survival after death

[Cuddles]

Now the personal stuff is out of the way, can you explain, or attempt to (once, please), how Occam's Razor dictates that it is probabilistically likely enough that the other models are false, for us to assert confidence that death is the end. Feel free to show your math, since probability seems to be something you're in to.

If we assumes that what we see is simply reality, the only thing we have to explain is this universe. If we assume that we are living in a simulation we have to explain not only this universe, but also the universe in which the substrate for the simulation exists, which is necessarily more complex than our own universe. This in itself is a violation of Occam, but in addition you must also assume that it is actually possible to simulate our universe in the detail we can see and that someone has done so.

Hypothesis : WYSIWYG.
Assumptions : WYSIWYG.

Hypothesis : The Matrix.
Assumptions : There exists a more complex universe than the one we observe.
It is possible to simulate an entire universe.
Someone/thing has done so.

In addition to Occam, in this case absence of evidence is evidence of absence. As has been said many times in different ways on this forum and elsewhere, if absence of a thing is indistinguishable from the thing itself, that thing does not exist. I can say that there is a dragon in my garage (although I believe we established in another thread that it is in fact a giraffe), but that this dragon is invisible and completely undetecable. You can't prove this wrong, but this is not because there really is a dragon, it is because the claim that there is one is meaningless. There is simply no difference between a world in which I have an invisible dragon and one in which there is not. Your claim that we could be in a simulation is the same. There is simply no difference between a world in which we are and one in which we are not. As such, your claim simply has no meaning.

Of course, if you say that there are differences between a simulation and real life then it is up to you to provide evidence. If life after death is possible in a simulation, but not in the real world, then if you provide evidence for life after death then you have evidence in your favour (but not proof). If this is the case, feel free to show us evidence rahter than indulging in wild speculation. On the other hand, if you wish to philosophise about the nature of reality, please take it to the Religion and Philosophy section of the board, where you will be torn apart by wild philosophers. (Seriously, it's a scary place.)

 

[Humphreys]

Dr Nonsense, I'll ignore you now since you're saying absolutely nothing that hasn't already been addressed, and for someone who implies knowledge in logical fallacies I'd expect you to know the difference between an ad-hominem attack and an insult.

If we assumes that what we see is simply reality, the only thing we have to explain is this universe. If we assume that we are living in a simulation we have to explain not only this universe, but also the universe in which the substrate for the simulation exists, which is necessarily more complex than our own universe. This in itself is a violation of Occam, but in addition you must also assume that it is actually possible to simulate our universe in the detail we can see and that someone has done so.

I agree with this completely, and its for this exact reason that I am a materialist. I said that before, but it seems to have been missed.

From a scientific point of view, we must accept materalism as true without evidence to the contrary, otherwise we'd be going against parsimony. However, this does not actually constitute anything like strong evidence against any other position, and is certainly not good enough on its own for us to declare confidence in the falseness of the other models. Occam has simply told us which theory has preference for further investigation.

What Occam's Razor does not do is tell us that other models like the computer simulated reality are probabilistically very unlikely or unreasonable. So we haven't really got anywhere. We still don't know, we can't be sure, and we shouldn't put any great confidence in any position.

Hypothesis : WYSIWYG.
Assumptions : WYSIWYG.

Hypothesis : The Matrix.
Assumptions : There exists a more complex universe than the one we observe.
It is possible to simulate an entire universe.
Someone/thing has done so.

We don't know whether those assumptions are true or not, but does that actually make those models probabilistically unlikely?

What have we proved other than we're not sure?

In addition to Occam, in this case absence of evidence is evidence of absence. As has been said many times in different ways on this forum and elsewhere, if absence of a thing is indistinguishable from the thing itself, that thing does not exist. I can say that there is a dragon in my garage (although I believe we established in another thread that it is in fact a giraffe), but that this dragon is invisible and completely undetecable. You can't prove this wrong, but this is not because there really is a dragon, it is because the claim that there is one is meaningless. There is simply no difference between a world in which I have an invisible dragon and one in which there is not. Your claim that we could be in a simulation is the same. There is simply no difference between a world in which we are and one in which we are not. As such, your claim simply has no meaning.

Of course, if you say that there are differences between a simulation and real life then it is up to you to provide evidence. If life after death is possible in a simulation, but not in the real world, then if you provide evidence for life after death then you have evidence in your favour (but not proof). If this is the case, feel free to show us evidence rahter than indulging in wild speculation. On the other hand, if you wish to philosophise about the nature of reality, please take it to the Religion and Philosophy section of the board, where you will be torn apart by wild philosophers. (Seriously, it's a scary place.)

I disagree completely with this. First, I don't think absense of evidence for the Matrix is evidence against it, because we'd not necessarily expect to see any evidence, and I don't accept that something being completely undetectable and having no impact on the material world is the same as non-existence.

I can imagine a scenario where I am a floating consciousness, merely observing the material world, yet completely unable to interact with it. I could have thoughts and experiences, yet by your definition I don't exist, because I am unable to interact with your world!

This is absurd, is it not?

 

[Cuddles]

I agree with this completely, and its for this exact reason that I am a materialist. I said that before, but it seems to have been missed.

In that case, what point are you trying to make? That we are not 100% sure what the universe is or how it works? I don't think you'll find a single person who believe we are.

From a scientific point of view, we must accept materalism as true without evidence to the contrary, otherwise we'd be going against parsimony. However, this does not actually constitute anything like strong evidence against any other position, and is certainly not good enough on its own for us to declare confidence in the falseness of the other models. Occam has simply told us which theory has preference for further investigation.

What Occam's Razor does not do is tell us that other models like the computer simulated reality are probabilistically very unlikely or unreasonable. So we haven't really got anywhere. We still don't know, we can't be sure, and we shouldn't put any great confidence in any position.

These two paragraphs contradict each other. In the first you say "materialism", whatever you think that is, is taken to be true because it is the simplest and therefore most likely. In the second you say we don't know which is more likely. The whole point of Occam is that it tells us which theory is more likely to be true.

We don't know whether those assumptions are true or not, but does that actually make those models probabilistically unlikely?

What have we proved other than we're not sure?

Of course we don't, that is why they're called assumptions. And yes, that does make those models less likely. If I have to make at least three unsupported assumptions for a hypothesis to be correct it is less likely than the hypothesis for which I only make one assumption.

I disagree completely with this. First, I don't think absense of evidence for the Matrix is evidence against it, because we'd not necessarily expect to see any evidence, and I don't accept that something being completely undetectable and having no impact on the material world is the same as non-existence.

I can imagine a scenario where I am a floating consciousness, merely observing the material world, yet completely unable to interact with it. I could have thoughts and experiences, yet by your definition I don't exist, because I am unable to interact with your world!

This is absurd, is it not?

It is absurd, but not in the way you think. If you are observing the material world you are interacting with it. In fact, simply being conscious would require interaction since this would require changing states and therfore energy and entropy flow. By my definition you don't exist because you can't exist. This is no different from the whole unstopable force/immoveable object dillema, it is only a problem until you realise that the things you are talking about can only exist in imagination.

 

[Deus Ex Machina]

Seems very silly but.......

At last a new book has been published setting out the secular scientific case for survival after death. This former stage magician tells us everything that his fellow magician James Randi is very careful not to tell us.

more...


http://www.cfpf.org.uk/recommended/books/webster/forever.html

If you survive it - it isn't "death".

 

[Dr B]

Dr Nonsense, I'll ignore you now since you're saying absolutely nothing that hasn't already been addressed, and for someone who implies knowledge in logical fallacies I'd expect you to know the difference between an ad-hominem attack and an insult.

My final point (as I ditched out of this a while ago because you are unable to put an argument togther - thats not an ad-hom - its a fact). I believe now that you have resorted to name-calling, on more than one occasion (obviously the strongest and most elegant form of argumentation of the educated masses ) there is little reason in continuing.

You are right I have a knowledge of fallacies and my knowledge of them has served me well in seeing straight though your nonsense. I have not insulted you - I have shown why your argument (not you - but the struture and form of the argument) is a nonsense. You just keep making statements - and do not furnishing anything with reasons. On top of all the other fallacies you make, you are quite right it would perhaps not be productive for us to continue on this topic.

I therefore remove myself in the hope others can help you more. I wish you well with it (and I mean that quite sincerely )

 

[articulett]

Seems very silly but.......

At last a new book has been published setting out the secular scientific case for survival after death. This former stage magician tells us everything that his fellow magician James Randi is very careful not to tell us.

more...


http://www.cfpf.org.uk/recommended/books/webster/forever.html

I'm going to watch James Randi very carefully at TAM to determine what it is he's being careful not to tell people. Damn, I knew I should have never trusted the atheist conspiracy--I should have known it was trickery with all their facts and reason and evidence and such. "Real Truths" are only available to the chosen few and can't be measured or perceived by skeptic, scientists, and those other debunking magician types. Damn that Randi--why won't he let us in on the deep secrets truths that only the woo seem to have evidence for? And damn those scientists...we could be refining this life changing information, but someone is keeping it all to themselves (except for the books they are trying to sell via the internet).

If there was life after death, don't you think that scientists would be rushing about madly trying to understand it, refine it, make it more comprehensive and useful--learn whatever tidbits we could. Humans aren't really content to llet discoveries lay unhidden. We're spending millions on star dust and genome mapping. A few divine bits of prescience would be helpful...useful...exciting.

I will forever be amused at the numbers of people claiming to have special insightful knowledge from divine or arcane sources. Prove to me that consciousness can exist outside of a living brain, if you want me to listen further about what you have to say regarding such.

 

[negativ]

I don't know about that, but I have always contended that it's not possible for someone to believe conclusively that there is no life after death. Certainly such a position can be convincingly argued on the basis of evidence and to a certain extent logic, but the inability of the human mind to imagine oblivion - nothingness - means that we cannot envisage not being alive and thus our belief cannot be total. Similarly, it is not possible to imagine a world that does not contain us, because to do so we would need to put ourselves in the role of observer, and once we do that the original premise of a world in which we don't exist is destroyed.

I believe with 99.9% certainty that there is no life after death. I came about this belief (and I do not in any way contend that this is a good argument) intuitively at about the age of 14 or so. I believe that I have successfully "imagined" oblivion and not being alive. That moment was fleeting but -- literally -- indescribably profound. Possibly I experienced what Zen Buddhists would call "Satori". I doubt that I could lay out the thought process that led me to that feeling so that another could come to the same conclusion.

It is not necessary to put onesself in the role of observer to imagine a world that does not contain us, because in a world that does not contain us, "observation" has no meaning. In fact, "meaning" has no meaning, and "no-meaning" has no meaning.

I am not eloquent enough to speak at length about this without devolving further into incomprehensibility, except to say that the ability to "imagine" oblivion after death is exactly the same as the ability to "remember" oblivion before your birth - the same experience you had when the dinosaurs were walking the earth or the one you had before the Big Bang. But that's not an experience, is it?

 

[Humphreys]

In that case, what point are you trying to make? That we are not 100% sure what the universe is or how it works? I don't think you'll find a single person who believe we are.

More than that, that we don't even know how likely/unlikely the other models are and can't even make a rough approximation. Rather than not 100% sure, we can't even be 60% sure, it's just mindless guessing on a subject far beyond our knowledge. Seeing as this is the case, why do we pretend that we can be confident that materialism is true, or that death is the end?

These two paragraphs contradict each other. In the first you say "materialism", whatever you think that is, is taken to be true because it is the simplest and therefore most likely. In the second you say we don't know which is more likely. The whole point of Occam is that it tells us which theory is more likely to be true.

Actually, if you read the paragraph again, I didn't say either of those things. Occam tells us we must prefer materialism from a scientific point of view, but it doesn't tell us how unlikely the other models are.

Of course we don't, that is why they're called assumptions. And yes, that does make those models less likely. If I have to make at least three unsupported assumptions for a hypothesis to be correct it is less likely than the hypothesis for which I only make one assumption.

We don't know how likely/unlikely those assumptions are, and lets not pretend materialism does not make some assumptions of its own.

How likely/unlikely is it that its possible to simulate this reality? We have absoultely no way of putting a value to that, even in theory.

How likely/unlikely is it that QM is explainable in a materialist framework? In this instance, I'd have to say less likely than in any other model.

But who knows.

It is absurd, but not in the way you think. If you are observing the material world you are interacting with it. In fact, simply being conscious would require interaction since this would require changing states and therfore energy and entropy flow. By my definition you don't exist because you can't exist. This is no different from the whole unstopable force/immoveable object dillema, it is only a problem until you realise that the things you are talking about can only exist in imagination.

The above is only true if materialism is true, and as I'm trying to point out, we can't be sure that that is the case. I'll keep on living as if it is, but I'm always wary of making any confident assertions on subjects like life after death.

 

[Soapy Sam]

It's even simpler than that. It really is only what I said, that imagination requires an observer and if you're imaging your own non-existance there cannot, by definition, be an observer, and therefore the original premise is impossible. (I could have put that better!)

I don't think anyone has understood this yet, although I accept that may be to do with my explanation as much as anything.

I certainly don't understand what's meant here.
Why does imagination require an observer?
Imagination requires a brain capable of imagining.
If I imagine the word "synconphotoformia", I may imagine a meaning for the word, even an imaginary etymology.
Where is the observer in this? It isn't me, because I'm not "in" the events imagined. The events imagined concern a word- no people in there at all. I'm outside, doing the imagining.
I can imagine a world in which the word is in everyday use, where I do not exist.
This seems very simple. You see an objection to this, which I'm afraid I'm completely missing. Can you possibly clarify further?

 

[John Jackson]

I've just read through this.

Humphreys, your entire argument is basically an Argument to Ignorance.

You seem to think that it's valid argumentation to invent premises without any justifiable reason and continue on the basis that they should be considered as no-one has proved them false; or that as they can't be tested one way or another that it's reasonable not to rule them out!

As Cuddles has pointed out, any claim that cannot be tested in any way is meaningless. Therefore, your entire line of reasoning is meaningless.

 

[articulett]

Humphreys,
the thing that bothers me about your way of thinking is that it doesn't factor in some important things that we do know--we do know that humans have been making up stories about life after death for eons--all kinds of stories--we even understand why...and the more we know about neurology the more we understand what areas of the brain is responsible for a sense of self as "separate" from our brain. We know how to affect this perception and the various ways people explain these perceptions including feelings of "being out of their body"--but despite eons of belief about such notions, we have no evidence at all that consciousness of any sort can exist absent a living brain, and lots of evidence that show how the brain is intimately involved with consciousness. We have lots info. about the kinds of mental glitches and fallacies of thought that humans are prone too. We have lots of evidence about how science can figure out info. and refine our knowledge once we can grasp, define, or measure some aspect of it--even invisible things like electromagnetism, DNA, microbes, etc. But we have no evidence at all that consciousness absent a living brain is anything more than an imaginary concept of human beings. All these eons of belief--0 evidence to work with. Compare that to the massive data accumulated for entities, mental states, and forces that are known to exist. It's not as if the odds that there is life after death is equally as likely as the odds that there is no life. Because we haven't got the slightest bit of evidence to lead us to conclude that someone can feel, think, remember, see, etc. after death--it is just bizarre to conclude that somehow they can--and more bizarre that someone would keep such proof a secret. And bizarre to the nth extreme to even begin to think we can describe what this invisible immeasurable entity that is indistinguishable (so far) from the imaginary can experience--or that such a thing CAN experience.

You just seem to leave a large door open for this possibility where others have concluded that it is increasingly unlikely that such an entity as a "soul" will ever be shown to exist. We know mirages are illusions. I think it's a pretty sure bet that the soul is too. To me, arguments for the possibility always sound like wishful thinking and nothing that makes me able to believe in such things--which I once did readily without a second though.

You say that you can't make a rational choice of one over the others--But one choice involves that which we observe, measure, quantify, and have much evidence in support of--all other claims involve invisible, immeasurable forces or entities. In that way, they are as relevant as the hijackers belief about having virgins when they die--or Tom Cruise's Xenu beliefs--they all involve something that no one can test, measure, disprove, define, verify, or even tease out from a delusion. It would take the smallest example to show that consciousness can exist outside of a brain to throw a giant monkey wrench in materialism--but anyone can always say there is some invisible something or other that materialsim can't explain therefore this somehow means that there is a possibility that there can be life after death.

I think the soul belief is a lot like the god belief. People want amazing amounts of evidence to disprove the possibility (knowing that you can't disprove a negative) and will take the tiniest inkling or anecdote as confirmation that the entity is real. And then they will explain away the whole thing by saying it's outside human understanding and that people are arrogant if they try to figure it out. Such people tend to have an extreme disinterest in the latest scientific discoveries if there is any chance it threatens their belief--and utter interest in that which may support it.

 

[Cuddles]

It seems obvious this thread is going nowhere. I think we're getting worryingly close to needing the mods to move it down to the depths of the religion forum.

 

[pbergeron]

No - there is none. However woo's love to point to what they call the 'Survival Physics of Ronald Pearson' as their ideal....

Get ready for metaphorically laden nonsense and sweeping assumptions and not forgetting that all important theory of everything......Happy Googling

link
http://www.survivalafterdeath.org/articles/pearson/survival.htm

I stumbled upon Ronald Pearson perusing youtube the other day. I was interested in the subject of an afterlife and interested in what he has to say about creation and a supposed answer to the failures of Einstein's theory of relativity - essentially claiming to have an answer for a theory of everything. However, and I still need to read more on the subject (just purchased his book titled Creation Solved?), for all of his theory to work, the reader has to accept what he calls the existence of an i-ether, a background "medium" or energy or whatever.

Once you accept this, the equations at both the massive (planets,etc...) and quantum levels calculate perfectly. I am no physicist so I may be over simplifying the matter.

What's my point? How is i-ether and the presumption of its existence any different than a belief in Dark Matter and Dark Energy. Aren't these 2 concepts (the 2 darks) a leap of faith in an attempt to satisfy the equations that solve everything?

Could it be that they are all really saying the same thing? I saw Machu Kakio(sp?) on the Science channel talking about 9 dimensions (i think) and a membrane theory that possibly solves the theory of everything ... 9 dimensions? again, isn't this a leap of faith since we can only perceive 3 dimensions??

Having said all of this, I wish Ronald Pearson would steer clear of using names like Uri Gellar and others in any of the articles he writes on the subject of psychic and paranormal abilities and the scientific explanations for all of this.

At the very least, it makes for great reading.

 

[godless dave]

So what's the UK law that prevents the author from publishing books and running his own website (at his own expense) like Randi does?