Proof of Immortality, VII

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Jabba said:
Anyway, I'm trying to propose an analogous question concerning time.
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You've been shown why it's not analogous. You do this a lot. You beg the similarity between questions you know how to answer and different questions that you don't. You're trying to dumb down the problem to fit your limited understanding.

Do you think that that claim makes any sense?
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If you stopped ignoring everyone, you'd know the answer to that. No, the claim doesn't make sense. And you've been told why it doesn't. The probability densities are vastly different, and you don't know how to accommodate variable probability density in any of your models.
 
Jabba said:
I think that your objection is the Texas Sharpshooter objection, and I do see that as the weakest link in my argument -- but then, I don't think that it really applies.
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Of course it does. The problem is that you don't know what the Texas sharpshooter fallacy is or why it's a fallacy. So you frantically cling to one thread nanny who tells you you don't need to worry about it, even though you admit you don't know why. And you just keep begging your critics to let you keep committing an obvious error in reasoning.

No, Jabba. You don't get to be the hero if you have to cheat.

My discussion of that issue is hilited below in two sections.
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Yeah, same old solipsist nonsense. Sentimentality is not a thing in statistics, so your highlighted paragraphs are just your usual attempt to redefine the universe to fit your beliefs. And please quit spamming this wall of text. It has been thoroughly refuted, and you have admitted you cannot address the refutation. Repeating it is annoying and pointless.
 
Jabba said:
If you have any friendly experts in Bayesian Inference (not including guys on this forum) ask them if my claim above makes sense.
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What's wrong with the people in this forum? You haven't shown any evidence that their refutations are wrong. In fact, you admit you can't. You just invent all sorts of reasons why you don't have to pay attention to them. "Friendly" in this context means they don't challenge you too much. People here hold your feet to the fire, and you don't like it so you whine about it. We've already proven that even when we grant all your contrived and foisted ground rules, you still can't debate honestly or effectively.

And let's not forget that you already have the input of statisticians who are not on this forum. They gave you the same feedback as we have about the mathematical viability of your proof. And you treated them just as badly as you're treating us. They finally concluded -- rightly so, according to the evidence -- that you have no interest in knowing whether your proof is correct; you just want to hear yourself talk and get applause for it.

No, sorry, as long as you're posting here you don't get to wave your hands and magically disqualify all your critics here.

However, there are three guys on this forum that do seem to be experts -- Caveman, tj and humots. I would like to hear what they have to say about my claim above.
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They've all told you several times in no uncertain terms that your proof is wrong. You just prefer them because they occasionally go after your other critics. Since your goal here is obviously to make skeptics look bad, you evaluate their claims solely according to that. You already admitted you don't understand what they're talking about. You've already admitted you don't really understand how Bayes' theorem works.
 
godless dave said:
But what do you mean by "the likelihood of now being between 1942-2042"?
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- I mean, given only that time began 14 billion years ago, how probable is it that the present time or moment would be between 1942 and 2042 Gregorian time.
 
Jabba said:
- But 1942 - 2042 is not relative.
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You still have too many degrees of freedom in your question because you haven't defined precisely, in a mathematically compatible way, what "now" means. It doesn't matter what other things you've nailed down if you haven't nailed down all the things that the question requires. As usual, you're simply throwing out vaguely defined terminology in hopes that someone will agree to it according to one way, and you can equivocate it to some other way and claim victory. You're not very good at this tactic, Jabba, and people catch you every time you try.

No, you're not posing and equivalent problem. You're distracting from your embarrassing errors in basic comprehension, such as probability density.
 
Jabba said:
...the present time or moment would be between 1942 and 2042 Gregorian time.
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You're just changing the word you equivocate on. Same problem. Further, it's clear you're trying to argue your way around the Texas sharpshooter fallacy using the same broken rhetoric you alway use. You use language that hides or makes implicit the designation of significance. S0dhner gave you an excellent answer on this with respect to your raffle example. You need to address that in this discussion.
 
Jabba said:
- I mean, given only that time began 14 billion years ago, how probable is it that the present time or moment would be between 1942 and 2042 Gregorian time.
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What do you mean by "the present time"? The present time is constantly changing. Every millisecond from the beginning of time until now was "the present time" for exactly one millisecond.
 
In short, Jabba, what is the significance of the interval 1942-2042? What is the significance of some particular shorter interval of time that you're alluding to with words such as "moment" or "now?" That you can divide some small interval by some number of such intervals does not give you a probability except as the context in which you've defined those entities can use a probability. Even if we were somehow able to teach you what a probability density function is, the number that comes out of it by applying the proper algebra does not mean anything except as our context can use a probability. You want to strip away everything that's important in statistical reasoning and pretend that algebra is all you need.
 
Jabba, what is the likelihood that the present time is anything other than when it is?
 
Jabba said:
- I mean, given only that time began 14 billion years ago, how probable is it that the present time or moment would be between 1942 and 2042 Gregorian time.
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How probable was it that the present time or moment would be between 1842 and 1942 in 1918?

How probable was it that the present time or moment would be between 1742 and 1842 in 1818?

How probable is it that the present time or moment will be between 2042 and 2142 in 2118?
 
If anyone requires a demonstration of a preconceived conclusion that absolutely NEEDS to be reached, and they have plenty of time, I think this thread and its predecessors is an excellent example.

I mean, now we're having to explain to a grown man why now is now.
 
Jabba's nebulous use of "now" or "the present time" is his attempt to imbue a certain time point or time interval with inherent meaning -- i.e., because it's the time we're currently experiencing, and that's somehow important in some way he doesn't have to explain further. Leaving aside the problem that it's a moving target, the real problem is how he's begging the significance of the data point, moving or not. This is how he routinely tries to fool people into thinking the Texas sharpshooter fallacy doesn't apply. He uses increasingly indirect, vague, and obfuscatory language to hide how the significance of the entities in the problem are defined, and therefore the utility of any probability that might arise. Then he postures it as an argument that significance doesn't matter ahead of time, and can be reckoned after the fact because it was the fact.

S0dhner really described it best using Jabba's raffle example. There were 100 people, each with a very slim chance of having his number drawn. Regardless of whose number is called, that person will be able to say "Gee, how improbable was that?" It doesn't matter that we can divide all of time to date into small or large increments and think about some individual millisecond (moving or not) falling into one of those intervals as a probability. The probability operates only on whatever dynamic motivated that choice of interval, granularity, and instant. Otherwise it's just a pointless probability wandering in the wilderness. Every raffle entrant has an equal -- equally small -- chance of winning. But as long as the raffle drawing is held, one of those individually highly improbable events is guaranteed to occur.
 
godless dave said:
What do you mean by "the present time"? The present time is constantly changing. Every millisecond from the beginning of time until now was "the present time" for exactly one millisecond.
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- That just doesn't seem like a problem to me. Is the present time between 1942 and 2042 Gregorian? Obviously, it is -- and, it will be for the next 23 years.
 
Jabba said:
- That just doesn't seem like a problem to me. Is the present time between 1942 and 2042 Gregorian? Obviously, it is -- and, it will be for the next 23 years.
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The likelihood of the present time being the present time is 1.
 
Jabba said:
That just doesn't seem like a problem to me.
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Of course it is. Others are content to point out that your model still includes too many degrees of freedom. The interval on which you've conditioned your likelihood is well enough defined, but the other parameter is not. And the probability distribution function that operates inside your likelihood still needs that parameter, because it's not a trivial distribution for all values of the parameter.

If you define and fix that parameter, we can certainly provide you with a single-valued probability. But then you have to answer my objection, which is why that probability matters? You're way too hung up on the rudimentary algebra of this problem, and you don't consider sufficiently what these models mean. Your inability to reason properly about the probative value of a probability is one of those fatal flaws you admit you can't address. This is why you can't address it.

Is the present time between 1942 and 2042 Gregorian? Obviously, it is -- and, it will be for the next 23 years.
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And what about someone reading this thread in 2050? For him, now will not be in that interval. No, it depends on what you mean by "present time." If I say "present time" is a 500-year interval starting at the instant you read this, then no, the present time exceeds the interval 1942-2042 by a wide margin. And that may be a perfectly valid definition, since this discussion often includes vast swathes of time. I see no reason why "present time" can't be the entire recorded history of humanity, since you're thinking in terms of the vastly larger passage of time since the Big Bang. 10,000 years is not very big compared to 14 billion years. That's my definition of "present time" for the purposes of answering your question.

If, as from the perspective of our potential future reader, "now" or "the present time" should be construed as a relatively short period of time on or about Feb. 16, 2018 (what you evidently intend), then he will want to know what's so bloody special about that date, other than it being the date when the post was written. It has no other significance that matters to him, and no other objective significance. It ends up being a contrived problem with no probative value or interest.

Again, this is you just trying to foist the notion of subjective belief as an operative probability or likelihood. There is no argument that makes solipsism universal and objective so that it works as a mathematical proof. In fact that's pretty much what solipsism is all about.
 
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