pnrjulius comments on Semantic Stopsigns - Less Wrong

53 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 24 August 2007 07:29PM

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Comment author: TheOtherDave 07 April 2011 06:05:08PM 4 points [-]

Ah, I see. Thanks for clarifying.

Sure, I agree: if, upon my death, I find myself in an afterlife consistent with religion X's teachings about the afterlife, and/or able to ask questions of some entity who claims to be the Supreme Being, I should update my beliefs about the likelihood of such an afterlife/Being.

Comment author: pnrjulius 19 May 2012 05:41:18AM 2 points [-]

But of course, we're pretty sure this won't happen. Indeed, let's consider two alternatives:

  1. Afterlife exists, but God set it up so that you can't report back because... uh... I'll get back to you?
  2. Afterlife doesn't exist, which is why you can't report back (there's nothing to report back from).

In more explicitly Bayesian terms, which is larger: P(~report|afterlife) or P(~report|~afterlife)? Pretty clearly the latter, right? So the lack of reports is therefore evidence against an afterlife. (Maybe not conclusive evidence, but evidence.)

Comment author: TheOtherDave 19 May 2012 02:49:48PM 0 points [-]

Agreed that this is evidence against an afterlife.

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