Maybe I'm just confused by your use of the term "magical". I am imagining magic as some kind of inexplicable, contracausal force - so for example, if Thor wanted to magically heal someone he would just will the person's wounds to disappear and, voila, without any physical process acting on the wounds to make them heal up, they just disappear. But surely that's not possible, right?

Thanks, that makes more sense to me. I didn't think qualities like omnipotence and such could actually be realized. Any way you can give me an idea of what these godlike entities look like though? You indicate they aren't actually "magical" per se - so they would have to be subject to whatever laws of physics reign in their world, no? I take it we must talking about superintelligent AIs or alien simulators or something weird like that?

I keep scratching my head over this comment made by Vladimir Nesov in the discussion following “A Rationalist’s Tale”. I suppose it would be ideal for Vladimir himself to weigh in and clarify his meaning, but because no objections were really raised to the substance of the comment, and because it in fact scored nine upvotes, I wonder if perhaps no one else was confused. If that’s the case, could someone help me comprehend what’s being said?

My understanding is that it’s the LessWrong consensus that gods do not exist, period; but to me the comment seems to imply that magical gods do in fact exist, albeit in other universes… or something like that? I must be missing something.