Proof of Immortality III

[abaddon]

Dave,

- This is just to let you know that I'm working on your question.

No, your not. You claimed you had those answers.

- To get started, you can just google combinations of "science," "consciousness," "self," "non-physical," immaterial," and also, some different famous scientists.

I could just google "crank" and save time.

- I'll start with philosophers.
- From Wikipedia,
- Western philosophers, since the time of Descartes and Locke, have struggled to comprehend the nature of consciousness and pin down its essential properties. Issues of concern in the philosophy of consciousness include whether the concept is fundamentally coherent; whether consciousness can ever be explained mechanistically; whether non-human consciousness exists and if so how can it be recognized; how consciousness relates to language; whether consciousness can be understood in a way that does not require a dualistic distinction between mental and physical states or properties; and whether it may ever be possible for computing machines like computers or robots to be conscious, a topic studied in the field of artificial intelligence.

Were you honest, you would have provided a link. You did not. Why not?

- following are a couple of long videos re science and consciousness -- though, just a few minutes of each should suggest how science is struggling with consciousness. I'll be back.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFSRTsLOiv0
- Watch for Bohr, Hisenberg and Einstine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g04RHQ1ysb4

Argumentum ad youtubem? You are sinking that low?

 

[JimOfAllTrades]

I know (at least to a degree such that I don’t let the infinitesimal possibility guide any of my actions) that I’m not winning the lottery. I also know (at least to a degree such that I let the almost certainty guide all my actions) that I exist. And, depending on how you calculate it, my existence is much, much, less probable than my winning the lottery. Given all that, why aren’t I incredibly suspicious of my existence?

Is that anything like a fair statement of your position?

Jim,
- It's the beginning of my position/argument.

Jabba, I’ve seen your arguments for several years now, and I don’t remember you ever posting anything like this.

However, remember how much room lies in the phrase “depending on how you calculate it”. I suspect the reason for my not understanding Toontown lies there. I’d really like to know why his method seems to produce results so vastly different from my thinking.

It’s possible I won’t be able to understand Toontown, and it’s possible that his thinking calls for a soul or other entity of some kind, and since I don’t believe in that then we’ll simply disagree. It’s even possible he’ll be able to explain it to me in such a way so that I’ll understand and agree.

But mostly I just like to try to understand processes where I seem to agree with many of the givens, some (or even most) of the conclusions, but then wind up seeming to suggest something radically different than what I would have expected. I guess it’s the programmer in me. Over thirty years I’ve learned that when you run a program and the output is quite different from what you expected, it’s almost always because I’ve made some kind of mistake. So I’m interested in Toontown’s thinking to see if I’ve made a mistake.

 

[caveman1917]

I think there's some equivocation here. Jabba is explicitly trying to prove asserting that statistical probability equates to logical certainty.

The only logical certainties are tautologies, everything else requires you to assume at least one premise.

Gambling is not the same as scientific experiment.

Tossing a coin is a scientific experiment though, it's one way of examining the coin.

Statistical likelihood is not the same as experimental proof.

All experimental proofs are statistical likelihoods, even if only by virtue of having non-zero probability of having been a spurious experimental result.

The level of risk we're willing to accept in a game of chance, based on our subjective perceptions of events, is not evidence for or against a hypothesis.

It's the best you're going to get unless your hypothesis is a logical tautology.

The bets we place based on Bayesian analysis do not equate to factual statements about objective reality.

For all I know there is no objective reality, this just seems to be saying "I don't like Bayesian analysis."

The coin toss analogy has limited usefulness here. Whether I would bet on an improbably-behaving coin doesn't actually tell us anything about what is actually going on with that coin.

It tells us something about what is actually going on with our knowledge of that coin. Or rather what should be going on with our knowledge of that coin, if we use Bayesian inference or, equivalently, that which maximizes our expected outcome on the gambling game.

In order to make a scientific (as opposed to gambling) claim about the coin, we'd have to examine the coin.

Tossing it is one way of examining the coin.

And in order to prove that claim, we'd have to publish the results of our examination, to some suitable degree of rigor.

Your point being? Tossing it will eventually "win" no matter what rigorous examination you can throw at it. For all strictly positive probability p that the coin is biased even if the rigorous examination doesn't show it, there exists an n times you have to toss it and get heads each time such that the probability of it being biased is greater than it not being biased.

This examination, this publication, this rigor, are exactly the things that Jabba (and Toontown) refuse to do.

I don't particularly care all that much about what Jabba and/or Toontown refuse or not refuse to do, I just came in for the probability claims that were being made - in which Toontown is, by and large, right. As far as I'm concerned immortality isn't proven, but then neither is mortality, so I don't really care either way what Jabba or anyone else wants to believe about that. As far as I know there is no evidence either way for mortality or immortality, so that discussion is pointless - you just leave with whatever preference you started with.

Instead, we get things like this bizarre doubling-down on a gambling analogy, as if that's some sort of gotcha that does an end-run around any requirement to properly apply logic and science to the claims.

As if gambling analogies aren't applying logic or science. Did you know that you can define Bayesian inference in terms of maximizing outcome on gambling games?

 

[sackett]

Um, Cave ole pal, I fear that there's quite a lot of evidence for mortality. Unless you're buying the Lazarus story. "But Lord, he stinketh."

Oh well. So many of us take turns trudging this barren valley of a thread.

 

[caveman1917]

Um, Cave ole pal, I fear that there's quite a lot of evidence for mortality.

I'll bet you 5$ that it will be a fallacy of the form:
H1 => E
H2 => E
E
Therefor, H1

Where H1 is "we are mortal", E is our observations of other people's death and brain activity, and H2 = "we are immortal and will see those observations of other people's death and brain activity". In other words, not actually evidence but merely a way to restate your preferred hypothesis.

 

[Loss Leader]

I know (at least to a degree such that I don’t let the infinitesimal possibility guide any of my actions) that I’m not winning the lottery. I also know (at least to a degree such that I let the almost certainty guide all my actions) that I exist. And, depending on how you calculate it, my existence is much, much, less probable than my winning the lottery. Given all that, why aren’t I incredibly suspicious of my existence?

Is that anything like a fair statement of your position?

Jim,
- It's the beginning of my position/argument.

And the end of it. There's a good reason why JimOfAllTrades views whether he will win the lottery differently than whether he exists: He already exists.

He knows he exists. So, there's no reason to suspect that he doesn't just because the chance of his existence was small. On the other hand, he hasn't won the lottery yet, so he has every reason to believe with great confidence that he won't.

And that's ignoring the fact that you have yet to define the words person/self/soul in a way that is an actual thing and not a process. Are you the same person you were 30 years ago? Have you changed at all? What is consistent between Jabba and Jabba-30? What is consistent between all Jabbas over all time? What would be consistent between any Jabba and any reincarnation?

Also, don't quote philosophers in a scientific discussion. The reason Descartes or any other philosopher may have believed in duality is that they were ignorant of the scientific method. And nobody's beliefs are scientific evidence of anything anyway.

 

[jt512]

The paragraph also proves the point that perspective matters in probability. The probability that "someone" will win the lottery is very nearly 1. The probability that "you" will win is very nearly 0.

The fact that someone will win the lottery has a different probability than you will win the lottery has absolutely nothing to do with perspective; they are simply two different questions. The fact that someone will win the lottery with a probability of 1 is one of the three axioms of probability. The fact that your ticket has probability 1/N, where N is the number of tickets sold (and one of them has to be picked), is due to the Discrete Uniform Probability Law. Anyone calculating either probability will get the same answer as anyone else, provided they understand probability at the most elementary level.

 

[Toontown]

No, it's not. You are saying the odds prove impossibility, and your entire argument in support of that claim is that you perceive yourself.

No. I don't require the story to be "impossible" before I reject it. Ridiculously unlikely from where I'm standing is sufficient for rejection. Why would we even be talking about probability if it could get any more certain than that?

Yes. I perceive specific information that rules heavily against the story. For some crazy reason, you think that specific information is invalidated because of where I'm seeing it from. But that's your problem, not mine.

Yes, it does, because you are still relying on your self-perception as if it is something that changes the odds.

No. My perception has made it possible for me to be aware of the existence of something the "Lone Brainger" story all but rules out - the sentient experience I'm currently enjoying. And that is no different from any other information our perception makes it possible to be aware of.

Said awareness does not change the odds. They're stacked plenty high without imaginative alteration. I simply recognize the odds as they apply to the suspicious observation. To know the odds a story has stacked against me is to doubt the story that stacked the odds against me. To doubt a story is not to be a "special snowflake".

Do you think Mt. Ranier's existence possesses the same significance that your brain's existence does?

No. I don't see anything else in the universe that is inconsistent with the story, for much the same reason that I'm not surprised that there are thousands of lottery winners. And even less surprised that I am not among them.

It's just that the one thing that is highly suspicious practically rules the story out.

Analogy: a preacher-man predicts the near-certain end of the world yesterday. Oops. Prediction effectively ruled out, notwithstanding the very dim possibility that he could have been off by a couple of days. Nothing else in the universe rules it out. Just that one glaring inconsistency. I rule it out without bothering to wait a couple of days, even though I know entire planets are being destroyed every day in the universe, and waiting could conceivably yield the predicted result. But I don't give a rat's ass. The thing is, this one is still here. And the preacher-man's story said it almost certainly wouldn't be here today. So, am I making Earth out to be a special snowflake by focusing on it to the exclusion of all other planets? Nah, I don't think so. I think the preacher-man's odds were bogus.

Yes, hypotheses do make predictions whether they intend to or not. It is often the unintended predictions that kill them.

My story concludes by saying that even if we decide the odds are equivalent to the possible combination of atoms in the universe, that it does not preclude your existence, even if we do not grant special status to it.
Here we definitely disagree, and the sole argument you provide is still simply that you perceive yourself.

Yeah, well. That's the only argument I need. I don't need this brain's existence totally precluded to rule out the "Lone Brainger" story. Odds stacked to the power of factorial 80 are more than sufficent.

Nor do I need a "special snowflake" license to use information that has fallen into my lap.

Like that time I saw the dealer's hole card in a blackjack game. I just happened to be in a position to garner that information. It never occurred to me that I'd be a "special snowflake" if I used the information. I just used it. It was kind of too late not to use it. I already knew it. I couldn't force myself to forget I knew it. Anyhow, it wasn't my fault the dealer was a front-loader.

But then the pit boss gave me that "special snowflake" look when I hit the hard 18. He must have thought that was suspicious. The dealer even yelled out "Hard 18 hit!". I guess people don't like it when I use information they've deemed verboten to protect their agendas.

Well, back to the salt mine: I'm not arguing with the fact that improbable brains exist. I'm ruling out the One-Brain-Or-Bust story. There are other possibilities which are undiscussable here. No, you haven't thought of them.

It doesn't get more special snowflake than that.

Yes it does. the "lone Brainger" story gets way more special snowflaky as soon as someone claims that odds stacked to the power of factorial 80 against it don't put a dent in it. Because that story is deemed to be even more special than that, I suppose.

Yes, nonsense, and no, it does not become more factual. You are acting as if you applying it to yourself imbues it with signficance; you have in fact stated so. That is the very embodiment of special snowflake.

Well, I'm not going to sit here all day and argue over whether a plain fact is more or less factual or significant if it applies universally.

I'm just looking at the plain fact and recognizing that, from where I'm standing, I shouldn't be standing anywhere, ever, if the "Lone Brainger" story is true.

And that's another plain fact.

No special snowflakiness is required to recognize a plain fact.

No, as evidence by the sentence he wrote which you left out of your quotation:

"Toontown is talking about particular brain, and the probability of that particular brain is 1 in a gajillion."

He not only saw the distinction, he pointed it out. You keep pretending we are conflating them, but it is a blatant straw man.

Right. See the difference, then proceed to ignore the difference and continue to grant the "Lone Brainger" story special snowflake status.

They didn't; nor did I claim they did. Your brain, under the odds as expressed by Jabba, and accepted for sake of argument here, had horrible chances of existing. What you have proven is precisely that you had horrible odds of existing; you have neither proven nor disproven anything else.

I'm surprised you admit that I've proven this brain had horrible prior odds of existing. But that seems to be the only progress we've made since all this started long ago.

I'm not trying to prove or disprove anything absolutely. That can't be done probabilistically. The fact that you and others keep trying to require that of me frankly looks pretty insecure of you from where I'm standing. It's as if you want to run a race, but you want me to spot you 50 yards.

 

[John Jones]

I'm not trying to prove or disprove anything absolutely. That can't be done probabilistically. The fact that you and others keep trying to require that of me frankly looks pretty insecure of you from where I'm standing. It's as if you want to run a race, but you want me to spot you 50 yards.

I disagree.

 

[jt512]

Statistical likelihood is not the same as experimental proof.

"Statistical likelihood" is the basis of experimental "proof." Experimental findings are usually based on a calculation of the probability of the result if the null hypothesis were true. When this probability is small enough the scientific hypothesis (the complement of the null) is considered to have been confirmed.

In order to make a scientific (as opposed to gambling) claim about the coin, we'd have to examine the coin..

Ideally, we might like to examine the coin, but we can usually draw conclusions without doing so. If the coin lands heads 1000 times in 1000 unbiased tosses, it is not a fair coin, a scientific conclusion about the coin we can reach without any examination of the coin.

Indeed, most interesting scientific hypothesis don't involve things we can actually examine. Who examined the Higgs boson? What would it even mean to examine the Higgs boson? The Higgs boson was declared to exist because a hypothesis predicted it would have a certain energy, and experiments detected a number of hits near the predicted energy that was statistically unlikely to have occurred by chance (with a probability under the null of something like 1-in-100,000).

Consider a field like experimental psychology. How do you examine a psychological theory? There's nothing physical to examine. All you can do is run an experiment and see if the behavior predicted by the theory occurs more often than would be expected by chance or more often than behaviors predicted by competing theories. When a particular statistical threshold is achieved, the theory is considered to have been confirmed.

 

[Toontown]

The fact that someone will win the lottery has a different probability than you will win the lottery has absolutely nothing to do with perspective; they are simply two different questions. The fact that someone will win the lottery with a probability of 1 is one of the three axioms of probability. The fact that your ticket has probability 1/N, where N is the number of tickets sold (and one of them has to be picked), is due to the Discrete Uniform Probability Law. Anyone calculating either probability will get the same answer as anyone else, provided they understand probability at the most elementary level.

Right, and the axiom I use will depend on the perspective from which I'm looking at the lottery - global or subjective.

I have no practical use for the global probabiity at this time. I know "someone" will win. But I wouldn't buy a ticket in the hope that "someone" will win.

I would only be interested in what my subjective chances are - if I was interested at all.

Perspective is critical because it determines which axiom to use. if I use the wrong axiom, I get the wrong answer.

Like the people who say "Someone will win the lottery, and I"m someone." Wul, yeah. But you're not the someone who will win. Wrong perspective, wrong axiom, wrong answer.

 

[jt512]

Right, and the axiom I use will depend on the perspective from which I'm looking at the lottery - global or subjective.

I have no practical use for the global probabiity at this time. I know "someone" will win. But I wouldn't buy a ticket in the hope that "someone" will win.

I would only be interested in what my subjective chances are - if I was interested at all.

Perspective is critical because it determines which axiom to use. if I use the wrong axiom, I get the wrong answer.

Like the people who say "Someone will win the lottery, and I"m someone." Wul, yeah. But you're not the someone who will win. Wrong perspective, wrong axiom, wrong answer.

Sorry, but you're totally confused and spewing nonsense.

 

[Loss Leader]

Said awareness does not change the odds. They're stacked plenty high without imaginative alteration. I simply recognize the odds as they apply to the suspicious observation. To know the odds a story has stacked against me is to doubt the story that stacked the odds against me. To doubt a story is not to be a "special snowflake".

Yeah, that's pretty much the dictionary definition of "special snowflake." I don't think you could give a better example of the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy if you tried.

 

[Garrette]

Do you think Mt. Ranier's existence possesses the same significance that your brain's existence does?

No. I don't see anything else in the universe that is inconsistent with the story, for much the same reason that I'm not surprised that there are thousands of lottery winners. And even less surprised that I am not among them.

Which gets back to (a) your entire argument rests simply on the fact that you are self-aware, (b) self-awareness is somehow separate from the brain, i.e., you are presuming soul to prove ..... something, and (c) nothing else; there is no argument; it is simply "I am self-aware, therefore my existence makes me special and.... something."

My story concludes by saying that even if we decide the odds are equivalent to the possible combination of atoms in the universe, that it does not preclude your existence, even if we do not grant special status to it.
Here we definitely disagree, and the sole argument you provide is still simply that you perceive yourself.

Yeah, well. That's the only argument I need.

And that is all that needs to be known of what you have said here. Just as I have been saying for a while, the entirety of your position is that you are self-aware therefore you are special therefore the statistics that actually explain everything quite well don't satisfy you.

All the rest is window dressing and muddled navel gazing masquerading as high philosophy.

 

[JimOfAllTrades]

Well, back to the salt mine: I'm not arguing with the fact that improbable brains exist. I'm ruling out the One-Brain-Or-Bust story. There are other possibilities which are undiscussable here. No, you haven't thought of them.

I was hoping to hear something new or interesting, hopefully something I hadn’t considered before.

Based on the highlighted above, I no longer have much hope. To quote someone on this thread "It's just that the one thing that is highly suspicious practically rules the story out."

 

[JoeMorgue]

Hmmm, so, if he can somehow achieve some sort of fatigued confusion here, then woo is valid?

In the last few years we've seen the rise of a new breed of argumentatives somewhere between Woo Slinging and Woo Apologetics.

We've long seen the "Big mean skepticism/science proved some Woo I love wrong so I'm just going claim that science is flawed/incomplete instead of accepting it" routine. We've a billion variations on this one, it's probably the core of more arguments on this board than any one other central concept. "Science is wrong, therefore Woo." It's a classic.

But there's a growing group of people that, for lack of a better term, seem more interested, argumentatively at least, in just a vague "taking skepticism to task" on a more moral level. As best I can figure the tendency of Woo Slingers to paint science/skepticism/rationality as "arrogant" or "strident" or other nonsense has actually started to take hold. Combine this with annoying idea that all arguments have to be "fair and balanced" and this has given birth to the rise of the "Thread Nanny." Someone who's just runs into discussions to take one side to task, ostensibly for the purposes of "keeping it fair" or proving that "the other side is just as bad" or other meaningless crap.

Now with Jabba's arguments it's very, very difficult to tell which is the dog and which is the tail is this particular chase, I've never been able to grasp whether the Immortality/Shroud threads are backdoor defenses of Jabba's "Very Effective Debate" style or if Jabba's "Very Effective Debate" style is a convoluted defense of his Immortality/Shroud arguments or if it's some weird self feeding loop of both or to what degree Jabba honestly believes any of it and what degree it's some elaborate mummer's farce with the goal of "Taking the skeptics down a peg."

 

[I Am The Scum]

Right, and the axiom I use will depend on the perspective from which I'm looking at the lottery - global or subjective.

I have no practical use for the global probabiity at this time. I know "someone" will win. But I wouldn't buy a ticket in the hope that "someone" will win.

I would only be interested in what my subjective chances are - if I was interested at all.

Perspective is critical because it determines which axiom to use. if I use the wrong axiom, I get the wrong answer.

Like the people who say "Someone will win the lottery, and I"m someone." Wul, yeah. But you're not the someone who will win. Wrong perspective, wrong axiom, wrong answer.

Perspective affects neither truth nor rational conclusions. If I am in the middle of a scenario, and it is rational for me to arrive at conclusion C, then it is equally rational for an outside observer, with the same access to information, to also come to conclusion C.

If I am wrong, then show a single scenario for which the above does not hold true.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Ten bucks says someone argues a very, very bad misunderstanding of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle trying to prove everyone gets their own personal reality before too long.

 

[Toontown]

Which gets back to (a) your entire argument rests simply on the fact that you are self-aware, (b) self-awareness is somehow separate from the brain, i.e., you are presuming soul to prove ..... something, and (c) nothing else; there is no argument; it is simply "I am self-aware, therefore my existence makes me special and.... something."

Sorry. I can't clear any of that up without going into areas I don't intend to go into.

In fact, sentience is precisely what I've been talking about, and is precisely what I should be talking about.

There is no story that tells a rock it's sentience has beaten giganogargantuan odds. A rock has no sentience. A rock has not been told any such story and has no reason or ability to find such a story suspect. A rock doesn't even exist in the same sense that sentience exists. What is it like to be a rock? Tell me about being a rock.

Yes, sentience is different from rocks. Sentience is the only thing in the universe that can be experienced. That fact alone makes sentience fundamentally different from inanimate objects. There is sentient existence and there is inanimate existence. They are not the same.

And probability is nonexistent except in the context of sentience. What can probability tell a rock? What is probability without information? What is information without sentience?

So we have rocks, which are utterly meaningless in the absence of sentience. And we have probability, nonexistent in the absence of sentience.

And that is all that needs to be known of what you have said here.

I don't concede that, but even if it was true it would still be a hell of lot more than needs to be known about what you've said here.

Just as I have been saying for a while, the entirety of your position is that you are self-aware therefore you are special therefore the statistics that actually explain everything quite well don't satisfy you.

Special compared to a rock, yeah. You, I'm not so sure about. At this point, I'm not even sure you can tell the difference.

The statistics suit me just fine. It's the story that says my sentience is next to impossible that I piss on. Because I can.

All the rest is window dressing and muddled navel gazing masquerading as high philosophy.

I don't concede that, but even if it was true it's still a hell of a lot more than you've got. Do you really not know the difference between sentience and a rock?

Start with this: A rock can't be told it's sentience is next to impossible, because it doesn't have any. Which means the rock can safely be ignored in questions regarding sentience.

So don't bother me about the rocks any more. Don't bother trying to tell me I need to lump my sentience and all the rocks together in one pile.

 

[Toontown]

Perspective affects neither truth nor rational conclusions. If I am in the middle of a scenario, and it is rational for me to arrive at conclusion C, then it is equally rational for an outside observer, with the same access to information, to also come to conclusion C.

If I am wrong, then show a single scenario for which the above does not hold true.

The outside observer is disadvantaged when, due to his location, he lacks the same information or refuses to use it due to ideology.