God-wise, I’ve never seen any evidence for anything remotely supernatural, and plenty of evidence for natural things. I know that throughout human history, many phenomena traditionally attributed to gods (f.ex. lightning) have later been demonstrated to occur by natural means; the reverse has never happened. These facts, combined with the internal (as well as mutual) inconsistencies inherent in most major religions, serve to drive the probability down into negligibility.
As for the Simulation Argument, once again, I’ve never seen any evidence of it, or any Matrix Lords, etc. Until I do, it’s simply not parsimonious for me to behave as though the argument was true. However, unlike some forms of theism, the Simulation Argument is at least internally consistent. In additions, I’ve seen computers before and I know how they can be used to run simulations, which constitutes a small amount of circumstantial evidence toward the Argument.
EDIT: I should mention that the prior for both claims is already very low, due to their complexity.
Epsilon is not a number, it’s a cop-out. Unless you put a number you are reasonably confident in on your prior, how would you update it in light of potential new evidence?
Well, so far, I have received zero evidence for the existence of either gods or Matrix Lords. This leaves me with, at best, just the original prior. I said “at best”, because some of the observations I’d received could be interpreted as weak evidence against gods (or Matrix Lords), but I’m willing to ignore that for now.
If I’m using some measure of algorithmic complexity for the prior, what values should I arrive at ? Both the gods and the Matrix Lords are intelligent in some general way, which is already pretty complex; probably as complex as we humans are, at the very least. Both of them are supremely powerful, which translates into more complexity. In case of the Matrix Lords, their hardware ought to more complex than our entire Universe (or possibly Multiverse). Some flavors of gods are infinitely powerful, whereas others are “merely” on par with the Matrix Lords.
I could keep listing properties here, but hopefully this is enough for you to decide whether I’m on the right track. Given even the basics that I’d listed above, I find myself hard-pressed to come up with anything other than “epsilon” for my prior.
What are the values for these probabilities and how have you estimated them?
Both of the values are somewhere around epsilon.
God-wise, I’ve never seen any evidence for anything remotely supernatural, and plenty of evidence for natural things. I know that throughout human history, many phenomena traditionally attributed to gods (f.ex. lightning) have later been demonstrated to occur by natural means; the reverse has never happened. These facts, combined with the internal (as well as mutual) inconsistencies inherent in most major religions, serve to drive the probability down into negligibility.
As for the Simulation Argument, once again, I’ve never seen any evidence of it, or any Matrix Lords, etc. Until I do, it’s simply not parsimonious for me to behave as though the argument was true. However, unlike some forms of theism, the Simulation Argument is at least internally consistent. In additions, I’ve seen computers before and I know how they can be used to run simulations, which constitutes a small amount of circumstantial evidence toward the Argument.
EDIT: I should mention that the prior for both claims is already very low, due to their complexity.
Epsilon is not a number, it’s a cop-out. Unless you put a number you are reasonably confident in on your prior, how would you update it in light of potential new evidence?
Well, so far, I have received zero evidence for the existence of either gods or Matrix Lords. This leaves me with, at best, just the original prior. I said “at best”, because some of the observations I’d received could be interpreted as weak evidence against gods (or Matrix Lords), but I’m willing to ignore that for now.
If I’m using some measure of algorithmic complexity for the prior, what values should I arrive at ? Both the gods and the Matrix Lords are intelligent in some general way, which is already pretty complex; probably as complex as we humans are, at the very least. Both of them are supremely powerful, which translates into more complexity. In case of the Matrix Lords, their hardware ought to more complex than our entire Universe (or possibly Multiverse). Some flavors of gods are infinitely powerful, whereas others are “merely” on par with the Matrix Lords.
I could keep listing properties here, but hopefully this is enough for you to decide whether I’m on the right track. Given even the basics that I’d listed above, I find myself hard-pressed to come up with anything other than “epsilon” for my prior.