From: Dan Fabulich (dfabulich@warpmail.net)
Date: Thu Sep 05 2002 - 21:02:08 MDT
gts wrote:
> > A slim chance is a slim chance is a slim chance.
> > If you reject one of these, you've got to reject both.
>
> Yes, and I've rejected both hypotheses:
>
> 1) That there is only a .999... probability that you are 23 is
> sufficient grounds for withholding judgment about your age. We can say
> that you are very likely to be 23 but we cannot say you are in fact 23.
That's not what I understood your position to be. You said that, if you
were writing carefully, you would say: "Given the empirical evidence of
your birth certificate, the hypothesis that you are not 23 must be
rejected in favor of the hypothesis that you are 23."
Now, maybe I misunderstood you here, but by this I presumed you meant to
say that you *could* accept the hypothesis that I was 23, even though
there must be a slim chance that the evidence is incorrect; in plainer
language, we should merely state in the indicative mood that "Dan is 23."
But whatever. :) If you're not going to pass judgement on anything in the
world, I say again, it's nothing special that you won't pass judgement on
immortality.
> That said, I do recognize that in statistics we are prepared normally to
> accept any hypothesis where p < .05, i.e., where the probability of
> accepting the hypothesis as true when it is false is 5% or less. (For
> more critical problems statisticians sometimes use p < .01, but the
> principle is the same.)
>
> Perhaps the real question here is why this statistical argument, (that a
> high probability of being immortal should be considered equivalent to
> immortality), is less than satisfying to me and to at least one other
> person here who has indicated a similar dissatisfaction to me in private
> email.
>
> Hmmm... <scratching head> :)
*This* is exactly the question I was getting at.
> I think that to answer to that question I must back-track a bit from my
> stance in favor of empiricism and note that some of us are interested in
> knowing whether true and certain immortality is possible, *in
> principle*. To prove something to be true *in principle* requires an
> appeal to rationalism in addition to (or instead of) empiricism.
>
> This problem of quantum tunneling is, after all, a very mathematical
> problem. Like most problems of physical science it can be viewed
> entirely in terms of mathematics. And mathematics is in the domain of
> rationalism.
>
> In other words we need something more akin to a mathematical proof. For
> example I can prove the truth or falsehood of a statement about the
> exact rate of acceleration of a falling object at time t with nothing
> more than mathematics and the empirical observations of physicists.
> Something similar should be possible in proving the truth of falsehood
> of propositions about human immortality.
I don't think this is the difference. You'll notice that we haven't done
any experiments to see if that infinite sum trick actually works out.
The whole thought experiment is an appeal to mathematics and rationalism!
If anything, you would want to criticize the argument for not including
enough observable evidence, for relying too heavily on math, not for being
too unlike a mathematical proof.
The example of the falling object is in the same vein. You can state the
acceleration rate to within some margin of error; the same holds for the
immortality argument (we can even directly bound the % chance of error).
In charity, *I* think the reason that you find probabilistic arguments for
immortality especially troublesome, compared to probabilistic arguments in
favor of my age, is that you think of immortality as being a special case
of confidence, of certainty. There IS a difference between arguing
whether or not I could be 23 and arguing whether or not I can be certain.
If we define P as "I'm 23 and I know with 100% confidence that I'm 23",
then we DO find ourselves in a position of being able to say that P
doesn't hold of me: since we know that 100% confidence is unattainable, we
know that P doesn't hold.
Similarly, if you think that immortality MEANS 100% confidence in an
infinite lifespan, then you'll be in a good position to argue that I can't
be immortal, BECAUSE I can't have 100% confidence, and immortality
requires confidence.
But, I challenge this definition altogether. Immortality, as exemption
from death, doesn't mean 100% confidence in anything.
Take an example: it makes logical sense to say that somebody could be 100%
immortal by a mathematical proof and the laws of physics [ie an imaginary
argument *much* stronger than the one given thus far], *but not realize
this*. Perhaps, for example, nobody had ever told this person the proof.
The fact that this example even *makes sense* means that immortality is
not a special case of certainty. Compare it with certainty itself: We
don't think it makes sense to say that you're 100% certain that P but you
don't know you're 100% certain that P. If you're 100% certain, then you
know it, as part of what it means to be certain. [This is different from
possibly defeasible arguments that "what I know, I know that I know,"
since you may believe a truth with only medium-high certainty and perhaps
still know it... but not so for certainty itself.]
Of course, you could imagine immortality to be whatever you like, but I
don't see how it would be informative or helpful to treat it as
"certainty."
Anyway, that's the key point here: immortality isn't, itself, certainty.
It's just living infinitely, whether or not you realize that about
yourself. The absence of a non-probabilistic argument is therefore no
more worrying about immortality than it is about my age.
-Dan
-unless you love someone-
-nothing else makes any sense-
e.e. cummings
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