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NancyLebovitz comments on Open Thread: April 2010 - Less Wrong
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In spite of the rather aggressive signaling here in favor of atheism, I'm still an agnostic on the grounds that it isn't likely that we know what the universe is ultimately made of.
I'm even willing to bet that there's something at least as weird as quantum physics waiting to be discovered.
Discussion here has led me to think that whatever the universe is made of, it isn't all that likely to lead to a conclusion there's a God as commonly conceived, though if we're living in a simulation, whoever is running it may well have something like God-like omnipotence and omnipresence. "May well" because the simulation-runner may be subject to legal, social, economic, or [unimaginable] constraints.
While I'm on the subject, is there any reason to think Omega is possible? Or is Omega simply a handy tool for thinking about philosophical problems?
I haven't seen "I don't know and you don't either" agnosticism addressed here.
The Bayesian translation of this is "I'm an atheist".
Interesting. I'm not sure I know enough about Omega to say. But for one thing: I think it is probably impossible for Omega to predict it's own future mental states (there would be an infinite recursion). This will introduce uncertainty into its model of the universe.
The justification for atheism over agnosticism is essentially Occam's Razor. As far as we know, there are no exceptions to physics as we understand it. So God/Gods explains nothing that isn't already explained by physics. So P(physics is true) >= P(Physics is true AND God/Gods exist(s))
I've always taken Omega to be just a handy tool for thinking about philosophical problems. "Omega appears and tells you X" is short for "For the purposes of this conundrum, imagine that X is true, that you have undeniably conclusive evidence for X, and that the nature of this evidence and why it convinces you is irrelevant to the problem."
In a case where X is impossible ("Omega appears and tells you that 2+2=3") then the conundrum is broken.