Cont: Proof of Immortality VIII

[JoeMorgue]

The brain generates the self. Nothing else is required. The self is not a separate entity, it is a process the brain does. This has been your problem from day one, and until you stop treating the self as a separate entity under the materialist model, you will always be fighting a straw man.

And Jabba's even pretended he agreed with that so we'd move on to his next insane argument.

 

[Jabba]

js,
- P(E) is also 1. But, P(E|H) is still 10^-100. By P(B)=1, I just meant that the brain is a given. By P(E)=1, I meant that the self is also a given. I don't know if that's official terminology...
- Whatever, B and E are both givens, whereas in P(E|H) H is a given, but E is not.
- This is confusing stuff, and some of my terminology probably makes it more confusing.

P(E) = P(E|H)P(H) + P(E|~H)P(~H).​

Since you claim that both P(H) and P(~H) are nonzero, then P(E) = 1 implies that P(E|H) = P(E|~H) = 1, and thus E does [not*] provide evidence for H over ~H or vice versa. So this is another way to see that your argument is false.

*provided by #404
jt,
- Why does P(E) = P(E|H)P(H) + P(E|~H)P(~H)?

Seriously, Jabba? That is a rather basic part of conditional probabilities and Bayes inference.

It is, in fact, the denominator in the right-hand side of the formula you continually proffer. Did you not wonder how Bayes Theroem:

P(H|E) = P(E|H)(P(H) / P(E)​

gets transformed into:

P(H|E) = P(E|H)(P(H) /(P(E|H)P(H) + P(E|~H)P(~H))​

?

js,
- Bayes (basic?) Theorem does not involve any hypotheses. It involves only events. Your formula hilited above should be P(A|B) = P(A|B)(P(B) / P(A).


P(H|E) = P(E|H)(P(H) / (P(E|H)P(H) + P(E|~H)P(~H)) is the theorem as it applies to complementary hypotheses.

 

[jt512]

Right, so if you can find a purpose here, let others do the same.

The day I find purpose here is the day shoot myself.

 

[Belz...]

The day I find purpose here is the day shoot myself.

That's jabba-level nonsense. Of course you have a purpose, since you post here. No point in just being contrarian.

 

[Belz...]

js,
- Bayes (basic?) Theorem does not involve any hypotheses. It involves only events. Your formula hilited above should be P(A|B) = P(A|B)(P(B) / P(A).


P(H|E) = P(E|H)(P(H) / (P(E|H)P(H) + P(E|~H)P(~H)) is the theorem as it applies to complementary hypotheses.

How did you calculate 10^-100?

 

[Dave Rogers]

Your formula hilited above should be P(A|B) = P(A|B)(P(B) / P(A).

No, it shouldn't; what you've written here implies either that P(B)=P(A) or that P(A|B)=/=P(A|B).

(And it's missing a right parenthesis, but so's jsfisher's.)

Dave

 

[JayUtah]

Bayes (basic?) Theorem does not involve any hypotheses. It involves only events.

Explain the difference between a hypothesis and an event in this context, and why it makes any difference in what jsfisher posted.

Your formula hilited above should be P(A|B) = P(A|B)(P(B) / P(A).

Nope. First, all you did was change H and E to A and B. That doesn't even rise to the level of trivial algebra, yet somehow in your mind that's an important correction. Second -- well, we'll leave that error for you to figure out. I spotted it right away. Who else did?

P(H|E) = P(E|H)(P(H) / (P(E|H)P(H) + P(E|~H)P(~H)) is the theorem as it applies to complementary hypotheses.

You mean to a hypothesis and its complement. Again, you don't seem to understand what a false dilemma is or what a complement is. Remember when you keep telling us you must be getting the terminology wrong? Remember when we said one can never enumerate the complement? Are those telling you something about how your proof is faring?

 

[Dave Rogers]

Second -- well, we'll leave that error for you to figure out. I spotted it right away. Who else did?

^ Ninja'ed above.

[...] Are those telling you something about how your proof is faring?

I'm guessing that whatever tale they're telling is not being heard.

Dave

 

[Toontown]

Well, if you think we're done, why are you still here?

Because someone is wrong on the internet.

In the case of this thread, lots of people have been wrong lots of times on the internet. A quick scan of the last couple of pages revealed multiple instances of wrongness involving multiple posters.

So the thread exerts an irresistible pull on people who can't stop arguing as long as someone is wrong on the internet, unless everyone is wrong in the same way, in which case "victory" is declared.

 

[JayUtah]

What do you do when someone says 1+2 = a potato? What do you correct? The potato or the 1+2?

That's why Jabba insists on the small, narrowly focused discussion and eschews the big picture. He likely knows that his proof fails spectacularly at the high level because it really does perform the equivalent of arithmetic on vegetables. He poses the problem

1 + ______ = potato​

and claims to be the genius who can fill in the blank with the "correct" value. He says it's 10^-100 but can't explain the arithmetic or the theory beyond that bare naked ipse dixit. He bumps up against the fundamental problem of arithmetic not being defined over vegetables (except for pedagogical purposes -- "If Timmy has two potatoes..."). When people point that out to him, his distractive answer is to simply ask what better number fills in the blank, not to explain how adding vegetables is supposed to work. In godless dave's words, "I object to your whole approach."

The right answer, of course, is to point out that the problem -- as formulated -- is absurd on its face. And when we reduce his logic to this sort of example, it refutes itself. But fringe claimants are fairly good at disguising absurdity, usually by shoving it into some specialist realm. JFK conspiracy theorists couch their theories in law or investigative specialties. Moon mission deniers express theirs in terms of engineering and astrophysics. UFO believers (oddly enough) frame their theories in the language of politics and coverup. The common thread is invocation of specialized knowledge that the author claims to know but the reader certainly does not.

The layman won't see the absurdity. The informed reader does, but is left with little correct recourse beyond saying, "That's absurd on its face." A true statement, but one that the unscrupulous author can easily spin for his lay audience as unsophisticated and therefore just a knee-jerk emotional answer from inept and confused critics. "See, all those skeptics can do with my argument is insult it." The fringe claimant often successfully begs the validity of his method in a way that a lay audience is not likely to question.

But then see how Jabba flails and flusters when he has to actually explain to actual mathematicians how to do arithmetic on a potato. A couple weeks ago I wrote a lengthy exposition about how Bayes is actually used in scientific reasoning. In that post, I pointed out that Bayes in its purest form is simply about how two events affect each other. Jabba didn't understand, and tried to object to the notion that Bayes and its "likelihoods" were about hypotheses, not events. That was his pidgin understanding of statistical inference. Now, today, that sentiment I expressed before has suddenly made an unexpected and inappropriate appearance in his answer to jsfisher. "No, you don't understand," says Jabba, and simply regurgitates what one of his critics said previously, in a different context, and to which Jabba once objected. It's not hard to see what's happening here. Jabba has no idea how to explain "potatomathics," so he's blustering and bluffing in the hope that cargo-culty handwaving will make it seem like he's both knowledgeable and correct. But in fact he's stuck his foot in his mouth. He's neither knowledgeable nor correct, nor does what he say affect jsfisher's post in any way. It made sense when I said it, in a wholly different context. But it doesn't make sense as a response there.

The goal is to maintain the illusion for the gullible "neutral jury" that the claimant is properly informed and has a plausible, detailed correction of his critic. It tries to say, "No, my reasoning isn't absurd; you just don't understand it. Here, let me say some gobbledygook that just repeats the absurdity but does so in a way that people who don't know what I'm talking about will be impressed."

You're right: it's very insidious. Jabba wants to control the debate in a way that never focuses on enough of the argument to see how absurd it really is. In the problem above he wants to debate number theory when talking about where the "1+" part comes from, and then "leave that behind" and pontificate about agriculture and cooking when talking about the potato part -- ignoring that the parts of his argument just don't fit together the way he claims. If I've achieved anything in this debate that I can be proud of, it has been to elicit from Jabba a frank admission that he's unable to have this debate unless he can employ this and other manipulative tricks.

 

[Belz...]

Jabba has no idea how to explain "potatomathics," so he's blustering and bluffing in the hope that cargo-culty handwaving will make it seem like he's both knowledgeable and correct. But in fact he's stuck his foot in his mouth. He's neither knowledgeable nor correct, nor does what he say affect jsfisher's post in any way. It made sense when I said it, in a wholly different context. But it doesn't make sense as a response there.

Reminds me of all those "sovereign citizen" videos where the SC in question is unable to properly use the "facts" they learned in the courses they followed when put into the proper context. Predictably, they all get owned.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Well apparently the problem is now yet another thread nanny running in to mother us over something.

Apparently this is another feature of Jabba's "Be wrong about literally everything in every possible way so it's impossible to focus on any specific wrong point" style, it attracts people who want to take one argument out of context and pretending it's "wrong" and they need to be tsk tsked over it.

 

[JoeMorgue]

When people point that out to him, his distractive answer is to simply ask what better number fills in the blank, not to explain how adding vegetables is supposed to work.

That's Woo Apologetics distilled down to its purest form.

Bill: X + Y = MyPreferredWoo.
Ted: No it's doesn't.
Bill: Than what should I use for X?
Ted: Errr nothing.
Bill: You didn't answer my question, therefore I win.
Random Thread Nanny: YOU SKEPTICS ARE DA STUPID! YOU DIDN'T ANSWER X+Y.

 

[Mojo]

js,
- I'm not sure that I'm using the terminology appropriately, but I do think that's what I meant.

 

[Monza]

Monza,
- If reincarnation is true, my self awareness is brought back to life. It's like having amnesia, and not knowing who you are, but you "wake up" as a fetus(?). and no one expects you to know who you are.

And yet the body is still required, which means that your existence cannot be more likely under ~H than it is under H.

Hilarious. In your model, your "self-awareness" isn't actually self-aware except when incarnated, and then only for the duration of the incarnation. In that respect it's functionally indistinguishable from materialism.

Ah. How does this feel different from materialism... With no memories, what ties the previous incarnation to the new one? ... What EXACTLY gets to live forever?

How, then, would you differentiate between your self being reincarnated and a process generated by the brain? If the new person self idenifies as Sam Jones, how could you tell it’s really Jabba?

Jabba,

Please read these replies as they are key questions that need to be answered. A person with amnesia is still the same body with the same brain (albeit somewhat damaged). In your scenario, a different body with a different brain, without any memories, is somehow the same awareness? Aware of what?

What is the difference between being mortal and being immortal? How can one tell the difference?

 

[Monza]

Mojo,
- The likelihood of my current existence under H is not 1 -- even though my brain and current existence are both givens...
- The likelihood of my current existence is not based upon actuality -- it's based upon the specifics of a particular hypothesis. In this case, it's based upon OOFLam. And, if OOFLam is true, my current existence is EXTREMELY unlikely. My current existence is much more likely if reincarnation is true.

Your current existence, under both OOFLam and reincarnation, requires your current body/brain.

 

[The Norseman]

Your current existence, under both OOFLam and reincarnation, requires your current body/brain.

To be fair, we actually don't know enough of what is meant by those terms to say anything with absolute certainty. He needs to define his terms better than he has been and poster after poster has asked him to clarify which he never does. I can think of one version of reincarnation which doesn't require your current body/brain (if one reincarnates as an animal or insect, for example).

Still, even with that, everything else you've said is pretty spot on.

 

[Jabba]

Your current existence requires your body to exist in both cases. The sequence of events required to produce your body is the same in both cases. In one case your body is all that is required. Your existence in the other case cannot be more likely than it is in that one.

Mojo,
- What do you think is the likelihood of the current existence of your body --given OOFLam?
How would you determine that?

 

[The Norseman]

Mojo,
- What do you think is the likelihood of the current existence of your body --given OOFLam?
How would you determine that?

"OOFLam" is made up nonsense. Stop using it.

 

[RoboTimbo]

Mojo,
- What do you think is the likelihood of the current existence of your body --given OOFLam?

You've shown it to be 1, given materialism.

How would you determine that?

How did you determine it was 10^-100 after showing that it was 1?