Will_Newsome comments on The curse of identity - Less Wrong

121 Post author: Kaj_Sotala 17 November 2011 07:28PM

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Comment author: Will_Newsome 06 August 2012 08:46:54PM -2 points [-]

Your talk of God involves a concept of "God" that applies to things that are in some major sense infinite, like a an abstract telos for all superintelligences, and things that are in some sense finite, like all particular superintelligences. Any such perceived crossing of that gap would have to be very carefully justified—e.g., I can't think of any kind of argument that could prove that a human was the incarnation of the Word. Unlike, say, my model of that Catholics, who explicitly make such inferences on the basis of the theological virtues of faith and hope and not unaided reason as such, I don't think you'd do be so careless in your own thinking, but I want to signal that I am not nearly so careless in my own, and that you shouldn't think I am so careless. I think there are decent metaphysical arguments that such interactions are possible in principle, but of course such arguments would have to be made explicit and any particular mechanism (e.g. "simulation" of a human in a (finite? finite-but-perceived-to-be-infinte? infinite?) "heaven" by a finite god approximating an infinitely good telos) should not be a priori assumed to be possible. Only a moron would be so sloppy in his metaphysics and epistemology.