Proof of Immortality II

[pakeha]

[ . . . ]what you're calling an experiencer is nothing more than an emergent property (or perhaps, if we were to be generous, a suite of emergent properties) of a living neurosystem. [ . . . ]

I raise a cup of the vintage of Year III in homage and recognition of Pharaoh's generosity. Suite it is, suite it shall be written.

 

[Agatha]

Keep adding zero to the denominator, to account for all the sperm/ovum combinations which are impossible due to time or interspecies constraints. It still won't make the denominator infinity (not least because infinity is NOT A NUMBER).

There is no such thing as an 'experiencer'. Consciousness is an emergent process, like a river flowing, not a static thing like a lake. The 'you' that existed five minutes ago is not the same 'you' as exists now, even though we all have the illusion of a persistent identity.

In any case, nothing about there being a different consciousness in a replicated brain has any bearing on the idea of immortality, which by definition involves the persistence of consciousness after the death of the brain.

For goodness' sake, Jabba, please could you address immortality instead of this everlasting circular discussion about 'experiencers' and replicated brains.

 

[Humots]

jond,
- You'll need to clarify what difference that would make.

As has been pointed out numerous times: if, as is the scientific view, the "self/experiencer/soul" is a process, an emergent property of the brain, then there is no separate entity that could possibly be immortal. Do you believe brains are immortal?

If you wish to keep insisting that the "self/experiencer/soul" exists as a actual, separate entity, you need to present evidence for same. By which, obviously, we mean actual evidence, not simply what you want to believe. Further, if you're going to posit such a thing, you'll need to explain how it interacts with the neurons in the brain. Remember the video that Pixy Misa linked that demonstrates that no such thing is possible? Remember your discussion with Susan Blackmore and the reading she suggested?

Jabba: This ^^^ is the difference it would make.

Are you insisting that the "self/experiencer/soul" exists as an actual, separate entity, which you call the "experiencer"?

Or are you simply ignoring this question as not relevant to your "probability" argument?

Note: the only reason I'm posting this is for the intellectual exercise. I doubt Jabba will pay any attention.

 

[godless dave]

Dave,
- If we were able to bring those reproductive cells together, we’d have a person just as real and distinct as you or me. This potential person, represented by the combination of one of your Dad’s sperm cells and one of Cleo’s ova was just never conceived – due (in part) to timing.

Because time travel is impossible.

- But then, all the potential combinations (besides you and your siblings) between your dad’s sperm cells and concurrent ova were never conceived either – due to other, less obvious, reasons.

Reasons that don't involve the impossibility of traveling through time.

- Is one potential combination less a potential because one of its precluding factors is more obvious?

Yes.

 

[godless dave]

Dave,
- If we were able to bring those reproductive cells together, we’d have a person just as real and distinct as you or me. This potential person, represented by the combination of one of your Dad’s sperm cells and one of Cleo’s ova, just never had a chance -- due, in part, to timing.
- And, that’s part of what we’re trying to count – how many potential persons, for one reason or another, could never occur?

Why would we count the ones that could never occur?

 

[jond]

I'm shocked, I tell you!

Here in the midst of all this Truly Effective Debate® we encounter a Vortex of Random Obliviousness™.

What are the odds of that happening?

Pharoah: I wonder if I might someday be allowed to borrow that phrase (Vortex of Random Obliviousess) for a song titles. It would go well as a follow up to Event Horizon of the Formless.

 

[John Jones]

I'm shocked, I tell you!

Here in the midst of all this Truly Effective Debate® we encounter a Vortex of Random Obliviousness™.

What are the odds of that happening?

Jabba, you have been called on the carpet yet again.

I can't wait to hear your latest excuse.

 

[Jabba]

Dave,
- If we were able to bring those reproductive cells together, we’d have a person just as real and distinct as you or me. This potential person, represented by the combination of one of your Dad’s sperm cells and one of Cleo’s ova was just never conceived – due (in part) to timing.
- But then, all the potential combinations (besides you and your siblings) between your dad’s sperm cells and concurrent ova were never conceived either – due to other, less obvious, reasons...

Because time travel is impossible.
Reasons that don't involve the impossibility of traveling through time...

- But they do involve the impossibility of traveling through time. And, they do it the same way that an offspring of your dad and Cleo would require traveling through time -- i.e., to produce one of the brains that you accept as potential but never realized would also require going back in time and changing something.

 

[John Jones]

- But they do involve the impossibility of traveling through time. And, they do it the same way that an offspring of your dad and Cleo would require traveling through time -- i.e., to produce one of the brains that you accept as potential but never realized would also require going back in time and changing something.

Has this got anything to do with proving immortality?

 

[godless dave]

- But they do involve the impossibility of traveling through time. And, they do it the same way that an offspring of your dad and Cleo would require traveling through time -- i.e., to produce one of the brains that you accept as potential but never realized would also require going back in time and changing something.

I'm not talking about going back in time and changing something - ie., my dad marrying his high school sweetheart instead of my mom, I'm talking about time travel of one of the sexual partners - Cleopatra traveling forward in time to mate with my dad, or my dad traveling backward in time to mate with Cleopatra.

 

[Jabba]

jond and Pakeha,
- Sorry. I shouldn't have responded to your earlier objections. I can't really deal with more than one sub-issue at a time, and I'm currently struggling to show that something can be impossible and potential at the same time...

 

[zooterkin]

I'm currently struggling to show that something can be impossible and potential at the same time...

You know, there could be a reason for that.

 

[Agatha]

I keep throwing 2 conventional six sided dice, Jabba. Every time I do, I get a number between 2 and 12.

I think rolling a 75 is an impossible outcome, so I don't factor it into my probability calculations when determining how likely each possible outcome is.

But by your logic, rolling 75 with just two dice is a potential (though impossible) outcome, and I should factor it in somehow. What value should I add to my denominator to take into account the potential outcome of 75?

 

[zooterkin]

- But they do involve the impossibility of traveling through time. And, they do it the same way that an offspring of your dad and Cleo would require traveling through time -- i.e., to produce one of the brains that you accept as potential but never realized would also require going back in time and changing something.

First of all, you have yet to show any tenuous link to immortality. Secondly, as I, and others, already said, you don't need to enumerate every possible sperm and ovum throughout history and postulate the result of their joining, you can just look at the possible variations of human DNA.

Thirdly, a slight tangent, but while godless dave's Dad clearly cannot now impregnate Cleopatra, my understanding is that it's not impossible that the particular DNA combinations that such a coupling might have produced could still be replicated in future, given the way that genes are shuffled and recombined, so these combinations could, theoretically, still be realised. Another reason to just look at the number of combinations rather than trying to count all the theoretical match-ups.

It still doesn't produce infinity.

 

[jond]

jond and Pakeha,
- Sorry. I shouldn't have responded to your earlier objections. I can't really deal with more than one sub-issue at a time, and I'm currently struggling to show that something can be impossible and potential at the same time...

It's not a sub issue. Unless and until you provide evidence for a soul,there is nothing that could possibly be immortal. All your impossible duplicate brain side trips, all your misuse of probabilities and all of your insistence that infinity is a number are all moot if you don't have evidence for a soul. Seriously.

 

[Jabba]

I'm not talking about going back in time and changing something - ie., my dad marrying his high school sweetheart instead of my mom, I'm talking about time travel of one of the sexual partners - Cleopatra traveling forward in time to mate with my dad, or my dad traveling backward in time to mate with Cleopatra.

Dave,
- Yeah. You're right -- these are not the same.
- But then, your dad marrying his HS sweetheart would also require time travel, which as you say is impossible. IOW, something you do accept as potential is also something you accept as impossible.
- ISOW, impossible does not rule out potential.

 

[godless dave]

Dave,
- Yeah. You're right -- these are not the same.
- But then, your dad marrying his HS sweetheart would also require time travel, which as you say is impossible.

Only looking back it from the present, but looking back from the present, we already know what happened, and that P(me) is 1.

If you want to calculate the probability of a past event, you have to look at it, and all the variables that led to it, from a perspective before it occurred. Who my father procreated with in 1969 was a variable. Whether he procreated with someone who had been dead over 2000 years was not.

In 1969, it was not impossible for him to procreate with his high school sweetheart. There was never a time when it was possible for him to procreate with Cleopatra.

 

[Jabba]

Only looking back it from the present, but looking back from the present, we already know what happened, and that P(me) is 1...

- There is no P(me) is 1 in the Bayesian formula. We're taking an event that has already happened and we estimate how that event effects the truth value of an existing theory.

 

[godless dave]

- There is no P(me) is 1 in the Bayesian formula. We're taking an event that has already happened and we estimate how that event effects the truth value of an existing theory.

But to calculate the probability, you still need to look at the conditions at the time of the event occurring.

 

[Giordano]

Dave,
- Yeah. You're right -- these are not the same.
- But then, your dad marrying his HS sweetheart would also require time travel, which as you say is impossible. IOW, something you do accept as potential is also something you accept as impossible.
- ISOW, impossible does not rule out potential.

Now we are talking about trans-time mating- this isn't Kansas anymore is it?

As I already told you, Dave's Dad impregnating his HS sweetheart was possible at that time and for years latter, but is not possible if he or she is dead, or if she is no lower producing fertile eggs. I gather the first two fertilizations were unlikely ones, but still had probabilities notably greater than zero. The latter two fertilizations have probabilities essentially zero. As a self-described statistician you would assign a low, but real probability for the first two depending on the circumstances (the likelihood that Dave's Dad would want to have sex with his HS sweetheart, the reverse, their distance, their chaperoning, their fertility at the time they might have sex, the distance from one another's locale at the difference times, etc.), but very near zero or essentially zero for the last two. For similar reasons, Dave's dad having babies with Cleopatra is essentially zero. In fact, Dave's dad now having babies by his 2014 sperm fertilizing one of his HS sweetheart's 1950 ova is essentially zero, too (there is some possibility that he did back then with 1950 sperm and 1950 ova and no one knows, but let's ignore that. The probability of that is also very low, but not zero and you can if you wish include it as a minor term in your equation).

Just a note: I use the term "essentially zero" to allow for David dad's HS sweetheart secretly freezing her gametes or having a child after menopause: very. very unlikely, but if we are talking about statistics, these are not really zero, but very very close to zero. The chance of Cleo freezing her gametes when she lived was even much, much closer to zero, or essentially (if I may use that word) zero precisely, equal to the possibility that a time traveling Starship Enterprise would pluck her out of Egypt to the 1950s and she would fall in love with Dave's dad rather than with Captain Kirk (did I see that episode?).

Impossible does rule out potential, both in statistics and in grammar. Zero probability means zero potential. A tiny probability means a tiny potential.