Proof of Immortality III

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Jabba, if you convince yourself that you have an immortal soul, then what? Think you'll die happy?

Based on his prior side arguments, it seems that if he convinces himself he has proven to skeptics mathematically that he has an immortal soul, but they reject his proof, he can continue to believe that skeptics are unfair and entrenched, and that his preferred mode of fringe thinking, in contrast, is not as irrational as it first seems. As Joe Bentley correctly notes, Jabba seems to have little lasting interest in the individual items that are the proxy for his dislike of skepticism.
 
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Jabba,
You have yet to explain why you as a simple living human are so incredibly improbable while you as a simple living human plus maybe a soul are so much, much more probable.

Indeed. Jabba's model of the human mind still requires all the natural processes in place, he's just adding another separate process that links with the natural one as some random arbitrary point because of... errr reasons.

Essentially Jabba is arguing that the creation of two unique things; the physical biological mind and the mystical woo-woo soul and them linking up is more probable than just the biological mind without explaining it any further.

Again we're not stupid and we know that "Goddidit" is the answer but...
 
That's not quite the fallacy. Let's say you have a hypothesis K that the possible outcomes of a die roll are random and equally likely, and therefore that the probability that the outcome will be "three" is 1/6. You then roll the die and the outcome is indeed a three. Then, the following is still correct: P("three"|K) = 1/6. The outcome of the experiment does not change the probability of the outcome under the hypothesis. If you don't believe this, roll the die a million times and calculate the empirical relative frequency of the outcome "three."

Jabba's fallacy is that, under his "scientific" hypothesis, he is unwittingly conditioning on the observed outcome as well as the hypothesis, and he is not taking this into account when he states the probability. He observes "Jabba exists" and states that, under the hypothesis R that "Jabba" was a random outcome, P("Jabba"|R) is very small. This is indeed true. But Jabba exists. Even if Jabba is the outcome of a random process, it was the random outcome that actually occurred. Furthermore, Jabba could only make the observation "Jabba exists" if Jabba exists. Therefore, the event he is observing is not an event in a sample space that contains the events "Jabba exists" and "Jabba does not exist," but rather, it is an event in the conditional sample space in which "Jabba exists" is the only element. Therefore, he is actually calculating P("Jabba"|R, "Jabba"), the probability that Jabba exists given that a random process occurred and he was the outcome. This probability is 1, and, since he is conditioning on his own existence, it is this probability he must use in Bayes' formula.

This fact that he is conditioning on his own existence is fatal to his argument. Since P("Jabba"|R, "Jabba") = 1, the posterior probability of his immortality hypothesis cannot be greater that its prior probability (because P("Jabba"|~R) ≤ 1). So his argument, which is intended to increase the posterior probability of immortality relative to its prior, can only lower it.
jt,
- I think you're saying that H and ~H are not analogous to A and ~A in my question about betting the farm -- and, you're implicitly allowing that if they were analogous, you'd accept my conclusion about H and ~H.
- If so, I think I see your point, and must do some more thinking...
 
I think you're saying...

Do not rephrase his argument to make it sound like he somehow agrees with you. When he tells you that your argument commits a fatal error and then goes on to describe that error in detail, do not simply apply spin and repeat the claim.

If so, I think I see your point, and must do some more thinking...

His point is the same point several others have already made. You are basing your probability estimate on a sample space that is inappropriate to the question you're trying to resolve. In the sample space that is appropriate, your probability of existing is 1, and that is the number you must use. You're trying to equivocate between that and your desired sample space in order to disguise the circularity in your argument. It hasn't fooled anyone yet, so stop trying.
 
Essentially Jabba is arguing that the creation of two unique things; the physical biological mind and the mystical woo-woo soul and them linking up is more probable than just the biological mind without explaining it any further.

This appears to be a textbook example of the conjunction fallacyWP, in case anyone's running a fallacy bingo card.

Dave
 
This appears to be a textbook example of the conjunction fallacyWP, in case anyone's running a fallacy bingo card.

Dave

I caught this one way back in April when I suspected the conversation would go there. Then I caught Toontown red-handed in June.

Even if souls (non-material minds) are real, it is possible that they are still contingent upon material bodies. After all, would the mind of Jim exist if Jim's parents had never existed? Jabba is doing everything he can to ignore these details.
 
jt,
- I think you're saying that H and ~H are not analogous to A and ~A in my question about betting the farm -- and, you're implicitly allowing that if they were analogous, you'd accept my conclusion about H and ~H.
- If so, I think I see your point, and must do some more thinking...


I'm saying what I'm saying. Just read it and think about it. It shows that your argument is dead in the water. As I explain, you cannot, even in principle, observe ~E (using your original notation). Your space of possible observations—your sample space—is restricted to, or conditional on, the event E having occurred. Therefore, if R is the "scientific" hypothesis, the likelihood of R in your Bayes' formulation should not be P(E|R), but P(E|E,R), which is obviously 1. The key to understanding why your argument cannot work is to understand the sample space.
 
jt,
- I think you're saying that H and ~H are not analogous to A and ~A in my question about betting the farm -- and, you're implicitly allowing that if they were analogous, you'd accept my conclusion about H and ~H.
- If so, I think I see your point, and must do some more thinking...

I'm saying what I'm saying. Just read it and think about it. It shows that your argument is dead in the water. As I explain, you cannot, even in principle, observe ~E (using your original notation). Your space of possible observations—your sample space—is restricted to, or conditional on, the event E having occurred. Therefore, if R is the "scientific" hypothesis, the likelihood of R in your Bayes' formulation should not be P(E|R), but P(E|E,R), which is obviously 1. The key to understanding why your argument cannot work is to understand the sample space.
jt,
- Unfortunately(?), I think you're agreeing with what I said -- just from a different perspective/angle.
- I think that H and ~H are not analogous to A and ~A because the fact that I already exist does not include the possibility of ~E in my sample space...
 
jt,
- Unfortunately(?), I think you're agreeing with what I said -- just from a different perspective/angle.
- I think that H and ~H are not analogous to A and ~A because the fact that I already exist does not include the possibility of ~E in my sample space...


I have no idea what A and ~A are, and I don't care. I have shown at the level of probability theory that your Bayesian argument cannot increase the posterior probability of your immortality hypothesis relative to its prior. Stop obfuscating and address my argument. If you can't, then admit that your argument is dead.
 
Unfortunately(?), I think you're agreeing with what I said -- just from a different perspective/angle.

No, he is not. And it's highly disingenuous of you to sidestep important refutations with this tired rhetorical stunt. No one agrees with you. Stop trying to make it seem as if they do.

I think that H and ~H are not analogous to A and ~A because the fact that I already exist does not include the possibility of ~E in my sample space...

He has told you explicitly what's wrong with the sample space in your formulation of your proof for immortality, and he's not trying to refer to any of the other distractionary analogies you've tried to deploy. We're all well attuned to your desperate obfuscatory hijinks, so stop pretending they work.

Fix your argument or concede.
 
Of an infinite number of universes, an infinite amount have Jabba in them while an infinite amount do not.

The chance of Jabba existing in any given universe is unknowable (it's both 0 and 1).

How does this not end the argument?
 
Of an infinite number of universes, an infinite amount have Jabba in them while an infinite amount do not.

The chance of Jabba existing in any given universe is unknowable (it's both 0 and 1).

How does this not end the argument?

Because it's wrong? The probability of an event cannot be both 0 and 1.
 
Well, you can't divide by infinity. You can't ever divide infinity by infinity. What misstake am i making?


Well, besides misspelling "mistake," a real number divided by ∞ is 0, unless my computer is broken:

Code:
jt512 ~ $ R
R version 3.3.1 (2016-06-21)
> 7 / Inf
[1] 0

I'm also curious about what the difference between "can't" and "can't ever" is.

The chance of Jabba existing in any given universe is unknowable (it's both 0 and 1).


Fundamentally, events are assigned probabilities by a real-valued function (P). A real-valued function, by definition, assigns a single number to each element in its domain. So, for any event E, it cannot be the case that P(E) = 0 and P(E) = 1.
 
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a real number divided by ∞ is 0, unless my computer is broken

I wasn't aware that the computer program, R, was an authority for mathematical meaning. Everything I've learned about the set of real numbers and about division is now cast in doubt. I feel so lost. Peano, you have betrayed me.
 
For a real number r, r/∞ is not defined. However, r/n approaches zero as n approaches infinity, so the expression has a value in the limit. That's how R -- a popular statistical modeling language -- is able to confidently evaluate it. There's a nuance between whether it's defined and whether it can be said to have a value. Values derived "in the limit" are still valid for many purposes, otherwise calculus wouldn't work.

And yes, Jabba is just using it to avoid having to state zero flatly. He has criticized his opponents for claiming zero probability for propositions Jabba desires to have some toehold, so for him to state that the probability of propositions he disfavors are exactly zero would open him to a valid charge that he has a double standard. He wants his critics to admit that there's a non-zero probability of an immortal soul existing, so that he has a non-zero number to multiply by his completely made-up likelihood ratio into some near certainty that an immortal soul is the only way we could have been blessed with our unique Jabba.
 
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