Ehh… even when you don’t mean it literally, you probably shouldn’t say such things as “first day as a rationalist”. It’s kind of hard to increase one’s capability for rational thinking without keeping in mind at all times how it’s a many-sided gradient with more than one dimension.
Here’s one:
Let’s say that the world is a simulation AND that strongly godlike AI is possible.
To all intents and purposes, even though the bible in the simulation is provably inconsistent, the existence of a being indistinguishable from the God in such a bible would not be ruled out because though the inhabitants of the world are constrained by the rules of physics in their own state machines or objects or whatever, the universe containing the simulation is subject to it’s own set of physics and logic and therefore may vary even inside the simulation but not be detectable to you or I.
Yes of course this is possible. So is the Tipler scenario. However, the simulation argument just as easily supports any of a vast number of god-theories, of which Christianity is just one of many. That being said, it does support judeo-xian type systems more than say Hindiusm or Vodun.
There may even be economical reasons to create universes like ours, but that’s a very unpopular position on LW.
Do you have particular assumptions in mind here? Or is this a more general statement about the nature of reasoning?
It’s a statement so general you probably learned it on your first day as a rationalist.
In other words, “Garbage in, garbage out?”
Yes.
Ehh… even when you don’t mean it literally, you probably shouldn’t say such things as “first day as a rationalist”. It’s kind of hard to increase one’s capability for rational thinking without keeping in mind at all times how it’s a many-sided gradient with more than one dimension.
Here’s one: Let’s say that the world is a simulation AND that strongly godlike AI is possible. To all intents and purposes, even though the bible in the simulation is provably inconsistent, the existence of a being indistinguishable from the God in such a bible would not be ruled out because though the inhabitants of the world are constrained by the rules of physics in their own state machines or objects or whatever, the universe containing the simulation is subject to it’s own set of physics and logic and therefore may vary even inside the simulation but not be detectable to you or I.
Yes of course this is possible. So is the Tipler scenario. However, the simulation argument just as easily supports any of a vast number of god-theories, of which Christianity is just one of many. That being said, it does support judeo-xian type systems more than say Hindiusm or Vodun.
There may even be economical reasons to create universes like ours, but that’s a very unpopular position on LW.
Come on. Don’t vote me down without responding.