Extensive knowledge of my private thoughts, revulsions and desires, in particular the ones embarrassing enough that I’ve never cared to share them with anyone.
Why would it be more likely that you’re speaking to a deity than that you are in a simulation speaking to the principal investigator of an experiment or some other non-theistic scenario?
The difficulty I have with this thought experiment is that I can’t decide how to distinguish between the hypothesis that there is a deity with whom I’m now conversing, and the many hypotheses that preserve a purely naturalistic universe in which my brain (or a simulation of my brain) is receiving coherent sensory inputs that make it seem like I’m interacting with a deity who can read my mind and show me absolutely anything I ask for—he could even give me the memories of having proven the Riemann hypothesis to my satisfaction, of having taken me to my funeral...
My gut feeling is that the simulation hypothesis and some other non-theistic hypotheses have higher prior probability for me, and any evidence for the theistic alternative is also consistent with the simulation and some other hypotheses—which I guess indicates with a problem with simulation hypothesis in this case, since it’s not falsifiable.
One of the primary ways to distinguish between a simulator and a deity is simply what they claim to be. It seems unlikely to me that a deity would claim to be a simulator. I can more see reason why a simulator would claim to be a deity but it still seems not like a likely course of action.
Assume for a minute that Simulator and Deity are the only two hypotheses with substantial probability mass. Then P(Simulator|says it is a simulator)> P(simulator). So by conservation of evidence, P(~ Simulator|says ~ simulator) > P(~Simulator) so, P(Deity|says is a deity)> P(deity). The question becomes then by how much?
Extensive knowledge of my private thoughts, revulsions and desires, in particular the ones embarrassing enough that I’ve never cared to share them with anyone.
Why would it be more likely that you’re speaking to a deity than that you are in a simulation speaking to the principal investigator of an experiment or some other non-theistic scenario?
The difficulty I have with this thought experiment is that I can’t decide how to distinguish between the hypothesis that there is a deity with whom I’m now conversing, and the many hypotheses that preserve a purely naturalistic universe in which my brain (or a simulation of my brain) is receiving coherent sensory inputs that make it seem like I’m interacting with a deity who can read my mind and show me absolutely anything I ask for—he could even give me the memories of having proven the Riemann hypothesis to my satisfaction, of having taken me to my funeral...
My gut feeling is that the simulation hypothesis and some other non-theistic hypotheses have higher prior probability for me, and any evidence for the theistic alternative is also consistent with the simulation and some other hypotheses—which I guess indicates with a problem with simulation hypothesis in this case, since it’s not falsifiable.
One of the primary ways to distinguish between a simulator and a deity is simply what they claim to be. It seems unlikely to me that a deity would claim to be a simulator. I can more see reason why a simulator would claim to be a deity but it still seems not like a likely course of action.
Assume for a minute that Simulator and Deity are the only two hypotheses with substantial probability mass. Then P(Simulator|says it is a simulator)> P(simulator). So by conservation of evidence, P(~ Simulator|says ~ simulator) > P(~Simulator) so, P(Deity|says is a deity)> P(deity). The question becomes then by how much?