Proof of Immortality, VII

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We've told you why hundreds of times. There are no pools of potential selves, as you've admitted in 2014, so no reason to assume that you could ever calculate odds, since this is the basis of your reasoning. Any number you've used so far is simply made up. Hence, statistics don't apply.

Without a pool of souls Jabba's efforts at statistics are pure nonsense. Every single statement he makes about statistics or his equation is complete rubbish, neurological diarrhea. By trying to deliberately apply the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy he's coming at this bass ackwards. It’s like trying to eat though his anus. He has everything turned around. The egg and sperm were a random combination, but the odds of that particular combination are meaningless, because SOME combination was going to happen if a viable fetus was to result.

What does he you hope to accomplish by trying to arrive at such a useless probability?

What's the POINT of his half decade of being too big a coward to get to a point?
 
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- Responding to #1, above, Bayesian statistics doesn't apply.

- I'll try to use the above as my closing statement in regard to #1 complaint. I'll give you guys the last word. Assuming that you guys still think that Bayesian statistics doesn't apply, tell me why, and I'll include your responses on my map that I hope to eventually provide to a neutral "jury."

Without a pool of souls to draw from all your babbling about statistics is meaningless. You're trying to come at a meaningless statistic that proves nothing. Any statistic teacher who wasn't deliberately trying to pass a moron to benefit the sports program would flunk you for such a moronic idea.

I'm not calling YOU a moron. I'm applying the label "moronic" to the pathetically ignorant, misinformed and jumbled mound of bovine excrement you insultingly call an "equation."

You are arguing about how many angels fit on the head of a pin, and acting like the conclusion you reach about this imaginary situation somehow proves something. It does not. You have spent five years working very hard to make yourself look foolish.

Why?

Why are you repeatedly subjecting yourself to abject humiliation while not bothering to learn ANYTHING from the exchanges?
 
Joe,
- Wouldn't you agree that most combinations of your Dad's sperm cells and your Mom's ovum were only potential selves?

No. At best one may describe it as a potential zygote. But zygotes are not selves. Selves are not things.
 
Joe,
- Wouldn't you agree that most combinations of your Dad's sperm cells and your Mom's ovum were only potential selves?

No,
that is a foolish thing!

Are there potential mountains?

After all a fault line is a chaotic process with a contingent history that could have turned out differently?

So how many potential mountains are there Jabba?
 
I'll try to use the above as my closing statement in regard to #1 complaint.

To start with, the list of opponents' points you're using is your list, not one composed by your critics. You don't get to script their side of the debate. While one can certainly advance a complaint that Bayesian statistics doesn't properly attach to philosophical questions, the complaint is actually that your inexpert application of Bayes doesn't apply to the problem because it's so clearly inept and ill-formed. You're trying to make a proof of a different stripe fit a Bayesian inference, whether it does or not. In the words of our resident statistician, you are "profoundly ignorant" of the proper way to formulate the problem as a statistical inference.

Moving on, this is not a "closing" statement because that would imply you've made an argument for which a summation would be appropriate. Your argument has consisted of nothing but the summation followed by ignoring everything that's said to you telling you what's wrong, and shameful begging of agreement to the summation alone. And we're not the only audience that has drawn that conclusion, so no blaming your critics.

I'll give you guys the last word.

Then your proof fails forthwith because the "last word" refutes it. Further, don't be so rude as to feign graciousness as an excuse to ignore your critics.

Assuming that you guys still think that Bayesian statistics doesn't apply, tell me why...

You've been told why a hundred times.

This list has been linked almost daily in this forum since it was first written six months ago. I can prove you know it exists. You have been invited many times to address it in the manner we requested, but you expressly declined.

Here is yet another chance. That list describes a number of flaws in your proof, many of which deal directly with your misuse of Bayesian methods. Each of them is individually fatal to your argument, meaning that a successful proof must overcome all of them. Mindful that you typically employ a "depth-first" tactic that forestalls a comprehensive survey of your proof, we specifically reject that approach in this case. For each of the fatal flaws, please write one or two sentences explaining how your final proof will overcome each one. This should take you no more than an hour, and should comprise a single post.

1. New information may affect the probability of an existing hypothesis (H).

You compute P(E|H) evaluating E subjectively after the fact. Effectively your proof constructs its evaluation only in a space where E has already been chosen, hence P(E|H) = 1. It also consults E to inform the method of evaluation. Further, "may affect" implies a mechanism of effect. I can state any hypothesis and I can name any piece of data, but that alone doesn't connect the data to the hypothesis. You must have an evidenced causal model. And here's where, in your proof, you dishonestly sneak the causal mechanism from your hypothesis into materialism and pretend they have to work the same way. You expressly ignore the actual causal mechanism for H -> E.

2. An old event may be new info if it hasn’t already been considered in the current probability of H.

But that's exactly how you consider it, and thereby you commit the Texas sharpshooter fallacy. As usual, you're simply trying to pretend the Texas sharpshooter fallacy shouldn't be a fallacy.

3. If an event is unlikely – given a particular hypothesis (H) – but the event occurs, the occurrence will tend to have a negative effect upon the probability of H — but, it need not.
4. It could be that given the complementary hypothesis – the event would be even more unlikely.

You wrongly consider H and ~H to be two singular competing hypotheses, thereby creating a false dilemma. And you know this, because for a brief period you tried to enumerate possible individual theories as members of ~H, as jt512 instructed you to do. But when you couldn't figure out how to shoehorn that into your Bayesian formulation, you abandoned it and returned to the false dilemma, because it's the only math you know. This is one point on which the record fairly loudly reveals that you know your Bayesian formulation doesn't apply when there are several incompatible hypotheses in flight.

5. Or, it could be that all possible events – given H – are equally unlikely (e.g. a fair lottery) -- if so, the particular event needs to be "set apart" in a way that is relevant to the hypothesis in order to impact the hypothesis.

This correctly describes the strength of Bayesian reasoning, but it does properly describe your approach. Normally in a Bayesian inference, this step would be where we could encode information from sources such as personal knowledge or experience.

When you try to illustrate this in your analogies, you speak of the lottery winner being a relative of the lottery organizer, and of this affecting the probability that he won legitimately because we can quantify a degree of suspicion as grist for the model. That's a rather poor illustration, as we've explained to you repeatedly. But the real problem is that there is no suitable analogue in your model. You want to "set apart" E so that you can jiggle the Bayesian outcome in your favor. But the criteria by which you propose to "set apart" E is no more than that it has been chosen. That method of "setting part" data expressly commits the Texas sharpshooter fallacy. Your lottery analogy doesn't describe your proof. Your proof instead proposes to evaluate P(E|H) as improbable on no stronger a basis than, "Oh, looky, this particular E came up in the data; how improbable was that?"

6. If – given H – an event is impossible, but does occur, H must be wrong.
7. Otherwise, what we call Bayesian statistics is used to evaluate the effect of a new and relevant event upon the probability of H...

And for the foregoing reasons, you don't do that correctly. Your problem doesn't fit the Bayesian method of reasoning, so you have to invent a whole bunch of things to make it seem like it fits -- imaginary "pools" of potential entities, etc.

I'll include your responses on my map that I hope to eventually provide to a neutral "jury."

No you won't. I do not consent to your use of my material elsewhere, and you were warned not to talk here about your desire to rewrite the debate elsewhere. No one is interested in your incessant lying elsewhere to buttress your ego. You agreed that you would discuss your proposed proof for immortality in this forum, therefore do that here and only that.

Further, do not keep blaming your ongoing failure on the alleged bias of your critics. Your argument fails not because your audience is biased but because it has been appropriately refuted and you decline to address the refutation.
 
Why are you repeatedly subjecting yourself to abject humiliation while not bothering to learn ANYTHING from the exchanges?

Because his plan is to humiliate us elsewhere by cherry-picking posts from this thread and making his own web site where he edits the discussion to make it look like he won. We know this because he's stated as much, and because he's done it before. He's giving us the "final word" here because he's going to create a new "final word" somewhere else.
 
Are there potential mountains?

He has an answer for this. There are many potential mountains, but mountainry is governed by straightforward processes like geology and is therefore deterministic enough. Instead, people are different than mountains because they have souls. Therefore you can't use mountains as an analogue to people in terms of the mathematics of potentiality.

(In other words, special pleading by begging the question of a soul.)
 
He has an answer for this. There are many potential mountains, but mountainry is governed by straightforward processes like geology and is therefore deterministic enough. Instead, people are different than mountains because they have souls. Therefore you can't use mountains as an analogue to people in terms of the mathematics of potentiality.

And this, let us not forget, is his description from the point of view of what he claims to be the materialistic hypothesis. He claims that, within materialism, people are set apart from materialism because they have a component which does not exist within materialism. It's less a circular argument than a Möbius argument.

Dave
 

Are you seriously calling me out by name? Have you no shame? You know that I can prove you've been aware of this list of objections for the past six months. You know that I can further show you have no interest in responding to it. Based on that, why should I or anyone else respond to your requests for further production? Why should any thinking person treat you as anything but a troll?

At this point, unless you are suffering from a severe disorder, you must know that your proof has failed on its merits. Your resurrected plans to create your own private version of this debate is prima facie evidence of such knowledge, followed by suggestions that whatever your critics contribute here is intended as fodder for such a dishonest enterprise.

As usual you're trying to shame away your critics. You roundly ignore them and post whatever you want regardless, thus giving them a Hobson's choice between taking your bait on any given day or simply going away. Now you're suggesting that if they post here, they have to deal with your intent to misuse their posts for your benefit -- and the only way to avoid that is not to post, not to criticize you, not to point out your egregious errors.

The MA prevents me from giving you the dressing-down you so richly deserve for such behavior. As I said, if a grown man in my employ were behaving as you do in a putatively mathematical, technical, or philosophical discussion, he'd have been fired long ago. You have had dozens of people over the past five years take you at face value and give you all manner of helpful, honestly-intentioned feedback regarding your proposed proof. And you repay them by trying to trick and manipulate them into feeding your ego.

You should honestly be ashamed, Jabba.
 
Because his plan is to humiliate us elsewhere by cherry-picking posts from this thread and making his own web site where he edits the discussion to make it look like he won. We know this because he's stated as much, and because he's done it before. He's giving us the "final word" here because he's going to create a new "final word" somewhere else.

That's is not uncommon here. We have the one who do what you've just said, like this forum being in interested in Angelology (we, taking it into consideration - the real us -this guy gets a lot of money from the gullible). And we also have those who refine their sham undertakings (like this one) by using our criticism to test different ways of presenting their BS.

If you participate actively in an endless thread like that, where's the surprise?

I'm proud to say Jabba replied to my messages only once. That means that I've never provided him with something he could use or twist in support of his ridiculous notions here or elsewhere.
 
Because his plan is to humiliate us elsewhere by cherry-picking posts from this thread and making his own web site where he edits the discussion to make it look like he won. We know this because he's stated as much, and because he's done it before. He's giving us the "final word" here because he's going to create a new "final word" somewhere else.

Well then, it's only fair that someone PM me the link so I can write a rebuttal exposing his deceptive editing and post it to my own blog.

 
He's not telling anyone where his latest stuff is.

His old stuff probably has a few clues...

On second thought, never mind. While potentiality relevant to the thread and the ongoing discussion it gets dangerously close to Doxing. I'd rather he have a site where he happily lies through deceptive editing than jeopardize the forum's principles and rules.
 
He's not telling anyone where his latest stuff is.

As we discussed, the existence of derived works is not something we can do much about. If you speak in public, you can be quoted in ways you cannot control. Nothing ethically, legally, or in connection with the rules of the forum really prevents that. We can certainly make it known that we disapprove of that use, and Jabba has already indicated that he largely doesn't care whether we do or not.

The issue in my mind is Jabba's ongoing manipulation of this forum to serve his personal needs with little other apparent purpose in mind. He invites comment by posting here, but does not consider responses something he is obliged to address. While annoying, that's not especially uncommon in a forum devoted to informal debate. But when people flounce in frustration, and they inevitably do, he has previously gloated over that as a victory for him. Again, annoying but not uncommon. We can put him on the shelf with dozens of other claimants who do the same things, and we're expected to have a reasonably thick skin in the face of such shenanigans. All we can do really is to call them out when we see them.

Jabba crosses an additional line, though. People post here thinking they are contributing to a discussion here, even though they have a reasonable belief that they will be ignored by some or all the participants. But Jabba wants to treat this thread as nothing more than the submissions page to his personal blog. He wants to change what it means to write a post at ISF. By now he has to know that all but a few people disapprove of his removal of posts to a private blog, to do with what he wants. Telling people that's what will happen to posts they write here, and expressly saying he won't debate them here, creates an additional reason for people not to post objections. He's using people's natural fear of being misquoted or misrepresented to scare them away from criticizing him here. That way he can make ISF look like the happy meadow of sycophantic approval he's obviously seeking. Jabba's "argument" consists of nothing but crass manipulation. He must know his arguments cannot prevail on their merits, so he's trying to contrive a different experience that distorts the merits.
 
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