Proof of Immortality, VI

[Hokulele]

Hans,
- But again, 1) Dave does accept an infinity of potential selves. And 2) I accept that I need to be, somehow, set apart from the rest of the infinity of potential winners. Setting myself apart from the rest of you guys is my key task at the moment.

Does this mean you now understand the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy and why it is fatal to your argument?

 

[jond]

Jond,
- If you select one issue from the above, I will do my best to answer it.

Why? You asked a question, and JayUtah answered it thoroughly and completely. Now it's up to you to answer him thoroughly and completely, or admit that you're not capable of debating at this level.

 

[John Jones]

Jond,
- If you select one issue from the above, I will do my best to answer dodge it.

FTFY

 

[JayUtah]

Dave does accept an infinity of potential selves.

No, not in the way you want that statement to mean. You insinuate that materialism must include the notion of an infinite number of potential selves because that's the way potentiality works. Dave several times said, to the effect, that an infinity of potential souls exists in the same way an infinity of potential Volkswagens exists. And that would indeed follow if your potentiality argument were a necessary adjunct to existence per se.

But since that observation is fatal to your claim -- leading to the same "improbability" calculation for inanimate objects that don't require souls, yet nevertheless exist -- you equivocate and beg the question that the potentiality which results in your Big Denominator applies only to souls. Selves are special because you say so. Dave doesn't accept that begged question, nor is the concept of the self that leads to your equivocation any part whatsoever of materialism. He accepts your premise arguendo to show how the resulting argument fails by reductio ad absurdum. And by my count, this is the fourth or fifth time you've asked him to repeat this discussion. Please try to move the discussion forward and not just plow overturned ground.

I accept that I need to be, somehow, set apart from the rest of the infinity of potential winners. Setting myself apart from the rest of you guys is my key task at the moment.

Your attempts to overcome the Texas sharpshooter fallacy have simply been to argue that it's not a fallacy, and to try to analogize it in several unrelated examples. To that end, you've been asked several times to explain the Texas sharpshooter fallacy in your own words and explain why it's a fallacy. (It is, despite your wishes to the contrary.) Your assiduous evasion of this step leads us to believe you know what the fallacy is, you realize its effect on your argument, and you don't wish to face up to that.

 

[JayUtah]

If you select one issue from the above, I will do my best to answer it.

Unacceptable. It's rude for you to expect your critics to be satisfied with only your partial answers to their rebuttals. Further, the justification for not accepting partial answers is in the post: you use this alleged focus as an excuse to dodge parts of the discussion you raise and then abandon when they are refuted. Having thus abused the privilege, you are no longer entitled to invoke it.

Your posts of late have not focused on one issue. They implicate three of the fatal flaws I identified in your argument: the Texas sharpshooter fallacy, your straw-man approach to materialism, and the mathematical problem of division by infinity. Since you have raised all these issues and refuse to maintain focus, I don't see why your critics should be content with your unwillingness to match the scope of your rejoinder to the scope of the rebuttal.

And you're the one who recently volunteered the postured statement that once you clear up the Texas sharpshooter fallacy, the rest of your argument falls into place. If you're going to bring up your perception of the degree of error in your proof, then other people's assessments of the degree of error cannot be dismissed as unripe, irrelevant, or out of scope. I have identified some dozen individually fatal flaws in your argument. Since you have lately claimed your argument contains only one outstanding flaw, I am entitled to know how you plan to deal with the other flaws others have identified. Please provide that.

 

[RoboTimbo]

Dave,
- Yeah. We discussed this before -- but, I can't remember your answer to the following issue.
- The likelihood that your ticket would be the one ticket randomly drawn from a pool of a million tickets is one over one million. If we could have a lottery with an infinity of tickets, and drew 7 billion tickets, the likelihood of randomly drawing your ticket would be 7 billion over infinity. Doesn't that represent our brain experiment here?

I've asked you before and others are also asking: can you explain the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy in your own words so that we can know you aren't engaging in it? Otherwise, it's one of a number of fatal flaws to your argument.

 

[JayUtah]

Doesn't that represent our brain experiment here?

No, it doesn't.

In materialism, the self does not and cannot have a separate existence, "potential" or otherwise. Self-awareness is explained in materialism as a property of an entity -- that entity being the physical body. If you're using "seven billion over infinity" to reckon the probability of self-awareness under materialism, you can't use concepts that don't arise in materialism. But that's exactly what you're doing. It's one of the fatal flaws I identified that you refuse to deal with.

The event E is that you exist and are self aware. Nothing more than that. "Self-awareness" does not, as limited to E, mean the self or soul whose existence you are trying to prove. You keep trying to describe this problem as equivalent to a lottery or a raffle. But instead you're inferring the existence of a lottery from nothing more than being handed a piece of paper that you assume is a lottery ticket. You are trying to read your entire argument into E as if it were part of the data.

 

[Mojo]

- But again, 1) Dave does accept an infinity of potential selves.

You have misunderstood what Dave has posted about this. Does this mean that (using your farmer/deer analogy) we can be pretty sure that you were aiming to misunderstand him?

And 2) I accept that I need to be, somehow, set apart from the rest of the infinity of potential winners.

Under the hypothesis you are trying to disprove, there is no "infinity of potential winners".

Setting myself apart from the rest of you guys is my key task at the moment.

No, you need to set yourself apart from all the "potential" Jabbas that could have existed in your place. Not from other people who exist.

Not that this would help you, because your "proof", even if it was valid, could only disprove hypotheses in which "selves" exist independently of bodies. In the hypothesis you claim to be trying to disprove there are no independently existing "selves".

 

[MRC_Hans]

Hans,
- But again, 1) Dave does accept an infinity of potential selves. And 2) I accept that I need to be, somehow, set apart from the rest of the infinity of potential winners. Setting myself apart from the rest of you guys is my key task at the moment.

I don't accept an infinity of potential selves. The concept "potential self" does not make sense. And you your task is not to set yourself apart. Because you are just another person. Your task is to set each and every human being that ever lived apart from .... what?

Hans

 

[Jabba]

Not in the slightest. Human selves aren't drawn from a pool. Like other animals, humans engage in sexual reproduction. A new human comes from a combination of a male and female parent.

Maybe this will help: http://www.biology-pages.info/S/Sexual_Reproduction.html

Dave,

- If your Dad hadn't existed during the same time as your Mom, your self could never have existed -- but that particular combination of sperm cell and ovum would still have represented a person -- you.

- Your Dad probably produced about a sextillion sperm cells in his life time (interesting coincidence). Your Mom probably came with about 500 ovum. You are here because your specific sperm cell got together with your specific ovum. If you have 2 siblings, the likelihood of you ever existing -- given OOFLam, and that your Mom and Dad had intercourse -- is only (1+2)/500,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.
- What I'm claiming is that the 500 sextillion combinations of sperm cells (from your Dad) and ova (from Cleopatra), still represent different selves though none of them really had a chance to "actualize."
- How many of your potential brothers and sisters never had a chance because your parents didn't have intercourse at the right time?
- Put aside the word "potential" for the moment. Would you agree that every combination of human sperm cell that has ever existed and human ovum that has ever existed represent different human selves?

 

[godless dave]

Dave,

- If your Dad hadn't existed during the same time as your Mom, your self could never have existed -- but that particular combination of sperm cell and ovum would still have represented a person -- you.

- Your Dad probably produced about a sextillion sperm cells in his life time (interesting coincidence). Your Mom probably came with about 500 ovum. You are here because your specific sperm cell got together with your specific ovum. If you have 2 siblings, the likelihood of you ever existing -- given OOFLam, and that your Mom and Dad had intercourse -- is only (1+2)/500,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.
- What I'm claiming is that the 500 sextillion combinations of sperm cells (from your Dad) and ova (from Cleopatra), still represent different selves though none of them really had a chance to "actualize."

If they never had a chance to actualize then the likelihood of them existing is zero.

- How many of your potential brothers and sisters never had a chance because your parents didn't have intercourse at the right time?

There were billions of potential combinations, maybe more. Of course a woman can only give birth to so many children in her lifetime.

Most importantly the number is finite. It's not infinite. Infinity is not the denominator.

- Put aside the word "potential" for the moment. Would you agree that every combination of human sperm cell that has ever existed and human ovum that has ever existed represent different human selves?

Not in any meaningful way.

 

[Jabba]

I don't accept an infinity of potential selves. The concept "potential self" does not make sense. And you your task is not to set yourself apart. Because you are just another person. Your task is to set each and every human being that ever lived apart from .... what?

Hans

Hans,
- Does each potential combination of sperm cell from your Dad and Ovum from your Mom (except your particular combination) represent a potential, brother or sister?

 

[JayUtah]

...still represent different selves though none of them really had a chance to "actualize."

You're just using a new set of words to foist "potential selves" all over again.

Put aside the word "potential" for the moment. Would you agree that every combination of human sperm cell that has ever existed and human ovum that has ever existed represent different human selves?

You put away the word "potential" but you didn't do away with the concept of potentiality, which remains fundamentally broken in your argument for reasons we have laboriously explained to you. Stop trying to make your same old tired arguments using different words, and actually look at how the refutation affects your argument.

 

[JayUtah]

Hans,
- Does each potential combination of sperm cell from your Dad and Ovum from your Mom (except your particular combination) represent a potential, brother or sister?

No. You're trying to make "represent" mean your concept of pseudo-existence that you made up just so you have something to pretend to count. Does each batch of iron ore "represent" a potential Volkswagen?

 

[The Sparrow]

Hans,
- Does each potential combination of sperm cell from your Dad and Ovum from your Mom (except your particular combination) represent a potential, brother or sister?

LOL, you continue to get increasingly desperate trying to weasel in anything you can by making up new terms.

How can a hypothetical future event represent anything?

Does the game of cribbage I plan to play tonight represent a possible perfect game of all 29s?

Don't bother answering. I know you won't anyway.

 

[Loss Leader]

- Put aside the word "potential" for the moment. Would you agree that every combination of human sperm cell that has ever existed and human ovum that has ever existed represent different human selves?

No, because that's stupid. How shall we run experiments on people who don't exist?

 

[Waterman]

Dave,
snip
- What I'm claiming is that the 500 sextillion combinations of sperm cells (from your Dad) and ova (from Cleopatra), still represent different selves though none of them really had a chance to "actualize."
snip

I do have yet another question... how can something that is physically impossible be considered potential?

I could consider a potential meal to have:

A drum stick from King Henry the VIII larder
A salad made from South American Tomatos fresh from 700
and the first beer to be brewed on the moon (within the next 50 years)

Can I call that a potential meal and can I use the same process to determine all the potential meals I could have? Even though it is physically impossible?

 

[JesseCuster]

The connection between reality and the selves that Jabba needs for the denominator in his pseudo-mathematical proof of immortality grows ever more tenuous.

He's currently reduced to begging for people to agree with the concept of imaginary pairings of sperm and ova representing potential selves that quasi-exist in some ill-defined infinite pool.

 

[Loss Leader]

He's currently reduced to begging for people to agree with the concept of imaginary pairings of sperm and ova representing potential selves that quasi-exist in some ill-defined infinite pool.

Give Jabba some credit. He's been begging for that agreement for four years.

 

[Mojo]

- If your Dad hadn't existed during the same time as your Mom, your self could never have existed -- but that particular combination of sperm cell and ovum would still have represented a person -- you.

- Your Dad probably produced about a sextillion sperm cells in his life time (interesting coincidence). Your Mom probably came with about 500 ovum. You are here because your specific sperm cell got together with your specific ovum. If you have 2 siblings, the likelihood of you ever existing -- given OOFLam, and that your Mom and Dad had intercourse -- is only (1+2)/500,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.
- What I'm claiming is that the 500 sextillion combinations of sperm cells (from your Dad) and ova (from Cleopatra), still represent different selves though none of them really had a chance to "actualize."
- How many of your potential brothers and sisters never had a chance because your parents didn't have intercourse at the right time?
- Put aside the word "potential" for the moment. Would you agree that every combination of human sperm cell that has ever existed and human ovum that has ever existed represent different human selves?

Jabba, do you agree that for your existence to be an observed event, your body must exist?