Proof of Immortality, VII

[Jabba]

What does that have to do with a human self being immortal? An infinitely divisible bucket of consciousness, whatever that means, is not a human self in any meaningful sense.

- sure it is. It is always conscious.

We are akin to small blind moles underground who know little or nothing about the world. But we continue to learn. . . .

Rovelli, Carlo. Reality Is Not What It Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity (p. 196). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

 

[Jabba]

No matter where you go, there you are.

Are you going to pretend not to understand that much quoted saying too, Jabba?

- Pixel,
- Something about the probability of my current existence being 1.00?

 

[The Sparrow]

- sure it is. It is always conscious.

We are akin to small blind moles underground who know little or nothing about the world. But we continue to learn. . . .

Rovelli, Carlo. Reality Is Not What It Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity (p. 196). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

It's like Jabba keeps dipping his bucket into an infinitely divisible well of woo.

 

[zooterkin]

What does that have to do with a human self being immortal? An infinitely divisible bucket of consciousness, whatever that means, is not a human self in any meaningful sense.

- sure it is. It is always conscious.

How does that make it a human self? Humans are not always conscious, for a start. And the thing that defines a self is, arguably, the memories it has. What memories do you have from before your most recent birth? Where is the notion of selfhood, which has connotations of individuality, in a 'shared bucket of consciousness'? You don't seem to understand the ideas you're proposing.

 

[Monza]

Mojo,
- The word "likelihood" in statistics refers to the probability of an event -- given a particular hypothesis. Given that each body can have only one finite existence, the likelihood that your body would exist right now is less than 10^-100.

No, it's closer to 0.9918. I virtually proved it here.

 

[Monza]

Halley,
- Upon "Perfection," they reunite with the Source. They always exist -- either in or out of the Source. Then, I suggest that the Source is like an infinitely divisible bucket of consciousness, and more than one current self used to be Napoleon. I know that sounds crazy, but so does quantum mechanics -- where some physicists claim (or at least suggest) that the universe is conscious.

Did you, Jabba, exist in the year 1888?

 

[JayUtah]

- sure it is. It is always conscious.

We are akin to small blind moles underground who know little or nothing about the world. But we continue to learn. . . .

Rovelli, Carlo. Reality Is Not What It Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity (p. 196). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

And does Rovelli believe that materialism includes an immortal soul? Please answer yes or no. Or do you only quote vague generalities from physicists trying to be philosophers when it seems to serve your purpose?

 

[JayUtah]

- sure it is. It is always conscious.

No, that doesn't make it human or proto-human. It certainly isn't part of materialism. Remember, your "potential selves" thing is what you're using to try to falsify materialism by computing P(E|H) where H is materialism and say it's very small. You don't get to use concepts that aren't part of materialism to do that. Further, you've been telling us there's no "pool" of consciousness, and that this is the reason you can say there's an infinite number of them. Now you're proposing literally a pool of pre-existing consciousness.

My colleagues are right. You're so far down the rabbit hole you can't even keep your own argument straight.

 

[JayUtah]

- Pixel,
- Something about the probability of my current existence being 1.00?

It does rather teach a lesson in sample spaces that quite a number of well-meaning and properly-informed people have tried to teach you. It's one of the ways your argument is fatally in error.

Speaking of the rest of the ways, you seem to be trickling out your remedial answers to the list of fatal flaws one at a time, every few days, rather than all at once as was the instruction. The purpose of the instruction was so that we could have your broad-strokes answers all together in a single post for easy reference. You seem to be trying to engineer it so that your answers will be far-flung over forty pages of thread and thus difficult to find.

Would you agree that deliberately disobeying important instructions should constitute a failure to adhere to the debate?

 

[sackett]

"We are aching mind boles ground under little smallclothes. But we yearn to learn to earn more coin to burn."

I put that in quotes to show that I didn't just make it up.

 

[Dave Rogers]

"We are aching mind boles ground under little smallclothes. But we yearn to learn to earn more coin to burn."

I put that in quotes to show that I didn't just make it up.

You're doing it wrong. Where's the unrelated fantasy you just made up that you want to give the false impression that it proves? It's supposed to go just above that bit.

Dave

 

[jond]

Hey Jabba, I must’ve missed your answer to this question: how does adding a soul change anything about the circumstances under which your body came to exist?

 

[Pixel42]

- Pixel,
- Something about the probability of my current existence being 1.00?

Something about your ridiculous astonishment at noticing that you exist even though you can only notice that you exist if and when you exist, yes.

 

[JayUtah]

It's like Jabba keeps dipping his bucket into an infinitely divisible well of woo.

Standard approach. "But a physicist wrote that book, so if you're really a skeptic and really speaking from a scientific viewpoint, you have to respect what he says." Well, no. Rovelli is indeed a physicist. But many physicists just can't seem to avoid also trying to be philosophers and failing miserably at it. In order to be noticed outside the realm of academia, one has to write for the popular audience. And more often than not, physicists seem to want to write in barely cogent generalities, glittering from wonderment that comes from the pure math of the theoretical physics world.

No, Rovelli doesn't have any particular insight into the problem of the soul.

 

[John Jones]

Jabba, it's The Sentient Puddle thing.

“This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in — an interesting hole I find myself in — fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for.”

 

[Jabba]

For your existence to be a piece of information to be considered, it must be observable. You can only be observed while your body exists. The likelihood that your existence is observed right now is, at most, equal to the likelihood that your body exists right now.

Mojo,
- The word "likelihood" in statistics refers to the probability of an event -- given a particular hypothesis. Given that each body can have only one finite existence, the likelihood that your body would exist right now is less than 10^-100.

What does that have to do with a human self being immortal? An infinitely divisible bucket of consciousness, whatever that means, is not a human self in any meaningful sense.

- sure it is. It is always conscious.

We are akin to small blind moles underground who know little or nothing about the world. But we continue to learn. . . .

Rovelli, Carlo. Reality Is Not What It Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity (p. 196). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

How does that make it a human self? Humans are not always conscious, for a start. And the thing that defines a self is, arguably, the memories it has. What memories do you have from before your most recent birth? Where is the notion of selfhood, which has connotations of individuality, in a 'shared bucket of consciousness'? You don't seem to understand the ideas you're proposing.

Zoo,
- I'll have to drop "human" for now.
- Arguably, I suppose, but not necessarily. We're addressing the same experience that reincarnationists think returns -- just without its previous memories.
- None.
- It's hard finding the right words and syntax...
- Physicists have the same problem with their equations.

- Obviously, I think it's my audience that doesn't understand these ideas.

 

[Jabba]

Something about your ridiculous astonishment at noticing that you exist even though you can only notice that you exist if and when you exist, yes.

- It isn't my astonishment in noticing that I exist -- it's my astonishment that I do exist. There is a real difference.

 

[Pixel42]

We're addressing the same experience that reincarnationists think returns -- just without its previous memories.

How precisely do you distinguish a returning experience/self/consciousness with no memories from a brand new experience/self/consciousness? What about it would indicate it's an old one returned rather than a new one?

You have been asked this question dozens of times, Jabba, and I don't recall you ever even attempting to answer it.

 

[Dave Rogers]

- Obviously, I think it's my audience that doesn't understand these ideas.

Objectively, though, one might suppose that it's the person who's already demonstrated an inability to understand the greatest number of different concepts who is unable to understand yet another.

Dave

 

[John Jones]

- It isn't my astonishment in noticing that I exist -- it's my astonishment that I do exist. There is a real difference.

Ja (may I call you Ja?)
It's a distinction that makes no difference.