Proof of Immortality III

[aleCcowaN]

Mojo,
- My best guess is that I am related to the controller of the universe/the force/the over soul/the conscious universe...
- But, that's just my best wish.

FTFY

- Re the hilited paragraph, I need to think about it. I'll be back.

Of course you will. Don't forget most of your friends are here.

 

[abaddon]

<snip>
I'll be back.

Again with the inevitable Arnoduck. Look, jabba, we have seen this evasion so many times that we are heartily sick to death with it. Please stop doing it.

If you had actual answers to the questions you find so difficult, you would post those answers on the spot. Saying "I'll be back" and hoping those questions will vanish while you hide is at best, a fool's errand.

 

[JayUtah]

If you had actual answers to the questions you find so difficult, you would post those answers on the spot. Saying "I'll be back" and hoping those questions will vanish while you hide is at best, a fool's errand.

At best. More appropriately, it's just dishonest. Jabba starts with the proposition that science doesn't have all the answers. Very well, all claims of the supernatural and paranormal lay that same foundation. But then Jabba audaciously goes on to show that he doesn't have any answers. Science is missing pieces of the puzzle, he claims. But he can't even describe the puzzle, much less provide the missing pieces. All we get is the declaration that he's the master of a great transcendental holistic mode of thinking that gives him special insight. We're supposed to cowtow to this blatant narcissism.

 

[Jabba]

True, but they are making the statement explicitly in context of defining the (affinely) extended real numbers. However there are a whole bunch of extensions of the real numbers, not all of which evaluate "r / ∞" to 0. So when just presented with "r / ∞ = 0" without further information we can't really know what extension the person is working with. Or if the person is even working in some extension rather than just having made an error.



True. It is, however, defined for the projectively extended reals (yet another extension of the real numbers, basically the usual extended reals but where +∞ = -∞).



Personally I'd go with saying that it's an error unless the person makes explicit what set they are working with.



There's no hard mathematical rule against using ∞ as a symbol representing a large (but possible unknown) finite number either. It's against convention, surely, but in the end symbols are just symbols. But then again, it's also against convention to state that a real number divided by infinity is zero without making explicit what extension you're working with.

To be honest though, I don't think Jabba is aware of any of this and was just making both errors.

Caveman,
- Is there a symbol for an unimaginably small number -- or, approaches zero?

 

[JoeMorgue]

Caveman,
- Is there a symbol for an unimaginably small number -- or, approaches zero?

Does it matter? You can't plug "almost zero" into your made up equations with your other made up numbers and make your made up math work.

 

[abaddon]

Caveman,
- Is there a symbol for an unimaginably small number -- or, approaches zero?

Those are called Limits, but given your inability to perform addition, what are the chances you will figure those out?

 

[Thor 2]

Jay,
- My basic belief is that modern science/reductive materialism is missing a big piece of the puzzle.

There we go again. A theist referring to science, (modern science no less), as if it is a bag full of stuff that is finite.

Science is first and last just a method for finding stuff out. There is no limit to where it may take us, so science is not missing any piece of anything. Anything not known is just work to be done.

The scientific method has always been there what's more. Ever since the first thinking animal made observation that if one thing was done, or observed, another thing happened as a consequence. Not only humans do this.

 

[Thor 2]

Can you expound your allegory? You call it meaningful, but that doesn't get us very far.

Not that it matters. You're avoiding the question of just what an immortal soul is supposed to do for eternity.

ETERNITY! Must I shout it every time?

Hey I felt that breeze also.

Maybe Jabba could take a minute to consider infinity then as a lead in to really getting his/her head into what eternity means.

Just think about it Jabba............. I mean really sink your head into trying to imagine infinity of distance for example. Just going on and on and on ........ then you may imagine you come to a wall, but no ....... what is beyond that wall?

 

[JayUtah]

Is there a symbol for an unimaginably small number -- or, approaches zero?

Yes, but it doesn't matter. Your argument is broken on fundamental levels that transcend fiddling with individual numbers. Don't get me wrong; you're made up numbers for P(E|whatever) simply won't work. But your salvation is not to found by taking the limit.

What's worse, I and others already talked about the concept you're alluding to several pages ago. If you were actually reading the thread you'd have your answer already.

 

[caveman1917]

Caveman,
- Is there a symbol for an unimaginably small number -- or, approaches zero?

A very small but still positive number is usually denoted by the small Greek letter epsilon. If you want to say "as x approaches zero" you'd write lim_{x -> 0}.

But remember that, in the end, these are all just conventions - you can define whatever symbols you want to mean whatever you want. Math does not depend on which symbols you use, the symbols are just stand-ins for abstract mathematical objects.

 

[Loss Leader]

Caveman,
- Is there a symbol for an unimaginably small number -- or, approaches zero?

And on the surface of a sphere, you can draw a triangle with three right angles.

Math is the least of your problems. The logic you choose to represent as math is completely borked.

 

[jt512]

I find that Texas Sharpshooter/special case/HARKing argument unconvincing. One can certainly make deductions based on one's own existence, even probabilistic, and even after the fact.

I don't think anyone is saying that you can never make a deduction based on your own existence. What I am saying is that Jabba observing his own existence is a foregone conclusion under both of his hypotheses; therefore, his observing his existence is useless for discriminating between those hypotheses.

I thought you had also written that you agreed that the conjunction fallacy applied to Jabba's argument. Am I misremembering, or did you change your mind about that, because I fail to see how it applies.

 

[Jabba]

- Next.

- In effect, I'm claiming that we are all "special cases."
- If we're here, we're special cases.

- I think that we're too quick to assign an event to chance and luck, given the existing scientific hypothesis -- even though we generally accept that it's only an hypothesis.
- My claim has been that all we need in order to avoid that conclusion (H) is a reasonably possible alternative hypothesis under which the event is more likely (RPAH(eml)) than it is under the existing hypothesis. Once the RPAH is applied, we have cross-hairs on the target -- whereas before, we had only a straight line that crossed the target.- I tried to apply that claim to our lottery issue, and found that in my effort to make this claim work, I had unwittingly made E a special case... Which poked a hole in my bucket.

- But now, I'm wondering if the hole was just an illusion -- after all, I have always claimed that this conclusion applies to all of us. Or, in other words, we must all be special cases -- in, that we currently exist...
- And in fact, each of us that does exist is much more likely to exist given ~H, than given H. IOW, the likelihoods of our current existences, given OOFLam and ~OOFLam, should all be appropriate entries into the Bayesian formula, and all yield the same results...

- I must admit that this sounds wrong -- but so far, I can't figure out why.

- Just as a reminder -- if we are in fact reincarnated, in order to account for so many of us now, and so few of us a long time ago, we need that we are all part of an infinitely divisible 'bucket' of consciousness -- and more than one of us was Napoleon in a previous life...

- So, say we had a lottery in which all of the winners turned out to be far-flung relatives of the controller of the lottery (say that happened 10 times, then the controller and winners disappeared). Wouldn't that be analogous to everyone who currently exists being a special case, and the likelihoods of each, given H and ~H, be appropriate entries into our formula?
- If this is not correct logic, hopefully I can figure it out before you guys do...

jt and Caveman,
- I haven't figured it out yet.
- As far as I can tell, you guys haven't either.
- But then, I'm known to miss a lot...
- Do you have more to say about this? Is my claimed lottery analogy not analogous?

No, it is not. You have specified winners who are all related to the controller of the lottery. That makes them a special case because, before the lottery is drawn, they have a particular characteristic that is not shared by all the ticket holders.

For everyone who exists to be an analogous special case they would need to share a particular characteristic other than the fact that they exist that is not shared by people who don't exist.

You are trying to claim that your existence is a special case analogous to a relation of the lottery controller winning the lottery.

Your existence is not analogous to this unless you are claiming to be related to the controller of the universe.

Mojo,

https://www.google.com/#q=analogy
• a correspondence or partial similarity...
• a thing that is comparable to something else in significant respects...

- It seems to me that my attempted lottery analogy is analogous to my claim that we 'lifers' are all special cases -- just like all the lottery winners are special cases -- even though we lifers don't share any particular characteristic with each other, other than the fact that we each currently exist...
- Except ... that all of us have a reasonably possible alternative hypothesis under which the event is more likely than it is under the existing hypothesis.
- Anyway, it seems to me that my attempted lottery analogy is analogous to our particular existences, and the real question is something like, "Is it analogous enough?" Is it missing something vital/necessary for my claimed logical conclusion?

 

[jsfisher]

Jabba,
Are you still using different meanings for "E" when talking about H vs. ~H?

 

[Loss Leader]

Mojo,

https://www.google.com/#q=analogy
•a correspondence or partial similarity...
•a thing that is comparable to something else in significant respects...

- It seems to me that my attempted lottery analogy is analogous to my claim that we 'lifers' are all special cases -- just like all the lottery winners are special cases -- even though we lifers don't share any particular characteristic with each other, other than the fact that we each currently exist...
- Except ... that all of us have a reasonably possible alternative hypothesis under which the event is more likely than it is under the existing hypothesis.
- Anyway, it seems to me that my attempted lottery analogy is analogous to our particular existences, and the real question is something like, "Is it analogous enough?" Is it missing something vital/necessary for my claimed logical conclusion?

A. You cannot reason by analogy. It is only a tool for helping to explain something. No new information can be discovered by analogy.

2. Your "reasonably possible" alternative has no testable definition or evidence. It hasn't been shown to be at all possible, let alone reasonably so.

III. You're arguing that two events - your creation physically and your endowment with a soul - are more likely than only one of those events.

FOURTH. How is a pool of lottery winners a special case. Lotteries are designed to be won by a small pool of people over time. The existence of such winners is predicted by the model. In the same way, your existence is explained by the material universe as we know it.

Stop the nonsense. Present testable evidence that souls exist.

 

[Jabba]

To be honest, I'm not really following the specific debate on your claims all that closely, I'm just here for the probability stuff. But since you asked, I took a look through the past couple of pages, and here's my 2 cents:

Mojo's quest for finding fallacies is counter-productive. When playing that game, at some point you just see what you want to see. The one that I can see to be well-supported is that you are assigning a lower probability to a compound hypothesis including a simple hypothesis to which you, on its own, assign a higher probability (ie body vs body + soul). The other ones seem to be pushing it a little, increasingly so as increasingly more are "discovered"...

Caveman,
- I don't understand.
- OOFLam, is not that I have a body -- it's that each of us potential humans have only one, finite, life at most. My current existence is much more likely if that hypothesis is not true.

 

[caveman1917]

What I am saying is that Jabba observing his own existence is a foregone conclusion under both of his hypotheses; therefore, his observing his existence is useless for discriminating between those hypotheses.

If I'm understanding it correctly, your argument is that his P(E | H) is implicitly P(E | H, E) and likewise for ~H, because it's impossible to observe your own non-existence, and hence P(E | H) = P(E | ~H)? You seem to reach the same conclusion as me, that contrary to his claims his likelihoods are equal, but I don't think your argument for it is correct.

To see this, let's introduce the hypothesis G being "the electrical wire is live" and ~G being "the electrical wire isn't live", and E is still "I exist". G here has the same function as H in Jabba's argument. Let's use, say, P(E | G) = 0.01 and P(E | ~G) = 0.99. Here you should argue the same thing, that because it's impossible for me to observe my own non-existence, what I implicitly have would be P(E | G, E) and P(E | ~G, E), both of course being 1. Yet it is clearly true that, after having touched the wire and having survived, I should conclude that the wire likely wasn't live.

It's trivially true that you can not observe your own non-existence, but that doesn't mean anything and you can't just insert E into the likelihoods like that.

I don't think anyone is saying that you can never make a deduction based on your own existence.

Yet that seems exactly what some people have done with the Texas Sharpshooter/special case argument. Because his E is "I exist" therefor he is considering himself a "special case" hence error. This is false, as can be seen above by keeping E the same but changing the H to the electrical wire thing.

If I misunderstood that particular argument then please explain.

The HARKing argument seems to be that, because his E is considered after the fact (ie he hypothesizes about it after he already knows that he exists) therefor error. Yet by the same substitution of G for H, and assuming I just now started hypothesizing about a wire from 10 years ago, that in no way negates the argument regarding that wire from 10 years ago.

Also, if I misunderstood then please explain.

I thought you had also written that you agreed that the conjunction fallacy applied to Jabba's argument. Am I misremembering, or did you change your mind about that, because I fail to see how it applies.

I thought that at some point he made a claim about the probability of his body existing to be lower than the probability of both his body and his immortal soul existing. If I'm wrong then I'll gladly withdraw my claim. Personally I'm not all that fond of "fallacy-calling" as a method of debate anyway, a fallacy is just a name for a particular reasoning error, and if someone makes such a reasoning error then their opponent might just as well simply explain the error.

 

[caveman1917]

Caveman,
- I don't understand.
- OOFLam, is not that I have a body -- it's that each of us potential humans have only one, finite, life at most.

Ah, that's what the "AM" in OOFLAM stands for. I had figured that OOFL stood for "only one finite life" but couldn't figure out what the AM stood for.

Do you agree with the following statements?

1. Every soul (ie the subjective "I"), mortal or immortal, for at least the first part of its life "inhabits" a body.

2. A soul is mortal if it dies when the body it inhabits dies.

3. A soul is immortal if it continues to live after the body it inhabits dies.

This ignores a couple of other possibilities, but I presume it captures what you want to argue.

If you agree with these statements, then we can identify each soul with the body it started out with. All potential souls can then be identified with all potential bodies, and all actual souls with all actual bodies. The probability that you, Jabba, would be in the set of actual souls is then the same irrespective of whether your soul is mortal or immortal. It is simply the probability of your body being in the set of actual bodies.

My current existence is much more likely if that hypothesis is not true.

Why? The probability of your existence as an immortal soul is the same as the probability of your existence as a mortal soul. By the identification of souls with bodies, it is the same as the probability of your existence as a body tout court. Ergo P(E | H) = P(E | ~H).

 

[jsfisher]

- OOFLam, is not that I have a body

Without the body, your existence is not observable.

 

[JayUtah]

Is it missing something vital/necessary for my claimed logical conclusion?

Yes, it's still missing all the important things that have brought up over the past four years and recently emphasized again. And no, your fancy footwork doesn't fix your analogy or make it worth anything, because you didn't address any of the specific reasons why your analogy doesn't hold. You just spouted a bunch of nonsense and declared yourself correct.