denimalpaca
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denimalpaca has not written any posts yet.
denimalpaca has not written any posts yet.
Like, the idea that an entity simulating our universe wouldn't be able to do that, because they'd run out of energy doesn't pass even the basic sniff test.
I'm convinced you are not actually reading what I'm writing. I said if the universe ours is simulated in is supposed to be like our own/we are an ancestral simulation then this implies that the universe simulating ours should be like ours, and we can apply our laws of physics to it, and our laws of physics say there's entropy, or a limit to the amount of order.
I also believe that if we're a simulation, then the universe simulating ours must be very different... (read more)
First, I'm not "resisting a conversion". I'm disagreeing with your position that a hidden variable is even more likely to be a mind than something else.
you are the one basically adding souls
I absolutely am not adding souls. This makes me think you didn't really read my argument. I'll present this a different way: human brains are incredibly complex. So complex, in fact, we still don't fully understand them. With a background in computer science, I know that you can't simulate something accurately without at least having a very accurate model. Currently, we have no accurate model of the brain, and it seems that the first accurate model we may get is just... (read more)
You can call it 'something missing', or 'god'.
I disagree. Something missing is different than a god. A god is often not well-defined, but generally it is assumed to be some kind of intelligence, that is it can know and manipulate information, and it has infinite agency or near to it. Something missing could be a simple physical process. One is infinitely complex (god), the other is feasibly simple enough for a human to fully understand.
The koopas are both pointing to the weirdness of their world, and the atheists are talking about randomness and the theists are talking about maybe it is a Sky Koopa.
I don't think this is really what you wrote... (read 814 more words →)
Sufficiently improbable stuff is evidence that there's a hidden variable you aren't seeing.
Sure, but you aren't showing what that hidden variable is. You're just concluding what you think it should be. So evidence that there's something missing isn't an opportunity to inject god, it's a new point to investigate. That, and sufficiently improbable stuff becomes probable when enough of it happens. Take a real example, like someone getting pregnant. While the probability of any given sperm reaching the egg and fertilizing it is low, the sheer number of sperm makes the chance that one of them fertilizes the egg is decent.
The argument can be equally applied to why we don't see... (read more)
I find the 'where are all the aliens/simulation?" argument to be pretty persuasive in terms of atheism being a bust
Why does this imply atheism is a bust? The only thing I can think of that would make atheism "a bust" would be direct evidence of a god(s).
you can fault them for not properly updating but you can't fault them for inconsistency.
They're still being inconsistent with respect to the reality they observe. Why is the self-consistency alone more important than a consistency with observation?
Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, a benevolent God is more likely than not going to exist somewhere.
I would urge you to go learn about QM more. I'm not going to assume what you do/don't know, but from what I've learned about QM there is no argument for or against any god.
were you aware that the ratio of sizes between the Sun and the Moon just happen to be exactly right for there to be total solar eclipses?
This also has to due with the distance between the moon and the earth and the earth and the sun. Either or both could be different sizes, and you'd still get a full eclipse... (read more)
I think you wrote some interesting stuff. As for your question on a meta-epistemy, I think what you said about general approaches mostly holds in this case. Maybe there's a specific way to classify sub-epistemies, but it's probably better to have some general rules of thumb that weed out the definitely wrong candidates, and let other ideas get debated on. To save community time, if that's really a concern, a group could employ a back-off scheme where ideas that have solid rebuttals get less and less time in the debate space.
I don't know that defining sub-epistemies is so important. You give a distinction between math and theoretical computer science, but unless you're in those fields the distinction is near meaningless. So maybe it's more important to define these sub-epistemies as your relation to them increases.
Even changing "do" to "did", my counter example holds.
Event A: At 1pm I get a cookie and I'm happy. At 10pm, I reflect on my day and am happy for the cookie I ate.
Event (not) A: At 1pm I do not get a cookie. I am not sad, because I did not expect a cookie. At 10pm, I reflect on my day and I'm happy for having eaten so healthy the entire day.
In either case, I end up happy. Not getting a cookie doesn't make me unhappy. Happiness is not a zero sum game.
Could you give an actual criticism of the energy argument? "It doesn't pass the smell test" is a poor excuse for an argument.
When I assume that the external universe is similar to ours, this is because Bostrom's argument is specifically about ancestral simulations. An ancestral simulation directly implies that there is a universe trying to simulate itself. I posit this is impossible because of the laws of thermodynamics, the necessity to not allow your simulations to realize what they are, and keeping consistency in the complexity of the universe.
Yes its possible for the external universe to be 100% different from ours, but this gives us exactly no insight at all into what that external universe may be, and at this point it's a game of "Choose Your God", which I have no interest in playing.