I think there might have been an LW comment somewhere that put me on that track or maybe even outright suggested it
I certainly made a remark on LW, very early in HPMoR, along the following lines: If magic, or anything else that seems to operate fundamentally at the level of human-like concepts, turns out to be real, then we should see that as substantial evidence for some kind of simulation/creation hypothesis. So if you find yourself in the role of Harry Potter, you should expect that you’re in a simulation, or in a universe created by gods, or in someone’s dream … or the subject of a book :-).
I don’t think you made any comment on that, so I’ve no idea whether you read it. I expect other people made similar points.
It’s more immediately plausible to hypothesize that certain phenomena and regularities in Harry’s experience are intelligently designed, rather than that the entire universe Harry occupies is. We can make much stronger inferences about intelligences within our universe being similar to us, than about intelligences who created our universe being similar to us, since, being outside our universe/simulation, they would not necessarily exist even in the same kind of logical structure that we do.
I certainly made a remark on LW, very early in HPMoR, along the following lines: If magic, or anything else that seems to operate fundamentally at the level of human-like concepts, turns out to be real, then we should see that as substantial evidence for some kind of simulation/creation hypothesis. So if you find yourself in the role of Harry Potter, you should expect that you’re in a simulation, or in a universe created by gods, or in someone’s dream … or the subject of a book :-).
I don’t think you made any comment on that, so I’ve no idea whether you read it. I expect other people made similar points.
It’s more immediately plausible to hypothesize that certain phenomena and regularities in Harry’s experience are intelligently designed, rather than that the entire universe Harry occupies is. We can make much stronger inferences about intelligences within our universe being similar to us, than about intelligences who created our universe being similar to us, since, being outside our universe/simulation, they would not necessarily exist even in the same kind of logical structure that we do.