The usual reason for laughing at the idea of looking in a dictionary would be because the meaning of a word is really determined by how it’s used and dictionaries merely report that. But in this case, the sentence immediately after the one you quoted (which you mysteriously didn’t quote) was “Look at how it’s actually used”. So could you explain, please, what you found so funny?
Why is it not a god? [...]
I think all those questions are answered quite well in the last two paragraphs of the comment you were replying to.
I’m pointing at abstraction levels.
Yes, I understand that. But words come with particular (rough) abstraction levels built in: “thing”, “asset”, “financial instrument”, “financial derivative”, “option”, “call option on an equity”, “American call option on Apple shares”, “American call option on 100 AAPL shares at a strike price of $500 per share and maturity date 2016-09-01″. The abstraction levels implicit in the words “creationism” and “simulationism” are lower than the abstraction level at which they turn into the same concept.
The not-created [...] (=God)
So, that’s the answer I remarked was the best one I could see, and I explained why I don’t find it a good answer, and you ignored that without comment.
The hacker.
Well, at least in this case you did make some comments that kinda engage with my comments on that answer, so let’s see.
an absent god, not not-a-god.
I think it’s the combination of his absence with the other features I mentioned that make him not-a-god.
he can shut down his computer
Yup. I don’t think the ability to destroy the universe is sufficient for godhood. (Suppose some clever physicist discovers a way for us to destroy the universe—but it doesn’t enable us to do anything else. Does that make us gods?)
or twiddle the rules of the universe
Except that he has no idea which of the bazillion universes his computer is simulating is ours, and he’s lost the source code for his universe simulator and isn’t smart enough to make sense of the object code. He could reach in and twiddle things at random, but that wouldn’t (e.g.) enable him to make any specific change, and the most likely consequence would be that the simulation would crash.
which would look awfully like a miracle.
Given the details I laid out, it would look like an awfully hamfisted miracle; he would have no actual control over what he did.
The usual reason for laughing at the idea of looking in a dictionary would be because the meaning of a word is really determined by how it’s used and dictionaries merely report that. But in this case, the sentence immediately after the one you quoted (which you mysteriously didn’t quote) was “Look at how it’s actually used”. So could you explain, please, what you found so funny?
I think all those questions are answered quite well in the last two paragraphs of the comment you were replying to.
Yes, I understand that. But words come with particular (rough) abstraction levels built in: “thing”, “asset”, “financial instrument”, “financial derivative”, “option”, “call option on an equity”, “American call option on Apple shares”, “American call option on 100 AAPL shares at a strike price of $500 per share and maturity date 2016-09-01″. The abstraction levels implicit in the words “creationism” and “simulationism” are lower than the abstraction level at which they turn into the same concept.
So, that’s the answer I remarked was the best one I could see, and I explained why I don’t find it a good answer, and you ignored that without comment.
Well, at least in this case you did make some comments that kinda engage with my comments on that answer, so let’s see.
I think it’s the combination of his absence with the other features I mentioned that make him not-a-god.
Yup. I don’t think the ability to destroy the universe is sufficient for godhood. (Suppose some clever physicist discovers a way for us to destroy the universe—but it doesn’t enable us to do anything else. Does that make us gods?)
Except that he has no idea which of the bazillion universes his computer is simulating is ours, and he’s lost the source code for his universe simulator and isn’t smart enough to make sense of the object code. He could reach in and twiddle things at random, but that wouldn’t (e.g.) enable him to make any specific change, and the most likely consequence would be that the simulation would crash.
Given the details I laid out, it would look like an awfully hamfisted miracle; he would have no actual control over what he did.