jmed comments on Something's Wrong - Less Wrong

82 [deleted] 05 September 2010 06:08PM

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Comment author: jacob_cannell 14 September 2010 03:47:31AM *  2 points [-]

I don't see any reasons why (2) - unknown natural process - gets to benefit from being a "set of zillions of potential processes, many of which have a far better prior" and (1) - goddidit - does not.

If you want to sum the probability of a hypothesis by performing some weighted sum over the set of zillions of it's neighbors in hypothesis space, that's fine. But if that is your criteria, you need to apply it equally to the other set of hypothesises you are considering - instead of considering only one specific example.

Bostrom's simulation argument gives us one potential generator of 'goddidits', and a likely high prior for superintelligent aliens gives us another potential generator of 'goddidits'. Either of those generators could spawn zillions of potential processes which have far better priors than Yaweh, but could look similar.

None of this leads to any specific conclusion - I'm just pointing out an unfairness in your methodology.

Comment author: [deleted] 02 December 2010 08:24:46PM 0 points [-]

Bostrom's simulation argument does NOT give us a generator of "goddidits" regarding the origin of life and the universe, because implicit in the question "How did life originate?" is a desire to know the ultimate root (if there is one), and us being in a simulation just gives us some more living beings (the simulators "above") to ask our questions about. Where did life in the universe "one level above us" come from? Where did our simulator/parent universe originate?

There is nothing unfair in dismissing "A MIRACLE!" in comparison to the set of plausible naturalistic processes that could explain a given phenomenon. And to second SarahC, it's somewhat incoherent to talk about non-naturalistic processes in the first place. You need to be very clear as to what you're suggesting when you suggest "god did it". But, no one here is suggesting that, so I'll stop tangenting into arguing against theists that don't seem to be present.