Proof of Immortality, VI

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JayUtah said:
Don't blame this on your wife. You have plenty of time to hunt back and compose large anthology posts. You have plenty of time to repeat yourself ad nauseam and perform countless fringe resets. The problem is clearly not how much time you have, but how you choose to spend that time. You claim you're interested in what's wrong with your argument. But your elective behavior simply says otherwise.
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Bears repeating.
 
Jabba said:
Dave,- I was going from the following:

(227)LL,
- I do currently accept that in order for my current existence to be a legitimate target -- and the likelihood of my current existence, given OOFLam, properly fill the role of P(E|H) in the Bayesian formula -- I need to be somehow "set apart from the crowd" (or something similar). I have offered my argument for that case previously, but can't seem to find it now...
- Anyway, here's my rough explanation.
- Just to sort of "set the stage," we all take our current existence totally for granted, when it really should be the very last thing we take for granted...
- Even if I am just a process, and not a "thing1." I am still the only "thing2" that I*know*exists. Everything else (1&2) could just be my imagination.
- If I didn't currently exist, there might as well be nothing -- and, if I never existed, there might as well*never*be anything.
- That makes me special!
- I assume that you have the same credentials, and are special also.
- That ought to get us started...
(229)In what way does that make you special?
(252)Dave,
- That is the question!
- I think that the basic answer is that I'm the only self that I know does exist, the rest of you guys are hearsay. That sets me apart, and makes me special. I think it's the same claim that Toon makes.
(256) Again, how does that make you special? What does it set you apart from? Those things are only true from your perspective, and your perspective only exists after you already exist. Before you existed there was no you to have a perspective.

-You were #'s 252 and 256. That's why I had assumed that you had accepted being "set apart" would resolve the TSS problem.
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Are you sure? Because not only is #252 formatted like one of your posts, it is addressed to Dave.
 
Jabba said:
- I've provided what seems to me an obviously valid explanation numerous times in past chapters.
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Yes, and it has been explained, in detail, why it is not valid, for example here: http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=11871278&postcount=3198

I guess I should try again in this chapter.
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No, you should address the criticisms of your argument, not just restate it as if the criticisms don't exist.

- I'm old and slow. I'm not good at quick answers. I've had to admit misstatements numerous times.
- I have numerous duties at home.
- I allow myself 2 or 3 hours a day to devote to arguing with you guys (my hobby). I can't justify (to my wife) using any more time. I wish that I could. You must realize that I'm enjoying myself... Just like you guys are.
- Over the 5 years, I've engaged more than 100 opponents. Most opponents include multiple questions/objections in each post. Jay is especially likely to include several in each post, and provide multiple posts in a row.
- In addition, whenever I ask Jay to specify something from the past, he fusses at me for being lazy and refuses to help.
- I have offered (more than once) to use Jay as your side's spokesperson, but he can't deal with me dealing with only one or two sub-issues at a time, and still refuses to help.
- For some reason, no one here seems to accept the above as a reasonable excuse for my 'tardiness.'
- That should do it for this chapter.
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No, making excuses won't get you anywhere.

And, seriously? Two or three hours a day for the best part of five years isn't enough time for you to address the criticisms of your argument? That's, at a conservative estimate, something like 3,500 hours, or about two years worth of full-time 35 hour weeks.

Now stop wasting your precious (and finite) time with this whining, and address this: http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=11871278&postcount=3198
 
Mojo said:
And, seriously? Two or three hours a day for the best part of five years isn't enough time for you to address the criticisms of your argument?
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And one wonders if that 2-3 hours per day includes the time he's spending writing up his "blog" -- you know, to present all this to a "neutral" audience and thus claim victory another way. As far as I know, no one else is doing that. It's especially rude to claim to be time-constrained when that activity is also on the table. The only time he paid attention to the list of fatal flaws was when he contemplated putting it in the blog. It's becoming clear where his priorities really lie. He's not interested in the debate, but he is interested in telling a story about the debate.
 
godless dave said:
You would have to have a good definition of H, but you would need that to solve the Texas Sharpshooter problem anyway.

You would need a credible value for P(E|~H). Depending how H is defined that could be difficult, since ~H would have to be everything that isn't H. Contrasting a hypothesis with its complement only works when there are exactly two hypotheses without the possibility of any others.
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- H is that we each have only one finite life to live at most. "We" refers to our selves, or our senses of selves.
- I'm not sure what else I need to say in order to adequately describe H.
- I explained a long ways back how I figured the value of P(E|~H) -- but it's complicated, so I'll have to go back and dig it up...
 
Jabba said:
- I allow myself 2 or 3 hours a day to devote to arguing with you guys


.......

- Over the 5 years, I've engaged more than 100 opponents.
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Assuming 5 days per week at 2 hours per day, you would have spent more than 2,500 hours arguing over something. You are quite literally wasting your life with this nonsense. This isn't the first time you've been told this. If you don't have an ulterior motive and this isn't just performance art, you should really get some help. I am saying this out of kindness - please go and do something else. At minimum wage, you have wasted 25 grand already. Cut your losses.
 
Jabba said:
H is that we each have only one finite life to live at most.
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No, that's a proposition that simply stands in contrast to your claim that you are immortal. The proposition itself is a consequent of the materialist hypothesis, which is the operative theory. You acknowledged this when you proposed that you would only prove "immaterialism," not immortality. You further acknowledge it in your argument, which doesn't address the "one-finite-life" consequent, but rather the materialist hypothesis that gives rise to it.

As formulated, your proof is a false dilemma. In your eagerness to construct an indirect proof, you have left a very large excluded middle.

"We" refers to our selves, or our senses of selves.
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No. "Senses of selves" (i.e., the plural wording) is inappropriate for H because under H as materialism explains it, that is a property and not an entity. It is meaningless to express it as a plural. And the existence of "we" -- however formulated -- is E, not H. You're trying to sneak your presumptions into the argument as E, data.

I'm not sure what else I need to say in order to adequately describe H.
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The first few of the individually fatal flaws I identified in your proof deal with your errors in formulation. Start there.

I explained a long ways back how I figured the value of P(E|~H) -- but it's complicated, so I'll have to go back and dig it up...
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It's "complicated" because you never figured out how to account for the fact that in your proof, as formulated, that ~H is not a single hypothesis, but rather a set of hypotheses that are not necessarily mutually compatible. Since you don't know how to work the proof with that in mind, and since there are practically innumerable members of that set, you swept it under the carpet and did a fringe reset. It is complicated, and that complexity works against you. And you clearly don't know how to fix it. Fatal flaw.

Your flip-flop between which of H or ~H is the singular hypothesis is one of the topics I call out in my rebuttal.
 
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Jabba said:
- H is that we each have only one finite life to live at most. "We" refers to our selves, or our senses of selves.
- I'm not sure what else I need to say in order to adequately describe H.
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Explain why we only have one finite life to live. Is it because our lives are nothing more than our physical bodies, which can only exist once? Or is it because we have non-physical "selves" that only exist once?
 
Jabba said:
jond,
- I've provided what seems to me an obviously valid explanation numerous times in past chapters. I guess I should try again in this chapter.
- I'm old and slow. I'm not good at quick answers. I've had to admit misstatements numerous times.
- I have numerous duties at home.
- I allow myself 2 or 3 hours a day to devote to arguing with you guys (my hobby). I can't justify (to my wife) using any more time. I wish that I could. You must realize that I'm enjoying myself... Just like you guys are.
- Over the 5 years, I've engaged more than 100 opponents. Most opponents include multiple questions/objections in each post. Jay is especially likely to include several in each post, and provide multiple posts in a row.
- In addition, whenever I ask Jay to specify something from the past, he fusses at me for being lazy and refuses to help.
- I have offered (more than once) to use Jay as your side's spokesperson, but he can't deal with me dealing with only one or two sub-issues at a time, and still refuses to help.- For some reason, no one here seems to accept the above as a reasonable excuse for my 'tardiness.'
- That should do it for this chapter.
- And this might be considered "off-topic."
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With respect to the highlighted part, you do not hold yourself to the same standard, so that makes you a hypocrite. With respect to the entire post, it is filled with falsehoods, and that makes you a ... well, you know.
 
godless dave said:
Explain why we only have one finite life to live. Is it because our lives are nothing more than our physical bodies, which can only exist once? Or is it because we have non-physical "selves" that only exist once?
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- H holds that there isn't (or very likely isn't) anything that is non-physical. That being the case, the self existing more than once, or forever, would require that the brain would live forever, or the same brain would somehow return to life.
 
Jabba said:
- H holds that there isn't (or very likely isn't) anything that is non-physical. That being the case, the self existing more than once, or forever, would require that the brain would live forever, or the same brain would somehow return to life.
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Are you still formulating claims and definitions? Five years not enough to move beyond that?
 
Jabba said:
- H holds that there isn't (or very likely isn't) anything that is non-physical. That being the case, the self existing more than once, or forever, would require that the brain would live forever, or the same brain would somehow return to life.
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OK I'm glad we have that clarified now.

That means P(E|H) is the likelihood of my physical body existing and being alive. If we were to estimate this from the very beginning of the universe, that would be a very small number, but so would the likelihood of anything else eventually existing.
 
Jabba said:
H holds that there isn't (or very likely isn't) anything that is non-physical.
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Close enough.

That being the case, the self existing more than once, or forever, would require that the brain would live forever, or the same brain would somehow return to life.
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Right; under H there doesn't seem to be any route to immortality because that would requires something in addition to the physical body.

Consider then ~H. If H is materialism, then ~H is all theories that are not materialism. Under some number of hypotheses under ~H, there could be immaterial selves. Souls, of course, is what we're talking about. But whatever, just some aspect of the human existence that is immaterial.

If that aspect is hypothesized to be the seat of the self, not the body, then the question shifts to the longevity of such an entity. Immortality has a longevity component too, not just an immaterialism component. What godless dave is trying to get you to think about is the case where you have a non-material soul, but it doesn't persist for any longer, practically speaking, than your body.

You're clearly fastened on the Judeo-Christian model of incarnation. That's fine, but there's much more to ~H than that. In the hypothetical case where you disprove H and can hold ~H on that basis, you still haven't reconciled how that set of non-materialist hypotheses proves your point.

In other words, a false dilemma.

Your argument puts materialism square in the sights. And by that you hope to dispel its consequent, which is what you originally wanted to get rid of. That consequent is "one finite life," and disproving that was your original goal. But you can't do it with your present model because you have taken aim at only one of the antecedents of "one finite life." You have ignored completely that other possible antecedents are part of the ~H you accidentally formulated while cobbling up your indirect proof. Sometimes ~H is "we are immortal" in your model. Other times ~H is "everything but materialism." Your critics call you on the switch, but you ignore them.
 
godless dave said:
That means P(E|H) is the likelihood of my physical body existing and being alive. If we were to estimate this from the very beginning of the universe, that would be a very small number, but so would the likelihood of anything else eventually existing.
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It follows from the chaos of the system that P(E|H) would be a small number, just by estimating the number of distinct and different specimens such a system would produce. But the salient point is that the number doesn't matter. As you point out, such a condition would hold for all specimens. The likelihood of their arising has meaning only if there were something significant about that outcome before the system operated. Jabba introduces all sorts of rhetorical nonsense to try to enliven such a meaning.
 
godless dave said:
OK I'm glad we have that clarified now.

That means P(E|H) is the likelihood of my physical body existing and being alive. If we were to estimate this from the very beginning of the universe, that would be a very small number, but so would the likelihood of anything else eventually existing.
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And the likelihood of Jabba's living body and his soul both existing, which is required for Jabba's current existence under his preferred hypothesis, cannot be greater than P(E|H).
 
Jabba said:
- OK.
- Another hypothetical: if I were able to solve the TSS problem, what more would I need to solve?
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Wow. You can't solve the TSS problem. Five years of failure should tell you that. It is nothing new.

Far more important is why you have failed to present anything at all.
 
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