Cakoluchiam comments on 2012 Survey Results - Less Wrong

80 Post author: Yvain 07 December 2012 09:04PM

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Comment author: Cakoluchiam 29 November 2012 10:47:40PM 0 points [-]

Would someone who created a computer that created the universe count as a god? I can easily write computer games with more complex behavior than I feel capable of fully comprehending, but I would not consider that computer program an intelligent entity. I can imagine that someone more educated and with a higher mental capacity than I could similarly write a computer program that is capable of creating and maintaining in simulation a universe with the global constants and initial conditions necessary to produce intelligent life without the program actually qualifying as intelligent itself.

My personal belief is that if there is a "god", he is quite probably much like a video game programmer, who can set up a universe like an MMO and let it run "infinitely" in "real-time", but, being constrained to a similar time-scale as the "players", is unable to make a large number of fine-grained adjustments to local variables at the immediate behest of said players (i.e. "answering prayers"). Someday we may get a version 2.0 release which allows third-party plugins so players can hack the universe to answer their own prayers, but I don't place a high conditional probability on that happening within my projected lifetime.

Comment author: Cakoluchiam 29 November 2012 10:55:57PM *  1 point [-]

Hell, if the mathematical universe hypothesis is correct, then somewhere out there in the universe there is, with no intelligent priors, a collection of particles in the form of a computer, simulating a universe containing intelligent entities.

Comment author: Decius 30 November 2012 02:28:39AM *  0 points [-]

And the universe it is simulating itself contains an entity which created a computer which simulates a universe...

Given that the mathematical universe hypothesis is correct, what are the odds that the universe we experience
A- is the mathematical universe
B- is a computer analogue simulation which was generated spontaneously
C- is a computer analogue simulation which was created by an intelligence but is currently unattended
D- is a computer analogue simulation which is attended by someone who wishes to suppress the thought that the universe is atten---