Proof of Immortality III

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Nonpareil said:
The scenario does not contain any requirement for the game to be rigged or not. This is the point that you continuously fail to address, or even acknowledge.
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In addition to the usual stonewalling, You're using an irrational and correspondingly useless definition of "requirement". I don't use that definition. Your definition doesn't even make sense in a scenario which (you think) doesn't provide an absolutely certain path to the correct answer.

And you're wrong about that too. Arriving at the "correct" answer does not require absolute certainty. The correct answer is the answer which makes use of the information you have.

If I was in the jam I analogically put you in, I would be like, yeah, right. You people threaten to snuff me if I don't roll a (1) on a 10 80! sided die. And what happens? I toss the die, and a (1) turns up like clockwork. You rigged the game, boys. Plain and simple.

But you say you wouldn't see any "requirement" for the game to be rigged. Would you also fail to distinguish between the required (1) and all the other unspecified numbers?
 
Toontown said:
In addition to the usual stonewalling, You're using an irrational and correspondingly useless definition of "requirement". I don't use that definition.
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I am unsure of what part of the word "requirement" you don't understand. It is entirely possible for everything in your scenario to happen by chance. The game does not need to be rigged. That is all that is meant.

Toontown said:
Your definition doesn't even make sense in a scenario which (you think) doesn't provide an absolutely certain path to the correct answer.
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You also don't seem to understand what the phrase "absolutely certain" means, if you think that your scenario includes it. That's rather the whole point.

Toontown said:
And you're wrong about that too. Arriving at the "correct" answer does not require absolute certainty. The correct answer is the answer which makes use of the information you have.

If I was in the jam I analogically put you in, I would be like, yeah, right. You people threaten to snuff me if I don't roll a (1) on a 10 80! sided die. And what happens? I toss the die, and a (1) turns up like clockwork. You rigged the game, boys. Plain and simple.
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Yes, yes. You've said this.

What you still fail to address, and likely to even understand, is that it is still entirely possible that it did happen by chance, and your personal inclination to think that the game was rigged in your favor is not an actual argument for it being so.
 
Toontown said:
Everything that came off the deck thereafter came off a randomly shuffled deck.
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Hlafordlaes said:
And?

And with that plus a tad of spice you get mass uniqueness.

Say things are not deterministic. Fine, easy direct step to treating each instance of a class as having unique properties, be it a mountain or a human.

Say things are highly deterministic. Fine, then we know that the configuration of spacetime is never precisely the same from one instant to the other; therefore, any and all processes are affected by a truly unique starting set of conditions... and so every instance of a class has unique properties, be it a mountain or a human.
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If you're trying to say the deck isn't really random because the card sequence doesn't change after it's been shuffled, you couldn't be more wrong if you tried.

A randomly shuffled deck is a random deck. The entire sequence of cards was randomly generated. Thus, everything that happens as a result of the shuffle is a randomly determined outcome.

And there is no determinism when there is nothing but emerging elementary particles and energy, so any unique set of starting conditions you may imagine held sway before it started became irrelevant as soon as it started.

And it doesn't matter anyway. True random or pseudo-random due to our lack of specific knowledge, probability works the same.
 
Toontown said:
If you're trying to say the deck isn't really random because the card sequence doesn't change after it's been shuffled, you couldn't be more wrong if you tried.
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Good that I was not saying that, then.

A randomly shuffled deck is a random deck. The entire sequence of cards was randomly generated. Thus, everything that happens as a result of the shuffle is a randomly determined outcome.

And there is no determinism when there is nothing but emerging elementary particles and energy, so any unique set of starting conditions you may imagine held sway before it started became irrelevant as soon as it started.

And it doesn't matter anyway. True random or pseudo-random due to our lack of specific knowledge, probability works the same.
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Not referring to anything prior. It was your claim back some pages that went all the way back to the BB that has us discussing things in reference to such time frames.

So, in the last few pages, we have two options:
- Superdeterminism and assumed constructionism (More Is Different denied) allow for estimating p(you) in that time frame. Answer: p(you), like anything else, is vanishingly small. Because in this case we claim superdeterminism, we can explain mass uniqueness by realizing that conditions at the start of or during any iteration of a process will differ, since all of spacetime will, too, locally, or in terms of any (possibly woo-like) distant influences.

- Assuming some form of randomness and indeterminacy, and allowing for More to be Different (~emergent rules at emergent scales or in emerging systems), there is little sense in calculating p(you) until those elements that might lead to (you) have emerged. But regardless, p(you) is always a small number, because also in this perspective we have randomness etc affecting each 'run' of any process, leading to mass uniqueness.

So, no mystery in p(you) being a small number.

Now, all that said, no p(anything) is worth a grain of salt without also evidence. Claims of a non-physical basis for self are, demonstrably, quite false. The self can be turned off and rebooted; therefore, the brain is a natural system operating under normal rules. The amazing qualia of experience -- the vibrancy and immediacy of existence and sensation -- are by some considered to be a product of the two-way network of the entire central and peripheral nervous system. Experience is not only a one-time event, it can be replayed with a certain repetition of the original chemical responses, and other thoughts can lead to psychosomatic responses. Mind and physical world, then, are intimately linked, yielding qualia.
 
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Toontown said:
As many as it takes you to again fail to distinguish between the general and the specific, thereby making probability practically useless to you.
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There's another factor that makes the probability of Jabba existing useless in Jabba's argument. We've already established that you wouldn't accept Stan's bet that Stan exists, and the reason you wouldn't accept that bet. If Jabba offered you a bet that Jabba exists, would you accept it?
 
Toontown said:
Just follow the discussion between Pariel and me back to it's origin.
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I did, which is why I'm asking. You have a requirement to throw a pre-determined number; I don't see how that corresponds to reality, where we're just looking at what did happen.

(BTW, it's Nonpareil.)
 
godless dave said:
Under OOFlam, the likelihood of me existing is 1, so I don't see how the math proves it wrong.
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Dave,
- "Likelihood" is the probability of a particular event occurring if a particular hypothesis is true. I'm not sure how to express this properly, or effectively, but "likelihood" is not a simple 'post hoc' probability.
 
Jabba said:
Nonparareil,
- Can you tell me why I'm wrong?
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Let's see, after reaching version III of this thread, I am guess there are anywhere between a handful and umpteen reasons already given. Take your pick of the, say, last 10-15 pages and you'll find plenty.

This is trolling, plain and simple, since you refuse to actually engage in the thread in normal terms, responding as objections to your premise come up. Since you let the vast bulk go by utterly uncontested, hard to see any legitimate goal here, and hard not to agree that the OP has been KOed several times over.
 
Jabba said:
Dave,
- "Likelihood" is the probability of a particular event occurring if a particular hypothesis is true.
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Right. If OOFlam is true, meaning there's no immaterial self:

Jabba said:
Dave,
- OOFLam assumes, or at least implies, that an immaterial soul (what I called one's "identity") does not exist.
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then the likelihood of me existing is the same as the likelihood of my physical body existing, as you said here:

Jabba said:
Dave,
- However, the human self being judged here is not the physical body and brain of a particular human being -- biologists would estimate that the likelihood of such a physical 'self' currently existing would also be one over one.
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So under OOFlam, the likelihood of my physical body existing is 1, and thus the likelihood of my "self" existing is 1.
 
Jabba said:
Can you tell me why I'm wrong?
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To summarize the three chapters of this thread plus the five chapters of the shroud thread where you've used similar reasoning:

1. You don't know how the math is meant to apply.

2. You are simply guessing at values which dictate the outcome of the model you've selected.

3. The effect is to attempt to hide a blatantly circular argument.
 
Jabba said:
"Likelihood" is the probability of a particular event occurring if a particular hypothesis is true.
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No. Likelihood is the probability of a particular event occurring, given a model incorporating both data and assumptions, and actual data. As with most fringe claimants who appeal to Bayesian methodology as their model, you have no data -- only assumptions. You want to plug in hypothetical data and treat it as if it were real, and pretend then that the model outcome somehow proves the assumptions.

Eminently circular.

I'm not sure how to express this properly, or effectively...
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Probability because you don't know what you're talking about and you can't be bothered to go read where on this forum people have spent considerable effort trying to educate you.
 
[caveat]
There is a degree to which the idea of I've been terming "mass uniqueness" is actually addressing something entirely different; i.e., that classes are abstractions of the mind, and words their labels. No two trees are alike in this sense, and are each objects unto themselves. Of course, tossing out the regularities and commonalities that classes are based on would also toss out science, as well as make this conversation difficult, so there are good reasons for allowing levels of abstraction based on such observed patterns. So, perhaps two mountains might be unique only because we've classified two unrelated areas of terrain with a single word, yet, say, humans would remain unique owing to the known commonalities across multiple disciplines that still yield difference, and not just our use of a single term to refer to many individuals.

I just chalk this pesky difficulty up to the fact that observations have observers... with clumsy fingers that sometimes smudge the lens. Hope that makes sense.
[/caveat]
 
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