd of people. People, plural.
 
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Jabba said:
- But Dave, you say that an exact recreation of your DNA and the first three years of your life would produce a copy of you rather than you. Those same specs would not specify you in the sense that they would distinguish between you and your copies -- by referring to your specs, we could not pick you out of a crowd consisting of you and your copies.
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Jabba, if you have TWO identical things, how many identical things do you have? (Hint: The answer is TWO. Not one. Not three. TWO.)

I'm pretty sure that even in today's blighted educational system they still teach children to count up to TWO.
 
- Just to point out:
- I currently have 5 new responses that I would like to respond to. As noted many times previously, these require real thought and I'm slow anyway. In addition, it isn't that each new response poses just one sub-issue. And then, I'm running out of time this morning...
- And, this response probably took only 5 minutes (I didn't waste much time with my excuse).
 
If that took you five minutes, you should a) re-consider your dedication to this waste-of-time activity of yours, and b) strongly look into a speech recognition system so that you don't have to type.

The above took me about 15 seconds.
 
Jabba said:
Agatha,
- I don't understand the inclusion of that last sentence -- my hypothetical does not include any changes to the DNA. Dave says that an exact recreation of my DNA, and even the first three years of my life, would produce a copy of me, but not me.
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Agatha said:
...Now in the case of reproducing a person, this isn't actually possible so we are talking theoretically. But supposing we could reproduce you, together with your memories and experiences, then at the moment of replication there would be one 'you' and one identical copy of 'you' - and nobody, not even the two 'yous' would be able to determine which 'you' was the original and which the copy. Each one would believe themselves to be the original, but they still have two separate consciousnesses.

Those two separate but identical consciousnesses are both you, one is original, one is a copy and they cannot be distinguished. After the moment of reproduction, the two selves would immediately begin to diverge and become more and more different. However, this would not help identify the original from the copy.

However, as I said, this is theoretical as in the real world, such reproduction is impossible. Even identical twins have different observations and experiences in the womb. ...
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Jabba, why are you confusing a theoretical speculation with real life?
 
Jabba said:
- Just to point out:
- I currently have 5 new responses that I would like to respond to. As noted many times previously, these require real thought and I'm slow anyway. In addition, it isn't that each new response poses just one sub-issue. And then, I'm running out of time this morning...
- And, this response probably took only 5 minutes (I didn't waste much time with my excuse).
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That's okay. You keep dithering around with the definitions of concepts with which everyone agrees. Don't bother moving on to the non sequitur that all those different possible people somehow equals an infinite number of them. Don't repeat your claim that "scientists" think that life is impossible. And, whatever happens, don't ever move on to just what exactly it is you think you're comparing the scientific model to.
 
Jabba said:
- Just to point out:
- I currently have 5 new responses that I would like to respond to. As noted many times previously, these require real thought and I'm slow anyway. In addition, it isn't that each new response poses just one sub-issue. And then, I'm running out of time this morning...
- And, this response probably took only 5 minutes (I didn't waste much time with my excuse).
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Then please stop repeating yourself and asking questions that you already asked. Recently asked!

Also as you have been told, stop posting us what you plan to tell us. It just wastes everyone time. Just TELL US.

Again, maybe if you are very slow, and you receive more questions than you can easily respond to, you should close this thread and focus on one that might be easier for you given your limitations.
 
Giordano said:
Again, maybe if you are very slow, and you receive more questions than you can easily respond to, you should close this thread and focus on one that might be easier for you given your limitations.
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That's already been tried. It failed because Jabba abandoned it.
 
Jabba said:
Dave,
- To me, you seem to be saying that your specs do not "specify" you, they simply allow for you. Can I go with that?
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No_2.jpg
 
Mojo said:
That's already been tried. It failed because Jabba abandoned it.
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And Jabba abandoned it because he had no hope of hiding his intellectual dishonesty behind a claimed deluge of responses or imagined misunderstandings.
 
Jabba said:
Jabba said:
Dave,
- To me, you seem to be saying that your specs do not "specify" you, they simply allow for you. Can I go with that?
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Agatha said:
I am not speaking for godless dave, but that doesn't work for me. DNA is more of a blueprint or recipe (though these are not exact analogies) for an individual person. Change any part, even a tiny bit, of the DNA and a completely different person will result...
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Agatha,
- I don't understand the inclusion of that last sentence -- my hypothetical does not include any changes to the DNA.
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Your alleged hypothetical doesn't include anything. Or it includes everything.

Being as how it's been not just incredibly poorly stated but re-stated differently in every new iteration it's drawing a long bow to even suggest that you even have a hypothetical.


Jabba said:
Dave says that an exact recreation of my DNA, and even the first three years of my life, would produce a copy of me, but not me.
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When Dave types the word "no", what do you see? A blank space? The words "I agree entirely"? Angels?
 
Jabba said:
- Just to point out:
- I currently have 5 new responses that I would like to respond to.
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More important, from the point of view of everyone unfortunate enough to have stumbled upon this misbegotten thread, are the 500+ responses that you refuse even to acknowledge.



Jabba said:
As noted many times previously, these require real thought and I'm slow anyway.
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Neither real thought nor apparent motion have been evident in anything that you've ever posted here.



Jabba said:
In addition, it isn't that each new response poses just one sub-issue.
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No, it's that most of them address just one issue that you refuse to address.

Namely, where is your evidence for the immortal soul?



Jabba said:
And then, I'm running out of time this morning...
- And, this response probably took only 5 minutes (I didn't waste much time with my excuse).
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Every minute you spend posting here is a waste of time.
 
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Humots said:
Jabba, are you assuming that there would be a specific difference between you and a copy of you?
I do not mean the differences due to separate environments and experience. I mean a "copy" difference that possibly all the copies would have in common.
If so, this would be wrong.
Suppose I create a cake using a recipe, then I use that same recipe to create a copy of the cake. But then I leave the room, and someone swaps the two cakes around a few times and smears the icing on one cake and puts candles on the other.
When I come back in, I can't tell which cake is the original and which is the copy. There are differences between the cakes, but there is no difference that identifies the copy as such.
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Humots,

- I gotta say that this is really interesting (for me at least) -- we (you guys and I) cannot agree upon almost anything...

- Whatever -- my response is that there is a big difference between humans and cakes, and that this big difference excludes any "analogousness" (analogosity?) between them (re the issue here) -- each human possesses the emergent property of consciousness that automatically takes on its own sense of self which would be different between the different copies from the very beginning...
- Obviously, if we took an original being and replicated its specifications, we could tell (later) which being was the original, by its time of birth. If somehow the original and the copy were triggered at the same time, we would not be able to identify the original -- but then, who cares who the original was anyway? And, I’m not being flippant here -- who the original was has no bearing upon our issue here.

- Humots, I should probably spend more time on this, but I did want to let you know – today -- that I am trying to respond.
 
my response is that there is a big difference between humans and cakes, and that this big difference excludes any "analogousness" (analogosity?) between them (re the issue here) -- each human possesses the emergent property of consciousness that automatically takes on its own sense of self which would be different between the different copies from the very beginning
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Why does that matter? The reason it "takes on" its own sense of self is because it emerges from that particular brain. Any sense of self that emerges from a copy's brain will consider that copy to be its self, because that's where it's located.

There's nothing about selves that suggests they can ignore time and location. A self can only see out of the eyes of the body it belongs to.


(Sorry for jumping in, Humots. I'm on my lunch break and had time to reply)
 
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Jabba said:
6495-6468

Humots,

- I gotta say that this is really interesting (for me at least) -- we (you guys and I) cannot agree upon almost anything...
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The ability to be wrong about everything is indeed interesting although I think there are probably better descriptors for making a career out of it.



Jabba said:
- Whatever -- my response is that there is a big difference between humans and cakes, and that this big difference excludes any "analogousness" (analogosity?) between them (re the issue here) -- each human possesses the emergent property of consciousness that automatically takes on its own sense of self which would be different between the different copies from the very beginning...
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Clearly you still haven't got a handle on the whole emergent property thing.

Otherwise you wouldn't be clumsily attempting to claim that a sense of self is an emergent property of consciousness.



Jabba said:
- Obviously, if we took an original being and replicated its specifications, we could tell (later) which being was the original, by its time of birth.
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What an extroadinarily meaningless thing to say.



Jabba said:
If somehow the original and the copy were triggered at the same time, we would not be able to identify the original -- but then, who cares who the original was anyway? And, I’m not being flippant here -- who the original was has no bearing upon our issue here.
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Issue?

There's an issue???



Jabba said:
- Humots, I should probably spend more time on this, but I did want to let you know – today -- that I am trying to respond.
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I have a sneaking suspicion that time isn't the only limiting factor.
 
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