Proof of Immortality III

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JayUtah said:
This is a serious issue for your critics. You've selected Bayesian inference as the method you want to use to "prove mathematically" that you are immortal. You've chosen priors P(H) and P(~H), which some of your critics assure the rest of us is entirely acceptable.

But then you have also chosen values for the conditions P(E|H) and P(E|~H), which those same critics assure you is not at all acceptable. Your method is wrong. And it's wrong in a way that P(H|E) ends up impossible for all H, which -- let's be frank -- is exactly what you wanted to have happen...
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Whomever,
- I assume that Jay is referring to things said by jt and caveman. I don't have time to track down those claims -- can someone direct me?
 
Jabba said:
jt and caveman,
- Do you agree with Jay?
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Stop trying to divide and conquer, Jabba. Here you compute the values from numbers you simply made up. It doesn't matter that you've tried to disguise your kiester-mining for those values. You simply assign arbitrary probabilities to the mish-mash of a partition you invented for ~H (which the people you call out to have already rejected) and propose to derive P(E|~H) based on that monstrosity.

Now I supposed you'll have to confess to equivocating on "given." The notation P(E|H) is read "the probability of E given H." Congruently P(E|~H) is read "probability of E given not-H." This is not the same as "the logic of [your] givens" referred to by Loss Leader. In his syllogism, which you have embraced, the premises
1. If I am mortal, there is no chance that I exist.
2. If I am immortal, it is certain that I exist.​
you treat as given -- in the sense that they are essentially propositions you believe you have proven (you haven't), or axioms that require no proof.
 
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Jabba said:
Whomever,
- I assume that Jay is referring to things said by jt and caveman. I don't have time to track down those claims -- can someone direct me?
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http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=11457528#post11457528

This is the last time I will look up something for you that you "don't have time" to look up yourself. You are responsible for following the discussion. If you don't care to devote sufficient time to that exercise to avoid having your critics do your legwork for you, you may not ask them to indulge you without incurring legitimate criticism of your laziness. Nor may you demand respect you have not earned, especially when you admit you are derelict in reading your critics' responses. This discussion has spun unresolved for more than four years, in large measure to these shenanigans on your part.
 
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Jabba said:
Mojo,
- But, it is -- pretty much -- what I'm saying.
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Why, if you think you have no possibility of existing, do you think it is possible for your body to exist. If you are mortal, your self and your body are the same thing.
 
jond said:
Why, if you think you have no possibility of existing, do you think it is possible for your body to exist. If you are mortal, your self and your body are the same thing.
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As I read it he believes he has no chance of living as a body only, and that he believes he requires both a body and a soul in order to express the as-yet unenumerated properties of the self. In other words, he has assumed his desired conclusion as a premise.
 
JayUtah said:
As I read it he believes he has no chance of living as a body only, and that he believes he requires both a body and a soul in order to express the as-yet unenumerated properties of the self. In other words, he has assumed his desired conclusion as a premise.
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Then how can the self not require a specific body? His body exists and there's no question that damage to his brain affects his sense of self, so they cannot be entirely separated. Further, if he's correct and Jabba's self could have instead of installing itself in his body and rather chose one called, say, Kilgore Trout, who is it that we're communicating with? And if we're communicating with Kilgore Trout, but it's really Jabba even though there is literally no way to know that, what on earth is the point of postulating it? The whole idea is absurd! But, of course, everyone but Jabba knows that...
 
But wait, there's more! So, if selfs can exist without bodies, then bodies can exist without selves. So, we should be able to find bodies, without brain damage, that have no selves.
 
Jabba said:
caveman,
- For me, If reincarnation is actual, we all must come from the same, infinitely divisible, bucket of consciousness -- and more than one of us was Napoleon in a previous lifetime. We must keep dividing. And all of us must have been the singularity, God?
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Sorry but I can not make sense of this.
 
JayUtah said:
In his syllogism, which you have embraced, the premises
1. If I am mortal, there is no chance that I exist.
2. If I am immortal, it is certain that I exist.​
you treat as given -- in the sense that they are essentially propositions you believe you have proven (you haven't), or axioms that require no proof.
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Premise 2 is irrelevant here though, it doesn't actually come into the argument.

1. mortal => ~exist
3. exist
Therefor, ~mortal

By modus tollens: (mortal => ~exist) <=> (exist => ~mortal)
 
JayUtah said:
Agreed. The syllogism can certainly be simplified as you have done. I copypasted from Loss Leader's post verbatim lest there seem the appearance of a straw man.
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"I exist if and only if I am immortal."

A fine statement if every single part of it weren't undefined, including: I; exist; and immortal.
 
caveman1917 said:
Sorry but I can not make sense of this.
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It's one of the classic formulations of reincarnation meant to explain the growth of the human race. Today there are billions of humans alive, whereas thousands of years ago there were much fewer humans. The hypothesis is that after death, the soul that inhabited a single body is fractured into a number of child souls that inhabit the number of new bodies that account for the human population growth rates. A corollary theory says that the subdivided souls are in some respect less vigorous than the originals, leading to the maxim that our forebears are less diluted in whatever qualities the reincarnate souls are said to possess. Not that this helps make sense, but it alludes to a concept that others have considered.
 
caveman1917 said:
This doesn't follow.
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Sure it does. In the Jabbaverse, selves exist independently from bodies. Bodies exist, but there is not specific connection between them and the selves that apparently inhabit them. If selves don't require bodies, why should bodies require selves?
 
jond said:
Sure it does.
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No it doesn't. Many religions which have an afterlife state that every body has a soul but that the soul continues to live independently from the body after the body dies. There is nothing in the statement "a soul can exist independently from the body" that entails that a body can exist independently of a soul.
 
caveman1917 said:
No it doesn't. Many religions which have an afterlife state that every body has a soul but that the soul continues to live independently from the body after the body dies. There is nothing in the statement "a soul can exist independently from the body" that entails that a body can exist independently of a soul.
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And yet Jabba keeps insisting that he doesn't need to account for his body in his calculations. If his body cannot exist without his soul then he needs to account for his body's existence as well as his soul.
 
Loss Leader said:
All of this is a bunch of nonsense. Jabba's argument has nothing to do with Bayes or anything else. He is saying:

1. If I am mortal, there is no chance that I exist.
2. If I am immortal, it is certain that I exist.
3. I exist
Therefore: I am immortal.

The problem isn't in his logic above, it's in the logic of his givens. They have absolutely no foundation whatsoever in testable fact. There's no way to assign a truth value to them. Thus, there's no way to assign a truth value to his ultimate conclusion.

If Jabba wants to advance his argument, he needs to provide evidence that his givens are true. This is something that he cannot do. He cannot even define what he means by "immortality," let alone provide falsifiable evidence for it.

And this all rests on the largely unspoken assumption that God exists. After some thousands of posts, Jabba has finally and very recently referred to a "creator." He can't provide a working definition for that, either.
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Jabba said:
LL,
- I like that!
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Mojo said:
That's kind of the problem.
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Jabba said:
Mojo,
- But, it is -- pretty much -- what I'm saying.
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godless dave said:
And that's what astounds us, because it doesn't make sense.

Starting with this part:
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Loss Leader said:
1. If I am mortal, there is no chance that I exist.
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Dave,
- To say it more precisely, "If OOFLam is true, there is virtually no likelihood that I would currently exist." And then, if OOFLam is not true, the likelihood that I would currently exist is about .62.
 
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