I still have a basic problem with the method of posing questions about possibilities I currently consider fantastically improbable. My uncertainty about how I would deal with the situation goes up with its improbability, and what I would actually do will be determined largely by details absent from the description of the improbable scenario.
It is as if my current view of the world—that is, my assignments of probabilities to everything—is a digital photograph of a certain resolution. When I focus on vastly improbable possibilities, it is as if I inspect a tiny area of the photograph, only a few pixels wide, and try to say what is depicted there. I can put that handful of pixels through my best image-processing algorithms, but all I’m going to get back is noise.
Can you consider hypothetical worlds with entirely different histories from ours? Rather than trying to update based on your current state of knowledge, with mountains of cumulative experience pointing a certain way, imagine what that mountainous evidence could have been in a deeply different world than this one.
For example, suppose the simulation sysadmin had been in active communication with us since before recorded history, and was commonplace knowledge casually accepted as mere fact, and the rest of the world looked different in the ways we would expect such a world to.
Unwinding the thread backwards, I see that my comment strayed into irrelevance from the original point, so never mind.
I would like to ask you this, though: of all the people on Earth who feel as sure as you do about the truth or falsehood of various religions, what proportion do you think are actually right? If your confidence in your beliefs regarding religion is a larger number than this, then what additional evidence do you have that makes you think you’re special?
I still have a basic problem with the method of posing questions about possibilities I currently consider fantastically improbable. My uncertainty about how I would deal with the situation goes up with its improbability, and what I would actually do will be determined largely by details absent from the description of the improbable scenario.
It is as if my current view of the world—that is, my assignments of probabilities to everything—is a digital photograph of a certain resolution. When I focus on vastly improbable possibilities, it is as if I inspect a tiny area of the photograph, only a few pixels wide, and try to say what is depicted there. I can put that handful of pixels through my best image-processing algorithms, but all I’m going to get back is noise.
Can you consider hypothetical worlds with entirely different histories from ours? Rather than trying to update based on your current state of knowledge, with mountains of cumulative experience pointing a certain way, imagine what that mountainous evidence could have been in a deeply different world than this one.
For example, suppose the simulation sysadmin had been in active communication with us since before recorded history, and was commonplace knowledge casually accepted as mere fact, and the rest of the world looked different in the ways we would expect such a world to.
In other words, can I read fiction? Yes, but I don’t see where this is going.
Unwinding the thread backwards, I see that my comment strayed into irrelevance from the original point, so never mind.
I would like to ask you this, though: of all the people on Earth who feel as sure as you do about the truth or falsehood of various religions, what proportion do you think are actually right? If your confidence in your beliefs regarding religion is a larger number than this, then what additional evidence do you have that makes you think you’re special?