Jabba
Philosopher
- Joined
- Feb 23, 2012
- Messages
- 5,613
- Aha!
- Back to what I claim makes for a legitimate target...
- That was followed by a bunch of back and forth until I told you...,
- Where would you like to go from here?
Proof of Immortality, VI
- Thread starter jond
- Start date
- Status
- Back to what I claim makes for a legitimate target...
godless dave
Great Dalmuti
- Joined
- Jul 25, 2007
- Messages
- 8,266
There's really nowhere to go. You still can't explain why being very unlikely (calculated from the beginning of the universe) makes the existence of a self questionable. Your argument fails because it's based on a premise you can't support.
RoboTimbo
Hostile Nanobacon
You could explain your understanding of the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy and give more examples of it.
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
Yes, the "I'm a special snowflake" argument. Your angsty, subjective nonsense is not evidence that you were preordained to be who you are, such that the probability of it arising by chance is both meaningful and negligibly small. Nor does your delusion of grandeur matter in the slightest according to the materialist hypothesis you're trying to refute. You must evaluate P(E|H) as if H were true, and H has no notion of adjusting the behavior of chaotic systems on the basis of one product of it really, really wanting to be special.
That "back and forth" you callously dismiss was the refutation of your claim.
Indeed, after admitting you could not rejoin all the rebuttals to your claims you accused your critics of being biased and small-minded. That's extremely shameful and dishonest because we know how your arguments fare elsewhere: no better than here.
You said that if you could get over the Texas sharpshooter fallacy, the rest of your argument will fall into place. First, you can't get over the Texas sharpshooter fallacy, so it remains a fatal flaw in your argument. You cannot even describe in your own words what the fallacy is and why it's a fallacy. So that casts doubt on your ability to assess the strength of your own argument.
And the rest of your argument does not fall into place. There were some dozen or so flaws identified, any one of them fatal to your argument. You know they exist because you referred to the post in which they were given. Where we should go from here, if you have conceded your failure to overcome the Texas sharpshooter fallacy, is that you should concede that you cannot prove immortality via mathematics as you claimed you thought you could. But after five years of covering the same ground repeatedly, that's not likely to happen. So what you should do is see if you can overcome the other fatal flaws you're presently ignoring.
Wallowing in one point or another forever is not productive, so what we would like is for you to write a sentence or two for each of the fatal flaws, outlining what you think the argument would be that would free you from your fall. That's what a conscientious person would ordinarily do when presented with a list of errors in his claim. To be able to claim victory, one would need to show he has a plan for all the errors.
caveman1917
Philosopher
- Joined
- Feb 26, 2015
- Messages
- 8,143
The entity that was you from 10 years ago no longer exists either. Hence the need for properly defined terms, such as "(im)mortality".
Belz...
Fiend God
Back to square one, unfortunately, as you're wont to do. This time, however, might I suggest listening to your critics?
Yes Jabba we keep coming back to claims that you never address.
It's bad enough having to explain to another grown man how a discussion works. Having to do it a half decade into the the discussion is pathetic.
What you dismiss as 'back and forth' was us explaining to you how everything you are saying and everyway in which you are saying it is either wrong or meaningless.
Well the part where you actually proof immortality would be nice.
Loss Leader
I would save the receptionist., Moderator
You admit that your premise is unsupportable and that, therefore, your conclusion cannot be considered to be true.
Jabba
Philosopher
- Joined
- Feb 23, 2012
- Messages
- 5,613
Dave,
- Here's how it started.
- For another thing, in many situations, the specific event is only one of NUMEROUS possible results (millions?) -- and for unlikelihood to be of consequence in such a case, the specific result has to be meaningfully set apart from most other possible results.
- So, I think you're just saying that my explanation for how I am meaningfully set apart re OOFLam doesn't work. Is that right?
godless dave
Great Dalmuti
- Joined
- Jul 25, 2007
- Messages
- 8,266
That's right.
caveman1917
Philosopher
- Joined
- Feb 26, 2015
- Messages
- 8,143
The moon is made of cheese, therefor the sky is blue.
Pixel42
Schrödinger's cat
"The aim of argument should not be victory, but progress." Joseph Joubert
This thread would make Joubert cry.
This thread would make Joubert cry.
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
That is right. Your italicized paragraph is correct enough but importantly incomplete. In most situations there are many possible outcomes. For the likelihood of any one outcome to have the sort of consequence you require in your model, the specific outcome has to be identified ("set apart") and characterized before the outcome occurs, and by criteria that rise above simply later being the outcome that occurs. Pre-specification, pre-identificaion, pre-ordination -- pick your word. The key in all cases is "pre-". You cannot choose the "intended" outcome with knowledge of what the outcome was or will be and declare the likelihood to have the kind of statistical import you're purporting in your model.
The analogy I chose was the poker game. The rules of poker have been around quite some time. For each particular variant, a list of hands or prototypical hands is provided along with an ordering ranking them. This forms the basis for assigning significance to sets of five cards drawn or dealt from the deck. The raw probability of being dealt any combination of five cards from a well-shuffled deck is the same for all combinations. You have as much chance of being dealt a royal flush of spades as any other combination of five cards. What makes the royal flush significant is that it is one of the pre-specified hands. We agreed prior to playing that this would be a winning hand. That agreement constitutes an assignment of significance.
What we may not do in poker is, after being dealt a random hand with no pre-specified significance, declare that to be a new winning hand. It attempts to assign significance based on knowledge of the outcome. The outcome is significant only because it was chosen, not because it was significant before the deal, and not -- for example -- because it follows the general criteria by which other outcomes are assigned significance (i.e., patterns of colors, values, and suits).
Your argument does the equivalent of inventing new winning poker hands after having been dealt the cards. You're trying to say the cards you were dealt are somehow now significant simply because there was a very small chance of being dealt that hand out of all the hands that were possible. A moment's thought demonstrates that would be true for all the other players at the table, for all hands played.
This analogy becomes a little more illustrative if we change the exercise from playing poker to determining whether the deck is stacked. You're handed a deck of cards and you are told the deck is either stacked or well shuffled. We can use Bayesian inference to find this out.
("Stacked," of course, means the cards are intentionally ordered in such a way as to produce hands of significance for some given game. And there are many games you can play with a standard deck of cards. To stack the deck for blackjack would mean arranging the cards so that a sequence of them adds cardwise to 21. To stack the deck for baccarat would mean arranging the cards so that certain strings of two or more cards have a modulus of 9. To stack the deck for poker would mean arranging the cards to create patterns of known winning poker hands. Also, stacking the deck is typically done to favor one player among N players, so it means every Nth card is intentionally arranged for. We'll assume two players of a simplified form of poker that simply involves evaluating each hand -- no hole cards or draws, and no replay of discards.)
What we have to work with are the hypotheses: the deck is stacked, or the deck is well-shuffled. And we have a set of easily-computed probabilities for drawing each kind of significant hand from a well-shuffled deck. Our priors could start with equal probability for stacked and shuffled. Our data, naturally, will be a series of hands played. What takes us from our priors to our posteriors is a model based on the set of probabilities that each hand will arise in a randomized deck. These are objective and immutable; they derive from the mathematics of the card deck. Where we encode subjective belief for this inference, if any, is in the priors. We may decide the guy who gave us the cards is shifty and assign a higher prior probability that the deck is stacked. Something like that would make this truly Bayesian.
If the deck is randomized, we would expect "significant" poker hands to be drawn by both players in a distribution roughly similar to what the likelihood ratio predicts for a randomized deck drawn to exhaustion. If one player draws "significant" poker hands at a markedly more favorable distribution than his opponent, the posterior probability increases that the deck is stacked.
Okay, that's a basic example. Here's where the Texas sharpshooter fallacy fits in. Let's re-run the experiment, only this time one of the players is allowed to arbitrarily declare his hand to be a "new" winning poker hand after he draws it. Now in the case where the deck was truly well-shuffled, this would bias our inference toward stacking, because the Texas-sharpshooter player would be drawing random hands that wrongly get counted as "wins" and skew his win rate. That would lead us to arrive at a posterior probability that the deck is stacked, but which factually is the wrong answer. That's why this is a fallacy. The experiment only works if we stick to the rules of poker and count as winning hands only those that were identified as such before the experiment began.
In order to get around this, you've cited hypothetical examples that you say justify identifying the outcome as the intended target after the fact. But in each of those cases I was able to show you how you interpolated into the example hidden sources of information that informed the intended outcome and would have been known or inferable prior to sampling the outcome. You cannot show any such circumstances for your actual model, wherein you simply identify those people who currently exist as the desired outcome, on no more basis than that they were chosen. Your hypothetical examples are not analogous to your model. Your model commits the Texas sharpshooter fallacy.
Loss Leader
I would save the receptionist., Moderator
The conclusion may be true, of course. However, its truth value cannot be determined via the reasoning presented.
I think you know that's what I meant.
caveman1917
Philosopher
- Joined
- Feb 26, 2015
- Messages
- 8,143
I know no such thing, I have no reason to assume such thing, and have you considered actually writing what you mean instead?
Jabba
Philosopher
- Joined
- Feb 23, 2012
- Messages
- 5,613
- Here again, is my attempted explanation:
- Anyway, I doubt that I can be much more convincing (though, I will try again), and will place most of my hope, instead, in being able to convince a more neutral audience.
- Try this. My current existence is analogous to my lottery ticket being the one drawn from a lottery of 10100 tickets, with all the remainder tickets being devoid of owners...
- As far as I know, I'm the only eye on the universe(s) there is. It's quite a coincidence that I would currently exist -- if I can exist for only one finite life at most.
- And, there is a coincidence here, in that there are two special events coinciding: it is me out of the gadzillions of possible selves, and it is 2017 out of the gadzillions of possible years.
- I’ll be back.
godless dave
Great Dalmuti
- Joined
- Jul 25, 2007
- Messages
- 8,266
Was any of that true before you existed?
How is that a coincidence? What's so special about you? What's so special about 2017?
None of this in any way sets you apart from any of the people who could have existed but don't.
Belz...
Fiend God
You'll be hard-pressed to find a more neutral audience. You'll either find a less patient one or one that already agrees with you. Neither of those are more neutral.
No. You've been told why it's not analogous at all. Stop it.
Why would it be a coincidence and not just a product of deterministic processes?
There really isn't.
No. You have not been able to show that those possible selves exist, much less establish their number, or justify why they matter at all.
It couldn't be any other moment. We move through time without fail. You're just adding more factors to your equation without justification.
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
The same "special snowflake" argument you posted yesterday. Don't simply repeat yourself when, in the meantime, your critics reminded you how that argument was refuted.
Much to the annoyance of your critics, who don't need your arguments repeated to them ad nauseam. They know what your claims are. They have refuted them, and you simply ignore the refutations and then go on to blame them for being biased and small-minded.
That has already been attempted. Your arguments didn't fare any better in that forum than they do here. The problem is not that your critics are biased and closed-minded, so kindly stop trying to gaslight them to that effect. Your critics, in fact, have given you clear, objective reasons why your argument has failed. You know those lists of reasons exist, yet you ignore them in favor of the delusion that you're an unsung genius and that it must be your critics' unfair behavior that keeps you from being seen as such.
'
That's not how a lottery works, even if the lottery analogy applied to materialism. If nobody buys the tickets, they don't go into the pot. If you're the only one who buys a ticket, you're the one who wins. Do you even think this nonsense through before you post it?
Solipsism defeats your argument. If you are the only real inhabitant of the universe then it is no coincidence it exists for you. But that's moot.
Yes, there is quite a small probability that the chaotic system by which things come into being in materialism would have produced you as you are now. And if that had been the pre-determined intent, that probability would mean something. But it wasn't, so it doesn't. Once again, try explaining the Texas sharpshooter fallacy to us in your own words, and then maybe you'll understand why this argument is not objectively convincing.
But if your pattern lately holds, you'll be back only to repeat your debunked claims verbatim and insult your critics without reading what they say. How is that "effective debate?"
HighRiser
Graduate Poster
To this member of the audience, in the peanut gallery, it seems that solipsism is useless.
Have you sorted out the Texas Sharpshooter problem yet? Ignoring it won't make it go away.
- Status