I appreciate your observations (for example, as interesting to think about). The arguments against Pascal’s Wager you’ve listed aren’t the best even if people use those most frequently. The only compelling argument I’ve heard against Pascal’s Wager is that you can’t/shouldn’t believe something just because it is convenient to do so.
But suppose your hypothetical scenario, in broad strokes, is true. We are in a simulation that has been tweaked so that we will worship the creator. How is this any different from the beliefs of Christianity? For example, ‘creating the universe’ is the same thing as building a simulation, and Jesus specifically said he was an avatar. Also regardless of why the simulation was actually created, it might as well be cached as ‘entertainment purposes’. Unless the creator is somehow dependent upon the simulation .. but in any case we probably don’t have enough insight into this psyche to speculate about the differences between his ‘needs’ and ‘wants’!
But I’ll provide the same counter-argument to your sim-creator that I provide against theism and see how it stands. If this simulator is able to induce worship by, for example, occasionally creating miracles and inspiring avatars, then why doesn’t he do a better job of it? (Maybe this is a who-can-induce-the-most-vehement-worship tournament and the rules are very strict? For example, only 5 interferences in the first 5000 years?) Also, the Jesus avatar was very keen on human fellowship. If the sim-creator was keen on this, why did he instill such antagonistic human behaviors?
It seems that the sim-creator doesn’t have a lot of control of the simulation after all. Regardless of the sim-creator’s motives, we’re still the product of evolution and the sim-creator still needs to follow the laws of physics. So the hypothesis doesn’t explain anything extra or give us any extra hope.
Yet amazing people and wonderful events do indeed leave a little hope. There is an apparent ‘force for good’ in the universe, which people can deify if they want (or externalize for convenience, as I do) . It just is what it is though, nothing supernatural or omnipotent but possibly prevailing.
the only compelling argument I’ve heard against Pascal’s Wager is that you can’t/shouldn’t believe something just
because it is convenient to do so
As I understand it, that’s because our universe has provided no evidence that belief alters reality; but it does seem to suggest that the optimum strategy is relentless pursuit of truth. However, if we had good reason to think otherwise (I don’t think this article counts), I see no reason why one shouldn’t alter their beliefs to their benefit, apart from aesthetics.
Whether or not this is even possible is unclear to me; but my intuition is that I could intentionally update to false beliefs, contrary to what seems to be the consensus here.
But I’ll provide the same counter-argument to your sim-creator that I provide against theism and see how it stands. If this simulator is able to induce worship by, for example, occasionally creating miracles and inspiring avatars, then why doesn’t he do a better job of it? (Maybe this is a who-can-induce-the-most-vehement-worship tournament and the rules are very strict? For example, only 5 interferences in the first 5000 years?) Also, the Jesus avatar was very keen on human fellowship. If the sim-creator was keen on this, why did he instill such antagonistic human behaviors?
The Player plays in mysterious ways.
Interesting points. Hard, though, to have good priors for. My default assumption would be that the game imposes restrictions, such as the laws of physics and of game theory; and the Player tries to create an interesting world within those restrictions. The Player isn’t free to say, “Humans will all be nice to each other all the time!” That isn’t an evolutionarily stable strategy.
IMHO, given the laws of physics and what we know about game theory and evolutionary theory, it’s pretty amazing that we have creatures who care about each other at all, and art, and music. (It doesn’t contradict these theories, but it is counter-intuitive.) I would give the Player a pretty high score.
The advantage of the argument in my post is that it tries to make only simple claims about how a God should be expected to behave. “God made the universe for fun” is much simpler, and therefore has a higher prior, than “God should construct the universe to contain super-happy beings”, which embeds many assumptions about God’s circumstances, morality, energy budget, etc.
There is an apparent ‘force for good’ in the universe, which people can deify if they want (or externalize for convenience, as I do).
This is a digression, but: Suppose the universe has no force for good, and has an average goodness of zero. Would we not expect that the creatures that thrived best in that universe would perceive the universe as good?
I appreciate your observations (for example, as interesting to think about). The arguments against Pascal’s Wager you’ve listed aren’t the best even if people use those most frequently. The only compelling argument I’ve heard against Pascal’s Wager is that you can’t/shouldn’t believe something just because it is convenient to do so.
But suppose your hypothetical scenario, in broad strokes, is true. We are in a simulation that has been tweaked so that we will worship the creator. How is this any different from the beliefs of Christianity? For example, ‘creating the universe’ is the same thing as building a simulation, and Jesus specifically said he was an avatar. Also regardless of why the simulation was actually created, it might as well be cached as ‘entertainment purposes’. Unless the creator is somehow dependent upon the simulation .. but in any case we probably don’t have enough insight into this psyche to speculate about the differences between his ‘needs’ and ‘wants’!
But I’ll provide the same counter-argument to your sim-creator that I provide against theism and see how it stands. If this simulator is able to induce worship by, for example, occasionally creating miracles and inspiring avatars, then why doesn’t he do a better job of it? (Maybe this is a who-can-induce-the-most-vehement-worship tournament and the rules are very strict? For example, only 5 interferences in the first 5000 years?) Also, the Jesus avatar was very keen on human fellowship. If the sim-creator was keen on this, why did he instill such antagonistic human behaviors?
It seems that the sim-creator doesn’t have a lot of control of the simulation after all. Regardless of the sim-creator’s motives, we’re still the product of evolution and the sim-creator still needs to follow the laws of physics. So the hypothesis doesn’t explain anything extra or give us any extra hope.
Yet amazing people and wonderful events do indeed leave a little hope. There is an apparent ‘force for good’ in the universe, which people can deify if they want (or externalize for convenience, as I do) . It just is what it is though, nothing supernatural or omnipotent but possibly prevailing.
As I understand it, that’s because our universe has provided no evidence that belief alters reality; but it does seem to suggest that the optimum strategy is relentless pursuit of truth. However, if we had good reason to think otherwise (I don’t think this article counts), I see no reason why one shouldn’t alter their beliefs to their benefit, apart from aesthetics.
Whether or not this is even possible is unclear to me; but my intuition is that I could intentionally update to false beliefs, contrary to what seems to be the consensus here.
The Player plays in mysterious ways.
Interesting points. Hard, though, to have good priors for. My default assumption would be that the game imposes restrictions, such as the laws of physics and of game theory; and the Player tries to create an interesting world within those restrictions. The Player isn’t free to say, “Humans will all be nice to each other all the time!” That isn’t an evolutionarily stable strategy.
IMHO, given the laws of physics and what we know about game theory and evolutionary theory, it’s pretty amazing that we have creatures who care about each other at all, and art, and music. (It doesn’t contradict these theories, but it is counter-intuitive.) I would give the Player a pretty high score.
The advantage of the argument in my post is that it tries to make only simple claims about how a God should be expected to behave. “God made the universe for fun” is much simpler, and therefore has a higher prior, than “God should construct the universe to contain super-happy beings”, which embeds many assumptions about God’s circumstances, morality, energy budget, etc.
This is a digression, but: Suppose the universe has no force for good, and has an average goodness of zero. Would we not expect that the creatures that thrived best in that universe would perceive the universe as good?