Proof of Immortality, VII

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zooterkin said:
Not sure; but if your parents didn't have any children, chances are you won't either.
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Bloodnok:
Ned Seagoon? Well well well, what a coincidence! Seagoon! Yes of course, I remember. Didn't your father have a son?

Seagoon:
Oh I... I never asked him about his private affairs.

Bloodnok:
Seagoon, of course, of course, yes! I knew your father before you were born.

Seagoon:
I didn't.

Bloodnok:
I wish you had, things might have been different.
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http://www.thegoonshow.net/scripts_show.asp?title=s05e24_yehti
 
Jabba said:
- Are you guys saying that P(E|H) -- in our situation -- equals 1.00?
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We're saying that you're tainting your reckoning of P(E|H) with other factors such as P(E) and P(H). This is because you have a poor conceptual understanding of what those are and how they would properly function in a statistical inference. This was one of the fatal flaws I identified last year. Instead of displaying an understanding of how the model works, you just assign random numbers to each of the terms in it. This is part of why people are asking you why you put the superfluous zeros after the decimal point. It seems you're trying to impress, rather than do things right. We aren't impressed, and neither will any other neutral audience be.

Also, you keep avoiding the question of how having a soul fixes things. You assert that P(E|H) is computed as very, very small, therefore you must have a soul. But because of the false dilemma you don't get to talk about the probability of an immortal soul as 1 - P(H|E). What you need to show us is P(soul|awareness)/P(materialism|awareness), properly formulated. You have already admitted you can't do this. And we agree, because it would require information that cannot be known. Because it cannot be known, you seem to think it's okay to make up whatever numbers you want, and that the result constitutes proof.

Instead, today you foisted yet another made-up number and polled for agreement. You begged agreement because you have no actual argument or data. Having received no agreement, you've embarked on a predictable course of obfuscation and evasion to distract from your latest ham-fisted foist having fallen as flat as all its predecessors. Now picture yourself presenting this to a conference room of bona fide statisticians. You say, "The likelihood of thus-and-such is this number." Do you really think not one single person in that room is going to raise his hand and say, "Um, Mr. Savage, how did you arrive at that value?" Do you really think you can avoid that question, in that company, by asking them if they know the difference between probability and likelihood? When you explain your rationale, and they say, "But Mr. Savage you are letting values vary in your reckoning of the likelihood which are, in fact, fixed," what are you going to say?
 
godless dave said:
I can't speak for anyone else, but I was answering the actual question you asked. This was your question:



That was the question I answered. "What is P(E|H)?" is a different question.
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Dave,
- So, what is your answer to the latter?
 
Jabba said:
Dave,
- So, what is your answer to the latter?
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The same as all the other times you have asked me that question: I do not have enough data to make an estimate. I do not know all the starting conditions at the beginning of the universe. Even starting in, say, 1940, the year before my father was born, I would not have enough data to make an estimate.
 
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Jabba said:
So, what is your answer to the latter?
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Do not shift the burden of proof. You are the one claiming this is a computable value, and that it is computed as being very, very small. That burden is not satisfied by plunking a series of naked numbers on the table and asking people to agree with them. Further, your method completely sidesteps the antecedent requirement to prove P(E|H) is knowable or computable. You are the one claiming the ability to effect your proof according to your method. No one else in this debate has one iota of obligation that in any way impedes your responsibility.
 
jond said:
If you wanted to know the answer to that question, why did you ask the other? Seems like a rather dishonest bait and switch tactic.
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He's frantically latching onto someone having said that P(E|H) = 1, which is not really how the objection to Jabba's mistake is most properly rendered. Jabba thinks one of his critics has made an error, so he's clinging to that as a means of backpedaling away from yet another failed foist.
 
Belz... said:
Oops. It kind of is 1, however.
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I apologize; I was brusque. "Most properly rendered" was pretentious and certainly not meant to offend. What I mean is that it would be better, in a explanatory setting, to show why it's 1. Stating it as an assertion just makes Jabba's knees jerk. That doesn't mean you are or were on the hook to explain it. It just means this is why Jabba thinks he is effectively deflecting the question.
 
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Again because Jabba's (probably bumbled) into a "When did you stop beating your wife?" style question, or at least what passes for one in Jabba's brain.

We can either give him an honest answer to the question he's asking which means he's trapped us in agreeing with him or we call him on the obvious subterfuge and he we didn't answer his question.

Jabba still thinks he's expertly trapping us in some linguistic, argumentative, or logical gotcha.
 
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