Comment on 2011 Less Wrong Census / Survey

Sun, 06 Nov 2011 16:03:26 GMT

Well, we enter the problem of "definition of god" right now. Does the tree that falls in a forest with no one to listen makes a sound ? Depends if "sound" is "vibration of the air" or "acoustic signal in a brain". The same goes here. If the universe is a simulation, there is a "god" if a "god" is "a conscious entity that created the universe", but not if a god is "an omni-powerful omniscient entity that existed for always" or anything else that most religions stick in the "god" word. And if "god" is an ontologically sentient entity that can't be reduce to non-sentient components, then it's unlikely that the creators of the simulation are like that, but not totally impossible (since the hypothesis space of how the "real universe" would be is very large).

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