Cont: Proof of Immortality VIII

[Jabba]

How does adding a soul make your current existence more likely?

- If I'm immortal, I always exist. And if my soul/self is reincarnated over and over, I'm much more likely to currently exist than if I exist for only one finite time, at most, over all of time.

 

[JesseCuster]

- If I'm immortal, I always exist. And if my soul/self is reincarnated over and over, I'm much more likely to currently exist than if I exist for only one finite time, at most, over all of time.

If that were true, it would be true for every single thing in existence, ergo, according to your argument, every single thing in existence exists forever...

If bananas were immortal, then they'd always exist. And if bananas were reincarnated over and over, the banana sitting in my fruit bowl, is much more likely to currently exist than if it existed for only one finite time, at most, over all of time.

Therefore the banana in my fruit bowl is immortal.

 

[RoboTimbo]

- If I'm immortal, I always exist. And if my soul/self is reincarnated over and over, I'm much more likely to currently exist than if I exist for only one finite time, at most, over all of time.

What do you remember about your existence in 1888?

 

[JayUtah]

If I'm immortal, I always exist.

Equivocation. The "I" that always exists in your claim above is not the same "I" that exists for a finite century, 1942-2042. Your existence cannot be both infinite such as to fudge your probability in one direction, and finite so as to fudge it in the other direction.

...I exist for only one finite time, at most, over all of time.

You exist in a finite time right now in both models. That's all the data you have.

 

[jond]

- If I'm immortal, I always exist. And if my soul/self is reincarnated over and over, I'm much more likely to currently exist than if I exist for only one finite time, at most, over all of time.

JayUtah already explained just the other day why that argument doesn’t work, and you ignored him. Meanwhile:

1. In the materialist model, your body alone explains your current existence. You claim that the likelihood of your body existing is virtually zero. But adding a soul changes nothing about the circumstances that led to your body’s existence. You therefore must figure out the probability of your soul’s existence and multiply that by the probability of your body’s existence. Report back with the numbers.

2. How do you know that your soul gets reincarnated over and over? What if it only happens once every 500 years? Or once every 1500 years? Or has a limit on how many incarnations it gets to have? It needs to be in a body to explain your current existence, because bodies do exist and self identify.

3. This soul thing apparently has no characteristics, brings none of your memories, none of your thoughts, none of your emotions, nothing at all that ties it to Jabba. How is it at all meaningful to suggest that some chap in 1888 who self identified as Sam Jones was actually Jabba?

 

[JoeMorgue]

This has already been explained to you a thousand times Jabba even before you mistaking the thread nannies for support caused you think you actually accomplished something.

By your "logic" every thing and process in the universe has to be eternal because what are the odds of it happening at the time in happened or existing at the time it existed.

But whatever you'll just bleat "But that's not the saaaaaame!" again.

 

[Monza]

Monza
- For some reason, you've made contradictory statements above. If immortality is real -- and I think it is -- I did exist in 1888, and will exist in 2119 (if time gets that far).

No, those were your contradictory statements.



If you existed in 1888, where are your memories of the events?

No. He cited YOU for contradictory statements. Maybe you know the resaon for that.

Hans

Thank you, Belz and MRC_Hans. Yes, the contradiction was from Jabba as he answered the questions one way and then flipped to the other. I quoted his latest response, but he may have changed his mind since then.

Jabba, what is the difference between an immortal person and a mortal one? How can we tell the difference?

 

[Dancing David]

If that were true, it would be true for every single thing in existence, ergo, according to your argument, every single thing in existence exists forever...

If bananas were immortal, then they'd always exist. And if bananas were reincarnated over and over, the banana sitting in my fruit bowl, is much more likely to currently exist than if it existed for only one finite time, at most, over all of time.

Therefore the banana in my fruit bowl is immortal.

Bravo, bravissimo!

 

[Belz...]

- I've become more informed over the last few years

Unsupported assertion.

after I recognized what seemed to me mathematical support for my "epiphany" of 1956.

SIXTY years ago? No wonder there's been no progress in 5 years.

- Given OOFLam, the likelihood of my current existence is virtually zero

Only because you pull numbers out of your ass and refuse to justify them, and because you misrepresent materialism and science, to name only two things.

 

[Belz...]

- If I'm immortal, I always exist.

And yet you have no evidence for your existence prior to 1942.

And if my soul/self is reincarnated over and over, I'm much more likely to currently exist than if I exist for only one finite time, at most, over all of time.

No, that is nonsensical.

 

[JayUtah]

Jabba is trying to say P(current existence|reincarnation) must be greater than P(current existence|materialism), but it appears he is equivocating P(current existence). In one instance it's (wrongly) said to be a uniformly distributed random variable. In the other instance it's (wrongly) a tautology. But while reckoning P(current existence|reincarnation) he is allowed to assume reincarnation occurs and involves immortal souls. He can't make immortal souls part of the data, but he can invoke what he hypothesizes about immortal souls to reckon how well reincarnation would explain his current existence. A more pressing problem is that anything that would underly the prior P(reincarnation) is entirely speculative at this point. So while Jabba can finely tailor his hypothesis to invent a rosy likelihood that it so very much better explains his current existence than materialism, every speculative step he takes there is a step backwards when it comes time to talk about the priors. That's how properly-constructed Bayesian inference keeps us from reaching foolish conclusions.

 

[JoeMorgue]

I think it's simpler than that.

Again Jabba just has a normal everyday belief in a magical soul from God. The only thing that makes Jabba any different is for some reason he has to pretend he's some rational mathematical genius that thinks this because he did the math instead of one of those plebian "believers."

And the rationalization he's decided to land on is the insane "It's more probable to encounter an event if it last forever than if it last for only a set amount of time"

I'm reminded of the line from Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy where the titular guide mathematically proves that nobody exist.

Universe

The Universe is a very big thing that contains a great number of planets and a great number of beings. It is Everything. What we live in. All around us. The lot. Not nothing. It is quite difficult to actually define what the Universe means, but fortunately the Guide doesn't worry about that and just gives us some useful information to live in it.

Area

The area of the Universe is infinite. Infinity is a hard concept to grasp; the Guide gives us this definition:

Bigger than the biggest thing ever and then some. Much bigger than that in fact, really amazingly immense, a totally stunning size, real 'wow, that's big', time. Infinity is just so big that by comparison, bigness itself looks really titchy. Gigantic multiplied by colossal multiplied by staggeringly huge is the sort of concept we're trying to get across here.

Imports

None. This is a by-product of infinity; it is impossible to import things into something that has infinite volume because by definition there is no outside to import things from.

Exports

None, for similar reasons as imports.

Population

None. Although you might see people from time to time, they are most likely products of your imagination. Simple mathematics tells us that the population of the Universe must be zero. Why? Well given that the volume of the universe is infinite there must be an infinite number of worlds. But not all of them are populated; therefore only a finite number are. Any finite number divided by infinity is as close to zero as makes no odds, therefore we can round the average population of the Universe to zero, and so the total population must be zero.

The logic is as airtight as Jabba's except for one minor difference... in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy the math is supposed to be the joke, unlike Jabba's math which just is a joke.

 

[jsfisher]

- If I'm immortal, I always exist. And if my soul/self is reincarnated over and over, I'm much more likely to currently exist than if I exist for only one finite time, at most, over all of time.

Not in any sense for which you claim to have evidence. Your whole claim of existence is based on a sense of self, remember? And that sense of self is a collection of memories and physical stimuli. None of that corresponds to the always-existing soul you claim you must be.

 

[The Sparrow]

- If I'm immortal, I always exist. And if my soul/self is reincarnated over and over, I'm much more likely to currently exist than if I exist for only one finite time, at most, over all of time.

Cool. Now all you have to do is prove reincarnation is real and we will be talking!

 

[JayUtah]

Cool. Now all you have to do is prove reincarnation is real...

...and works the way he says it does.

That's why this isn't a proof. It's a what-if.

 

[JoeMorgue]

We should also point Jabba still hasn't advanced beyond the "If you agree to agree that I'm correct before I prove anything I can prove I am correct" stage of the argument... and still fails at even doing that.

 

[Belz...]

I'm reminded of the line from Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy where the titular guide mathematically proves that nobody exist.

None. Although you might see people from time to time, they are most likely products of your imagination. Simple mathematics tells us that the population of the Universe must be zero. Why? Well given that the volume of the universe is infinite there must be an infinite number of worlds. But not all of them are populated; therefore only a finite number are. Any finite number divided by infinity is as close to zero as makes no odds, therefore we can round the average population of the Universe to zero, and so the total population must be zero.

Wow, that is literally the same logic as Jabba's.

 

[Jabba]

Maybe they know enough about Bayesian statistics to realize that the implication you see isn't real.

- Maybe so.
- That would make a lot of sense. But so far, the more I think about it, the less I see room for error.
- I've noticed that you've been absent since 2/21. Since I've been making a lot of claims in that period, I've also been hoping that you didn't disagree with those particular claims. I suspect that was just wishful thinking -- but, can you tell me, specifically, where (I don't assume it's singular)you still disagree with my argument?

 

[jt512]

The latter. Here's Bayes:

P(A|B) = P(B|A)/PB P(A)​

A and B are events. The blue part is usually called the likelihood ratio. The blue part is what Jabba thought he was asking for -- in his wording, "the Bayesian likelihood." In jt512's post, he calls it the "weight of evidence," which makes sense when you consider that when Bayes' theorem is used to drawn an inference, event B is usually data, or evidence, gleaned from the outside world. A is the event that a certain hypothesis is true. P(A) is the probability that your hypothesis is true, irrespective of what new evidence might tell you. The role of the blue part is to either attenuate or amplify the probability of your hypothesis based on how much worse or better it explains B, the evidence, over chance.

Actually, what I was referring to was the following form of Bayes' Theorem, which is especially convernient for comparing hypotheses:

P(A|B) / P(A'|B) = P(B|A) / P(B|A') × P(A)/P(A') ,

or in words,

(posterior odds) = (likelihood ratio) × (prior odds) ,

where A and A' are two hypotheses. The first term on the rhs is what is normally referred to as the likelilood ratio (after all it is a ratio of likelihoods), the term I said was sometimes called the weight of the evidence. Notice that it does not involve the priors, unlike P(B|A)/P(B), since B usually must be calculated from the Law of Total Probability, which requires knowing the priors for each hypothesis.

 

[JayUtah]

That would make a lot of sense. But so far, the more I think about it, the less I see room for error.

And maybe you don't see room for error because of the same ineptitude that prevents you from seeing the error itself. You're still just begging the question that you're proficient enough not only to do the work but to validate your own efforts. You haven't shown any evidence that you are even remotely competent at statistical reasoning. Pray tell us what special brand of "thinking about it" magically endows you with a skill you clearly don't have.

...but, can you tell me, specifically, where (I don't assume it's singular) you still disagree with my argument?

You've been told at length what's wrong with your argument. Stop flitting from poster to poster, searching for the path of least resistance. Stop asking people to repeat themselves incessantly for your benefit. Stop ignoring everyone.