I think this whole line of thought is interesting and is too easily dismissed on LW, which is unfortunate.
If the SA holds, and so far there is no reason to believe it doesn’t . . .
Then historical interventions are possible. The Singularity future should also radically up estimate our prior of historical intervention by physical aliens, and these two scenarios are difficult to distinguish regardless.
The question then is how likely are interventions? Do they have utility for the simulator? This is an interesting, open question.
A large portion of the planet believes or at least suspects that historical intervention occurred. That they may have come to these beliefs for the wrong reasons, using inferior tools, does not change in any way the facts of the matter the beliefs concern.
Just even considering these ideas brings up a whole vast history of priors that biases us one way or the other.
Before knowledge of a future-Singularity, there were no mechanisms that could possibly allow for superintelligences, let alone those creating universes like our own. Now we are very clearly aware of such mechanisms, and it is time to percolate this belief update through a vast historical web.
Anyway, if you then take a second pass at history looking for possible interventions, the origin of Christianity does look a little odd, a little too closely connected to the later Singularity which appears to be spawning from it as a historical development.
I speculate on that a bit towards the latter middle of this page here
I think this whole line of thought is interesting and is too easily dismissed on LW, which is unfortunate.
If the SA holds, and so far there is no reason to believe it doesn’t . . .
Then historical interventions are possible. The Singularity future should also radically up estimate our prior of historical intervention by physical aliens, and these two scenarios are difficult to distinguish regardless.
The question then is how likely are interventions? Do they have utility for the simulator? This is an interesting, open question.
A large portion of the planet believes or at least suspects that historical intervention occurred. That they may have come to these beliefs for the wrong reasons, using inferior tools, does not change in any way the facts of the matter the beliefs concern.
Just even considering these ideas brings up a whole vast history of priors that biases us one way or the other.
Before knowledge of a future-Singularity, there were no mechanisms that could possibly allow for superintelligences, let alone those creating universes like our own. Now we are very clearly aware of such mechanisms, and it is time to percolate this belief update through a vast historical web.
Anyway, if you then take a second pass at history looking for possible interventions, the origin of Christianity does look a little odd, a little too closely connected to the later Singularity which appears to be spawning from it as a historical development.
I speculate on that a bit towards the latter middle of this page here