/shrugs. I might be out of my depth here, and would not be surprised if someone corrects me, so take everything with a grain of salt. ("Someone" probably being someone with extensive knowledge of decision theory, though.) But. In the case of "Are we being simulated by a bastard?" we can try to extrapolate from human psychology using the kind of reasoning found in Omohundro's basic AI drives. It probably ends up such that we can use that kind of reference class forecasting combined with pragmatic considerations to make predictions/decisions that are "good enough" in some objective sense. E.g. even if we are being simulated by a bastard, we're probably also in other simulations that matter more to us, and assuming what we suspect matters is what matters more "objectively", whatever the hell that means, then we should pragmatically act as if we're (mostly) acting from within non-bastard-simulated contexts --- though we might update based on (logical?) evidence.
I think the important point is that such reasoning sounds significantly less impressive/authoritative than "your hypothesis has too many burdensome details". It worries me when people start wielding the sword of Bayes, partially because the math isn't "fundamental" when there are are "copies" of you---which there almost certainly are---and partially because it gives a veneer of technicality that makes it naively seem impossible to argue against, which is bad for epistemic hygiene. But my worries might be more paranoia than anything legitimate.
(logical?)
I do not know what to call this kind of evidence outside of technical decision theory discussion. "Logical" is the obvious choice, and that's the decision theory name for it, but it's only 'logical' in an abstract way. Maybe it's the most accurate word though, and I'm just not familiar with the etymology. "Platonic evidence" (or evidence) feels a little more accurate to me, 'cuz you can talk about an observation carrying both physical evidence and Platonic evidence without thinking that Platonic evidence entails having to p...
Background
I was raised in the Churches of Christ and my family is all very serious about Christianity. About 3 years ago, I started to ask some hard questions, and the answers from other Christians were very unsatisfying. I used to believe that the Bible was, you know, inspired by a loving God, but its endorsement of genocide, the abuse of slaves, and the mistreatment of women and children really started to bother me.
I set out to study these issues as much as I could. I stayed up past midnight for weeks reading what Christians have to say, and this process triggered a real crisis of faith. What started out as a search for answers on Biblical genocide led me to places like commonsenseatheism.com. I learned that the Bible has serious credibility problems on lots of issues that no one ever told me about. Wow.
My Question
Now I'm pretty sure that the God of the Bible is man-made and Jesus of Nazareth was probably a failed prophet, but I don't have good reasons to reject the supernatural all together. I'm working through the sequences, but this process is slow. I will probably struggle with this question for months, maybe longer.
Excluding the Supernatural was interesting, but it left me wanting a more thorough explanation. Where do you think I should go from here? Should I just continue reading the sequences, and re-read them until the ideas gel? I'm coming from 30 years of Sunday School level thinking. It's not like I grew up with words like "epistemology" and "epiphenomenalism". If there is no supernatural, and I can be confident about that, I will need to re-evaluate a lot of things. My worldview is up for grabs.