jacob_cannell 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: jacob_cannell 26 January 2011 06:56:09AM *  4 points [-]

Carrier's definition of supernaturalism as non-reductionist explanations involving ontologically basic mental entities is something of a strawman argument and makes the term somewhat useless. (ie it is not the definition many theists would even argue)

The more typical definition of supernaturalism usually refers to events that operate outside of the normal laws of physics. This definition is potentially relevant to simulationism, because a simulator would of course be free to occasionally intervene and violate normal physical 'law' if so desired. Of course, this entity itself would still be reducible to simpler physical processes in it's own universe.

Comment author: Sniffnoy 26 January 2011 08:36:02AM 1 point [-]

But what does that even mean? How are the "normal" laws of physics distinguished from the actual laws of physics?

Comment author: jacob_cannell 26 January 2011 09:10:00AM 1 point [-]

The normal laws of physics being those that predict the universe absent interventions from said external universe, which may include some extraneous special case code.

The same physics could describe the whole system of course at some deeper level, so perhaps 'normal' was not quite the right distinction. Limited?