To me, the simulation hypothesis definitely does not imply a supernatural creator. ‘Supernatural’ implies ‘unconstrained by natural laws’, at least to me, and I see no reason to expect that the simulation creators are free from such constraints. Sure, it means that supernatural-seeming events can in principle occur inside the simulation, and the creators need not be constrained by the laws of the simulation since they are outside of it, but I fully expect that some laws or other would govern their behaviour.
To me, “Supernatural” needs to be evaluated from within the framework of the speaker’s reality. Otherwise, the term loses all possible semantic meaning.
But don’t you think there is an important distinction between events that defy logical description of any kind, and those that merely require an outlandish multi-layered reality to explain? I admit I can’t think of anything that could occur in our world that cannot be explained by the simulation hypothesis, but assuming that some world DOES exist outside the layers of nested simulation I can (loosely speaking) imagine that some things really are logically impossible there. And that if the inhabitants of that world observe such impossible events, well, they will wrongly concluded that they are in a simulation, but actually there will be truly supernatural happenings afoot.
I mention this somewhat pointless story just because religious philosophers would generally not accept that God is merely supernatural in your sense, I think they would insist on something closer to my sense, nonsense though it may be.
To me, the simulation hypothesis definitely does not imply a supernatural creator. ‘Supernatural’ implies ‘unconstrained by natural laws’, at least to me, and I see no reason to expect that the simulation creators are free from such constraints. Sure, it means that supernatural-seeming events can in principle occur inside the simulation, and the creators need not be constrained by the laws of the simulation since they are outside of it, but I fully expect that some laws or other would govern their behaviour.
To me, “Supernatural” needs to be evaluated from within the framework of the speaker’s reality. Otherwise, the term loses all possible semantic meaning.
But don’t you think there is an important distinction between events that defy logical description of any kind, and those that merely require an outlandish multi-layered reality to explain? I admit I can’t think of anything that could occur in our world that cannot be explained by the simulation hypothesis, but assuming that some world DOES exist outside the layers of nested simulation I can (loosely speaking) imagine that some things really are logically impossible there. And that if the inhabitants of that world observe such impossible events, well, they will wrongly concluded that they are in a simulation, but actually there will be truly supernatural happenings afoot.
I mention this somewhat pointless story just because religious philosophers would generally not accept that God is merely supernatural in your sense, I think they would insist on something closer to my sense, nonsense though it may be.
Really good point. But I still enjoyed the conversation.
A bold, but reasonable expectation that I agree with. There MUST be SOME laws, even if we don’t know what they are.