If somebody started talking about the earth starting because of cheesecake, you'd wonder where the cheesecake came from. You'd look in a history book or a cook book and discover that the cheesecake has its origins in the roman empire, as a result of, well, people being hungry, and as a result of cows existing, and on and on, and you'd wonder how all those complex causes could produce a cheesecake predating the universe, and what sense it would make cut off from the rich causal net in which we find cheesecakes embedded today. Intelligence should not be any different. Agency trips up Occam's rasor, because humans are wired to expect there to always be agents about. But an explanation of the universe which contains an agent is an incredibly complicated theory, which only presents itself to us for consideration because of our biases.
You're right; yet no one ever sees it this way. Before Darwin, no one said, "This idea that an intelligent creator existed first doesn't simplify things."
Here is something I think would be useful: A careful information-theoretic explanation of why God must be complicated. When you explain, to Christians, that it doesn't make sense to say complexity originated because God created it and God must be complicated, Christians reply (and I'm generalizing here because I've heard these replies so many times) one of 2 things:
It shouldn't be hard to explain that, if God knows at least what is in the Encyclopedia Brittanica, God has at least enough complexity to store that information.
Of course, putting this explanation on LW might do no good to anybody.
It shouldn't be hard to explain that, if God knows at least what is in the Encyclopedia Brittanica, God has at least enough complexity to store that information.
Keep in mind that if this complexity was derived from looking at external phenomena, or at the output of some simple computation, it doesn't reduce the prior probability.
I've often had half-finished LW post ideas and crossed them off for a number of reasons, mostly they were too rough or undeveloped and I didn't feel expert enough. Other people might worry their post would be judged harshly, or feel overwhelmed, or worried about topicality, or they just want some community input before adding it.
So: this is a special sort of open thread. Please post your unfinished ideas and sketches for LW posts here as comments, if you would like constructive critique, assistance and checking from people with more expertise, etc. Just pile them in without worrying too much. Ideas can be as short as a single sentence or as long as a finished post. Both subject and presentation are on topic in replies. Bad ideas should be mined for whatever good can be found in them. Good ideas should be poked with challenges to make them stronger. No being nasty!