Proof of Immortality, VII

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Jabba said:
Dave,
- Sure, but leave me out of the equation. What is the likelihood that now would be between 1942 and 2042 Gregorian time?
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To quote a manager I once worked with when he was dealing with the network administrator who had come to work drunk again, "Put down the schnapps Schultz, you're snockered again."
 
Jabba said:
Sure. But the question still makes sense...
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No, "now" is relative and subjective by definition, and refers to an indeterminate interval of time. Under that definition please explain how your question makes sense. Don't just insist that it does; explain why each of your critics' objections is not operative or applicable.

Also, please explain the relevance of the question to your proof, to show you're not just distracting from yesterday's embarrassing gaffes. You've told us to ignore the event E for the time being. But doing so would fundamentally change the question. I can use statistics, for example, to deteermine the probability that my car will need a certain repair within a certain future interval of time. What you're asking is akin to "What is the probability of a repair?" It makes no sense. What repair? What car? You're just throwing statisticky-sounding gibberish against the wall in hopes that your critics will rise to the bait.
 
Jabba said:
Sure. But the question still makes sense...
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There are, in fact, only two possibilities. Either "now" means "the moment at which this statement is made," in which case the probability is 1; or "now" is not being used to mean the concept it is generally understood to mean, in which case the question does not make sense.

Dave
 
Dude, what are the odds that now is, like now, man? It could totally be some other time in some other dimension, and you and me are smoking a bowl and having this discussion there and then. Whoa.
 
Jabba said:
Sure. But the question still makes sense...
- Gotta go. I'll be back.
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Not really, but keep pretending, how is time defined exactly?

Your question ignore that doesn't it?

And just assumes some abstracted meaning to the word time.

In physics, there is only one time per reference point and that is 'now'.

Given any inertial frame of reference, it exists in the 'now'. So to ask, "What is the chance that now is between March1, 1950 and March 1 2100?" is meaningless.

The now can only be reference to one inertial frame as it exists.
 
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Jabba said:
Dave,
- Sure, but leave me out of the equation. What is the likelihood that now would be between 1942 and 2042 Gregorian time?
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Ahhh, he's using puddle logic.

“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.”

― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt
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I just ran
Code: 
SELECT GETDATE();
and got this:

Code: 
2018-02-15 09:57:36.127

So that settles it. "Now" is 2018-02-15 09:57:36.127.
 
Jabba said:
- Anybody's. The answer is unknowable from your perspective and my perspective (and probably, everybody else's) -- but whatever, it's extremely small!
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Now I know why your posts sound familiar!

http://wisdomofchopra.com

"Innocence differentiates into deep brains"

"Emotional intelligence explains mortal choices"

"The 'Now' of the moment is the 'Now' you will carry forever."

"The odds of 'you' being 'you' right 'now' are infinitesimal yet predestined. You are 'supposed' to be."

"Perception of infinite time is the path to cosmic life"
 
Jabba said:
- Anybody's. The answer is unknowable from your perspective and my perspective (and probably, everybody else's) -- but whatever, it's extremely small!
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Won't "now" be different depending on whose perspective you're talking about and when they are talking?
 
Jabba said:
- Anybody's. The answer is unknowable from your perspective and my perspective (and probably, everybody else's) -- but whatever, it's extremely small!
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That would be option (b): the question is meaningless, because you have chosen not to adhere to the accepted meaning of the word "now".

Dave
 
Jabba said:
The answer is unknowable from your perspective and my perspective (and probably, everybody else's) -- but whatever, it's extremely small!
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No, the answer is undefined, because your question is ill-formed. And no, you don't get to say that since it's undefined it must therefore be very small. You do this a lot. You pose gibberish conundrums, wave your hands, and declare that by virtue of the conundrum your desired outcome must be the result.

Geez, Jabba. If you wanted to demonstrate how ignorant you were of mathematics, you couldn't be doing a better job.
 
godless dave said:
Won't "now" be different depending on whose perspective you're talking about and when they are talking?
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- Yes -- but, the "likelihood" won't change for the next 24 years, at least. And, most likely, everybody's best answer will still be "extremely small."
 
Jabba said:
- Yes -- but, the "likelihood" won't change for the next 24 years, at least. And, most likely, everybody's best answer will still be "extremely small."
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Why would it be extremely small? If I hadn't been born in 1970, I wouldn't have been born at all, at any time. There is no other time when I could have been born.
 
Jabba:

It seems you are still lobbying your upthread poker hand analogy, that we should be suspicious that so many unlikely things have happened to create our here and now (although your use of 'now' seems to be unfolding). Do you think that rephrasing this claim will make thread readers jump up and say 'oh, I get it now. Jabba was right all along?' I don't think leading questions are working here.
 
Jabba said:
- Yes -- but, the "likelihood" won't change for the next 24 years, at least.
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Why? You said anyone's perspective. I choose Abraham Lincoln's perspective. And I have no idea what he will have chosen for his "now." And since your question has too many degrees of freedom, it is ill-formed and has no answer.

And, most likely, everybody's best answer will still be "extremely small."
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But that's not a mathematical question, then, is it? If you simply poll for agreement to a question obviously designed to equivocate its operative principles, then you're just creating the illusion of rigor instead of actually being able to provide it. Do you really think your critics can't see what you're trying to do?
 
Jabba said:
- Yes -- but, the "likelihood" won't change for the next 24 years, at least. And, most likely, everybody's best answer will still be "extremely small."
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Do you not see, though, how comprehensively this invalidates your entire line of argument? If there are 140,000,000 tickets in a lottery, and you happen to buy ticket no. 27,598,163, that's a 1 in 140,000,000 chance, bit every other ticket is just as unlikely to have been the one you bought. If it's equally unlikely that "now" falls within any specific 100 year period, then it's equally unremarkable that "now" falls within any 100 year period. Your argument therefore equates to the argument that it's impossible to buy a lottery ticket, a conclusion you can invalidate trivially simply. It is, in fact, as practically everybody has been repeatedly pointing out to you, in our role as teachers to yours as the inattentive and demotivated student, an exact statement of the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy.

Dave
 
Dave Rogers said:
That would be option (b): the question is meaningless, because you have chosen not to adhere to the accepted meaning of the word "now".
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And he forgot to underline it or put it in quotes. "What are the chances of 'now' being in some particular interval?" Answer given, and then the inevitable rejoinder: "But that wouldn't be now."
 
carlitos said:
Dude, what are the odds that now is, like now, man? It could totally be some other time in some other dimension, and you and me are smoking a bowl and having this discussion there and then. Whoa.
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Jabba, this is pretty much your claim.
 
Dave Rogers said:
...yours as the inattentive and demotivated student, an exact statement of the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy.
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I wouldn't say demotivated. I'd say anti-motivated. In my teaching career I encountered many demotivated students. They sat in the back, asked no questions, didn't turn in homework, failed tests, took their sorry grade and went away. I also encountered a handful of anti-motivated students. These are highly annoying. An anti-motivated student is one who believes he already knows the material and wastes the class time asking pointed questions ostensibly intended to embarrass, entrap, or stump the teacher. They want to show the rest of the class (or whoever) that they are the smartest ones in the room.

In a classroom setting these individuals are toxic. Not only do they refuse to learn, they act in a way that prevents others from losing. Luckily those individuals don't last long in the college setting. They often fail qualifying exams for advancement and generally spout a trail of invective and blame as they depart. They are, for these purposes, ineducable.

This appears to be Jabba. As we've noted, he won't listen and he won't learn, and when that results in an impasse he just blames his critics for being biased or stupid. There are really only a limited number of civil ways such approaches can be handled.
 
Jabba said:
- Yes -- but, the "likelihood" won't change for the next 24 years, at least. And, most likely, everybody's best answer will still be "extremely small."
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You have agreed that your existence is cause-and-effect dependant. That means the likelihood is 1. Stop trying to backtrack from that just because you realise that this means you've lost.
 
godless dave said:
"Now" is 2018-02-15 09:57:36.127.
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But now it's then. That's the problem.

Many things are computable in a way that seems to make them a probability. If we define "now" arbitrarily as the one-second interval immediately following the instant at which I type the full-stop at the end of this sentence, it is certainly computable as a "probability" across some definite interval of time. But Dave Rogers has the right answer: that "probability" has no operative significance. We would have had to give it one. That the division results in a very small number in the case I state above does not provide a probability that relates, as such, to anything that inherently matters. And Dave correctly notes that once again it merely restates the Texas sharpshooter fallacy to assert that it does simply by virtue of its having been selected.

If we choose, for some reason, 2018-02-15 09:57:36.000 to 2018-02-15 09:57:37.000 as a one-second interval we're interested in among some larger defined interval, and we choose -- again for whatever reason -- the event of you clicking "Submit reply," to a post of some great, then the probability of that event falling within the predetermined interval would have some significance to whatever context we had had in mind, which gave rise to the designation of the intervals and the event. But if we have defined the interval because it contains the instant when you clicked Submit, then trying to point out that such a one-second interval is a very small target among a number of decades, centuries -- or from the Big Bang to the heat-death of the universe -- is entirely meaningless. Why is it meaningless? Because the selection by that criteria binds the selection to the criteria for the purposes of determining likelihood. It literally does become "What's the likelihood of hitting the target I defined in terms of having hit the target."

Jabba hopes to overcome that obvious flaw by removing the description of the event, but not the implied significance of the event.
 
Jabba said:
- Yes -- but, the "likelihood" won't change for the next 24 years, at least. And, most likely, everybody's best answer will still be "extremely small."
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OK; fair enough, if you mean the likelihood of "now" in that way. But then it is easy to calculate, provided you state the resolution of "now":

Here are the likelihoods for various resolutions of "now" (assuming 24 years):

1 year: 1/24
1 month: 1/288
1 day: 1/8760
1 hour: 1/210240
1 minute: 1/12614400

... etc.

So what?

Hans
 
godless dave said:
Do you understand that you could not possibly exist before your parents were born?
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He may not. Jabba recently confirmed to me on this message board that he existed in the year 1888. I assume his parents were born after that.
 
Dave Rogers said:
Do you not see, though, how comprehensively this invalidates your entire line of argument? If there are 140,000,000 tickets in a lottery, and you happen to buy ticket no. 27,598,163, that's a 1 in 140,000,000 chance, bit every other ticket is just as unlikely to have been the one you bought. If it's equally unlikely that "now" falls within any specific 100 year period, then it's equally unremarkable that "now" falls within any 100 year period. Your argument therefore equates to the argument that it's impossible to buy a lottery ticket, a conclusion you can invalidate trivially simply. It is, in fact, as practically everybody has been repeatedly pointing out to you, in our role as teachers to yours as the inattentive and demotivated student, an exact statement of the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy.

Dave
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Well put.

Every moment in time will have its day in the sun and be "now". Think of any time and it will have been, is, or will be "now".
 
Monza said:
Every moment in time will have its day in the sun and be "now". Think of any time and it will have been, is, or will be "now".
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It is rather amusing, I admit, to watch Jabba collide up against his first attempt to consider a continuous sample space. Maybe Mr. Certified Statistician will favor us with his own-words description of the difference between relative likelihood and absolute likelihood. Or maybe he'll just send Befuddled Old Man out onto the stage to sing "The Old Gray Mare" with his pants down around his ankles. "Gee, guys, this is really complicated stuff. But I think we all agree that the number I'm fishing for must be very small."
 
Jesus Christ are we gonna have to ad "How time works" to "Death exists" and "1 and 2 aren't the same number" to things Jabba doesn't understand?
 
jt512 said:
"Tsuris"? Oy. You're Jewish? Since when do Jews believe in immortality?
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He's posted before that he married into a Jewish family but he still self-identifies as Christian.



Jabba said:
- Anybody's. The answer is unknowable from your perspective and my perspective (and probably, everybody else's) -- but whatever, it's extremely small!
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Yeah! GOD is unknowable from your perspective and my perspective (and probably, everybody else's) so HE'S EXTREMELY SMALL!!

I'm so glad you agree!



JayUtah said:
I wouldn't say demotivated. I'd say anti-motivated. In my teaching career I encountered many demotivated students. They sat in the back, asked no questions, didn't turn in homework, failed tests, took their sorry grade and went away. I also encountered a handful of anti-motivated students. These are highly annoying. An anti-motivated student is one who believes he already knows the material and wastes the class time asking pointed questions ostensibly intended to embarrass, entrap, or stump the teacher. They want to show the rest of the class (or whoever) that they are the smartest ones in the room.

In a classroom setting these individuals are toxic. Not only do they refuse to learn, they act in a way that prevents others from losing. Luckily those individuals don't last long in the college setting. They often fail qualifying exams for advancement and generally spout a trail of invective and blame as they depart. They are, for these purposes, ineducable.

This appears to be Jabba. As we've noted, he won't listen and he won't learn, and when that results in an impasse he just blames his critics for being biased or stupid. There are really only a limited number of civil ways such approaches can be handled.
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Umm... I don't know if I agree fully here. It's obvious when the real anti's come into the thread when they claim knowledge and competence above everyone especially the skeptics (always said with as much condescension and opprobrium as possible).



JayUtah said:
It literally does become "What's the likelihood of hitting the target I defined in terms of having hit the target."
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(Highlight mine.)

However, this is the best summary I think I've read on the subject of the TSF; it is bell-ringingly clear with the clean simplicity and conciseness.
 
Jabba said:
- Yes -- but, the "likelihood" won't change for the next 24 years, at least. And, most likely, everybody's best answer will still be "extremely small."
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That is the most ridiculous statement of all time, the time is always now.
It doesn't matter that you ask some bizarre philosophical question with no meaning.
The time is always now, it has no likelihood. Now always has a 100% likelihood.
 
The Norseman said:
Umm... I don't know if I agree fully here. It's obvious when the real anti's come into the thread when they claim knowledge and competence above everyone especially the skeptics (always said with as much condescension and opprobrium as possible).
Click to expand...

That's what Jabba does. But others do it worse, I'll grant you.
 
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