If somebody started talking about the earth starting because of cheesecake, you’d wonder where the cheesecake came from. You’d look in a history book or a cook book and discover that the cheesecake has its origins in the roman empire, as a result of, well, people being hungry, and as a result of cows existing, and on and on, and you’d wonder how all those complex causes could produce a cheesecake predating the universe, and what sense it would make cut off from the rich causal net in which we find cheesecakes embedded today. Intelligence should not be any different. Agency trips up Occam’s rasor, because humans are wired to expect there to always be agents about. But an explanation of the universe which contains an agent is an incredibly complicated theory, which only presents itself to us for consideration because of our biases.
You’re right; yet no one ever sees it this way. Before Darwin, no one said, “This idea that an intelligent creator existed first doesn’t simplify things.”
Here is something I think would be useful: A careful information-theoretic explanation of why God must be complicated. When you explain, to Christians, that it doesn’t make sense to say complexity originated because God created it and God must be complicated, Christians reply (and I’m generalizing here because I’ve heard these replies so many times) one of 2 things:
God is outside of space and time, so causality doesn’t apply. (I don’t know how to respond to this.)
God is not complicated. God is simple. God is the pure essence of being, the First Cause. Think of a perfect circle. That’s what God is like.
It shouldn’t be hard to explain that, if God knows at least what is in the Encyclopedia Brittanica, God has at least enough complexity to store that information.
Of course, putting this explanation on LW might do no good to anybody.
It shouldn’t be hard to explain that, if God knows at least what is in the Encyclopedia Brittanica, God has at least enough complexity to store that information.
Keep in mind that if this complexity was derived from looking at external phenomena, or at the output of some simple computation, it doesn’t reduce the prior probability.
It shouldn’t be hard to explain that, if God knows at least what is in the Encyclopedia >Brittanica, God has at least enough complexity to store that information.
Except that the library of all possible books includes the Encyclopedia Brittanica but is far simpler.
Except that the library of all possible books includes the Encyclopedia Brittanica but is far simpler.
Presumably, God can also distinguish between “the set of books with useful information” and “the set of books containing only nonsense”. That is quite complex indeed.
I’m afraid I wasn’t clear. I am not arguing that “god” is simple or that it explains anything. I’m just saying that god’s knowledge is compressible into an intelligent generator (AI).
The source code isn’t likely to be 10 lines, but then again, it doesn’t have to include the Encyclopedia of Brittanica to tell you everything that the encyclopedia can once it grows up and learns.
F=m*a is enough to let you draw out all physically possible trajectories from the set of all trajectories, and it is still rather simple.
You say: You’re right; yet no one ever sees it this way. Before Darwin, no one said, “This idea that an intelligent creator existed first doesn’t simplify things.”
I may have to look up where before Darwin it gets argued, but I am pretty sure people challenged that before Darwin.
You’re right; yet no one ever sees it this way. Before Darwin, no one said, “This idea that an intelligent creator existed first doesn’t simplify things.”
Here is something I think would be useful: A careful information-theoretic explanation of why God must be complicated. When you explain, to Christians, that it doesn’t make sense to say complexity originated because God created it and God must be complicated, Christians reply (and I’m generalizing here because I’ve heard these replies so many times) one of 2 things:
God is outside of space and time, so causality doesn’t apply. (I don’t know how to respond to this.)
God is not complicated. God is simple. God is the pure essence of being, the First Cause. Think of a perfect circle. That’s what God is like.
It shouldn’t be hard to explain that, if God knows at least what is in the Encyclopedia Brittanica, God has at least enough complexity to store that information.
Of course, putting this explanation on LW might do no good to anybody.
Keep in mind that if this complexity was derived from looking at external phenomena, or at the output of some simple computation, it doesn’t reduce the prior probability.
Except that the library of all possible books includes the Encyclopedia Brittanica but is far simpler.
Presumably, God can also distinguish between “the set of books with useful information” and “the set of books containing only nonsense”. That is quite complex indeed.
I’m afraid I wasn’t clear. I am not arguing that “god” is simple or that it explains anything. I’m just saying that god’s knowledge is compressible into an intelligent generator (AI).
The source code isn’t likely to be 10 lines, but then again, it doesn’t have to include the Encyclopedia of Brittanica to tell you everything that the encyclopedia can once it grows up and learns.
F=m*a is enough to let you draw out all physically possible trajectories from the set of all trajectories, and it is still rather simple.
You say: You’re right; yet no one ever sees it this way. Before Darwin, no one said, “This idea that an intelligent creator existed first doesn’t simplify things.”
I may have to look up where before Darwin it gets argued, but I am pretty sure people challenged that before Darwin.