cousin_it comments on Theists are wrong; is theism? - Less Wrong

5 Post author: Will_Newsome 20 January 2011 12:18AM

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Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 22 January 2011 10:37:17AM 6 points [-]

In lieu of an extended digression about how to adjust Solomonoff induction for making anthropic predictions, I'll simply note that having God create the world 5,000 years ago but fake the details of evolution is more burdensome than having a simulator approximate all of physics to an indistinguishable level of detail. Why? Because "God" is more burdensome than "simulator", God is antireductionist and "simulator" is not, and faking the details of evolution in particular in order to save a hypothesis invented by illiterate shepherds is a more complex specification in the theory than "the laws of physics in general are being approximated".

To me it seems nakedly obvious that "God faked the details of evolution" is a far more outre and improbable theory than "our universe is a simulation and the simulation is approximate". I should've been able to leave filling in the details as an exercise to the reader.

Comment author: cousin_it 22 January 2011 01:56:47PM *  1 point [-]

Seconding Kevin's request. Seeing a sentence like that with no followup is very frustrating.