Ian_C. comments on Absolute Authority - Less Wrong

44 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 08 January 2008 03:33AM

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Comment author: Ian_C. 09 January 2008 07:58:40AM 0 points [-]

Michael: "Balls may roll as well as bounce. They can deflate or inflate, or crumple or explode, or any of a thousand other things." Paul: "It also fails because we have counterexamples up the wazoo."

But even if an object behaves thousands of ways, it is still behaving in those ways and only those ways. If we want to work with it, we must follow cause and effect, we can't simply *will* it to do what we want. That is the case for all objects I know of, there are no counter-examples.

Z. M. Davis: "are you arguing that the concept of omnipotence is incoherent, or merely [...] that we have no reason to believe that any omnipotent entity actually exists?"

I am arguing that observation proves that omnipotence is impossible. If object behavior is determined by the kind of thing it is (which appears to be the case, since the same kinds of things act the same), then it is not determined by anything else, such as the will of an external agent.

"The religious can, without logical self-contradiction, claim that God-in-Her-Infinite-Wisdom chooses to make created objects behave in predictable ways."

Their claim that object behavior is determined by God contradicts the observation that it is determined by what *kind* of thing an object is.

p.s. I think this discussion has gotten a little OT (sorry Eliezer)