Proof of Immortality III

[Pixel42]

But can you guess with whom I am about to communicate via email?

Someone should at least send him a link to this thread. The poor guy needs some prior warning of the "confusion of ideas" (excellent and very apposite Babbage quote, Dabop) with which he is going to be confronted.

 

[Rincewind]

I thought "estimates" had to have something to do with data or experience by definition.

Nah - apparently a WAG is sufficient...

 

[Monza]

No it doesn't. It's:

"My dog has four legs."
"How does he smell?"

"With his nose."

 

[Slowvehicle]

"With his nose."

 

[JayUtah]

Someone should at least send him a link to this thread. The poor guy needs some prior warning of the "confusion of ideas" (excellent and very apposite Babbage quote, Dabop) with which he is going to be confronted.

Indeed, one element of the pattern I forgot to mention earlier is that sometimes the offline expert's statements, as mishandled by the intermediary-claimant, end up offending him or coming back to bite him. Most bona fide experts don't want to get embroiled in controversy, especially if it seems they have made public comments that appear to support some crackpot idea, but often only because they don't want to appear to be endorsing any part of a controversy in which they don't have a stake.

Hence if Jabba intends to present Dr. Hoerl as an expert witness in this debate, then it is his duty to inform Hoerl of that intent. He needs to make it plain that if Jabba reports Hoerl endorses certain elements of Jabba's claims, people from this site will be reaching out to him to confirm that. Jabba's ominous statements indicate he fears this, and that he considers his critics a source of unspecified danger to Hoerl. But that's just the nature of authority. You don't get to present witnesses for your case without allowing them to be cross-examined. If the witness isn't amenable to that, then he should be excused.

 

[Mojo]

"With his nose trunk."

FTFY.

 

[Slowvehicle]

FTFY.

That's irrelephant...

 

[Rincewind]

That's irrelephant...

 

[Toontown]

This thread doesn't need to be hound dogged the way you're all doing. Checking it for progress once a year is more than sufficient.

It hasn't moved in any direction since it's inception nearly two years ago. Same occasional assertions, same occasional rebuttals, interspersed with twittering interludes which consume most of the pages, insuring that no one will bother to read through it all. Now even the twitter is being repeated.

Even if any of you wanted to have the discussion Jabba wants, you couldn't. Not one of you has the faintest clue what to make of the (conservatively) 10 ⁸⁰ odds that were stacked against your particular brain moments after the big bang, before your particular brain emerged unbothered by the giganogargantuan odds that were stacked against it.

 

[JayUtah]

This thread doesn't need to be hound dogged the way you're all doing.

Indeed. It's much better spent listening to you call everyone else small-minded.

 

[Garrette]

This thread doesn't need to be hound dogged the way you're all doing. Checking it for progress once a year is more than sufficient.

It hasn't moved in any direction since it's inception nearly two years ago. Same occasional assertions, same occasional rebuttals, interspersed with twittering interludes which consume most of the pages, insuring that no one will bother to read through it all. Now even the twitter is being repeated.

Even if any of you wanted to have the discussion Jabba wants, you couldn't. Not one of you has the faintest clue what to make of the (conservatively) 10 ⁸⁰ odds that were stacked against your particular brain moments after the big bang, before your particular brain emerged unbothered by the giganogargantuan odds that were stacked against it.

You are mistaken. Several not only can but have spoken against it, similarly to how some can and have spoken against your nebulous claims on that regard (primarily in other threads, I think).

You refuse to be nailed down on it, but your criticisms rely upon treating the emergence of any particular consciousness as if it were predicted beforehand as opposed to being the thing(s) that happened. This becomes more clear if you remove the argument from one about consciousness. You may as well argue about the particular fingerprint on my right index finger, the particular snowflake that fell a month ago outside my window, or the particular arrangement of planets and asteroids around the star Sol. All those things have the same gigantogargantuan odds against them in your vision of things -- absolutely everything does.

 

[Hlafordlaes]

... but your criticisms rely upon treating the emergence of any particular consciousness as if it were predicted beforehand as opposed to being the thing(s) that happened.

'Sactly. Nothing unique about uniqueness, other than its woo-inspiring simplicity. Apparently it can blind one if gazed at too long in hindsight, however.

"[four-letter, colloquially appropriate yet bad word] happens."

 

[pharphis]

This thread doesn't need to be hound dogged the way you're all doing. Checking it for progress once a year is more than sufficient.

It hasn't moved in any direction since it's inception nearly two years ago. Same occasional assertions, same occasional rebuttals, interspersed with twittering interludes which consume most of the pages, insuring that no one will bother to read through it all. Now even the twitter is being repeated.

Even if any of you wanted to have the discussion Jabba wants, you couldn't. Not one of you has the faintest clue what to make of the (conservatively) 10 ⁸⁰ odds that were stacked against your particular brain moments after the big bang, before your particular brain emerged unbothered by the giganogargantuan odds that were stacked against it.

You're presuming things could have happened any differently to begin with.

 

[Toontown]

You're presuming things could have happened any differently to begin with.

1. Yeah. I guess that's what I'm doing. Me and every cosmologist on the planet.

2. News flash: 19th century determinism died with the emergence of quantum mechanics early in the 20th century and was buried unceremoniously by the standard cosmological model, which starts with an indeterministic quantum stew and coninues to be affected by quantum indeterminism thereafter. Not that it even matters, because:

3. News flash: probability theory does not presume or rely upon true randomness to begin with. That's because incomplete information has the same probabilistic effects as true randomness.

You who keep dredging up this deterministic clockwork argument overlook the fact that the science of probability actually works.

 

[Toontown]

You refuse to be nailed down on it, but your criticisms rely upon treating the emergence of any particular consciousness as if it were predicted beforehand as opposed to being the thing(s) that happened. This becomes more clear if you remove the argument from one about consciousness. You may as well argue about the particular fingerprint on my right index finger, the particular snowflake that fell a month ago outside my window, or the particular arrangement of planets and asteroids around the star Sol. All those things have the same gigantogargantuan odds against them in your vision of things -- absolutely everything does.

You don't know what you're talking about. You refuse to distinguish between the general and specific, which effectively rules out your ever being able to make any practical use of probability at all.

But doesn't rule out anyone else's ability to make practical use of probability. Just you and everyone else who makes that error.

Observation: you never have any evidence until (1) evidence comes into existence, (2) you become aware of it's existence, and (3) you have sense enough to distinguish it from all the other random crap that happened.

 

[Mojo]

Even if any of you wanted to have the discussion Jabba wants, you couldn't. Not one of you has the faintest clue what to make of the (conservatively) 10 ⁸⁰ odds that were stacked against your particular brain moments after the big bang, before your particular brain emerged unbothered by the giganogargantuan odds that were stacked against it.

Every other particular result is just as unlikely.

 

[Mojo]

Let's go back to a question that wasn't answered in a previous version of this thread:

Here's a question that I asked a couple of pages back, which didn't seem to get addressed:

Imagine we have an N-sided die with a name on each side, each of which is the name of one of N people who are in the next room. We throw the die, and then call in the person whose name has come up to look at the die. They are aware of this procedure. Should they be surprised to see their name?

ETA: I've spotted a way that Toontown could misunderstand the question, so I'll put it another way:

What is the probability that the person called into the room will see their own name?

 

[Garrette]

You don't know what you're talking about.

Yes, yes, we all know this is the claim you endlessly repeat in all these threads, and while you do catch the occasional error in others' thinking, you have yet either to catch the errors in your own or to undermine the central point others are making.

You refuse to distinguish between the general and specific, which effectively rules out your ever being able to make any practical use of probability at all.

Completely wrong, though I am open to you demonstrating otherwise. Where do I make this error? It isn't the post you quote.

But doesn't rule out anyone else's ability to make practical use of probability. Just you and everyone else who makes that error.

No one is preventing anyone else from making practical use of probability except for Jabba -- and to the extent you get specific, you. Jabba is the one misusing probability; to the extent you talk about it at all, it is clear you make the same errors, though you won't show your work so no one can really review it, leaving you all the wiggle room you desire so you can continue to pontificate. Both you and Jabba are not only welcome but also encourage to actually make practical use of probability. It is, in fact, what we have all been waiting for.

Observation: you never have any evidence until (1) evidence comes into existence, (2) you become aware of it's existence, and (3) you have sense enough to distinguish it from all the other random crap that happened.

This undermines my point and supports yours how, exactly?

 

[JayUtah]

You don't know what you're talking about.

Actually I do. As I said before, I use this type of analysis all the time in my work, for paying customers who hold me accountable for the results. I'm fairly adept at knowing when it's applicable and when it's not.

But doesn't rule out anyone else's ability to make practical use of probability. Just you and everyone else who makes that error.

Don't be silly.

The odds of drawing a royal flush of spades out of a standard deck are the same as drawing any other hand -- even if that hand has no special value in poker.. Arbitrarily identifying ahead of time the hand(s) you wish to draw, and pretending that affects the odds of drawing it over any other arbitrarily preselected group of five cards, is your error. And it's a fairly common one. The only thing statistically magical about the royal flush of spades is an overconstraint of the problem. There is only a margin difference in applied value over a royal flush of hearts, or a straight to the ace, or any other flush. You want to talk about the odds of my "one finite life" and not the odds of some "one finite life." The odds that it will snow are different than the odds of it snowing my special snowflake.

Of course probability has valid practical applications. That doesn't mean all workings of a probabilistic model of someone's devising are predictive, especially when the key numbers are invented or reckoned incorrectly.

 

[Jabba]

OK, then H isn't the scientific model for consciousness. That means ~H would include, among other things, models where immaterial selves are immortal, but also models where immaterial selves don't exist at all.

Dave,
- H is the scientific model of mortality for individual human consciousness -- i.e., we each have but one, finite, time of consciousness (at most).
- H allows for no immaterial selves. It allows for consciousness to be strictly material. ~H does also; it just implies immaterial selves in that if some of us do not have but one, finite, time of consciousness (at most), something must survive the material body.