On another note I've started blogging here, in order to practice my writing and lay down my thoughts in semi-coherent form 'cuz I'm trying to write a treatise on God and other such things. Five to fifteen or so LessWrong folk have messaged me asking for more info about my thoughts on theism, religion, &c., and I suspect more than that are quietly interested, so the readership might not be tiny once I publicize the blog. And I suspect the readership will be pretty elite. I've also invited various cool people to write guest posts. If you want to write guest posts that are more or less on the theme then let me know.

Yes, I would like to write such a post, but I'm not so sure I want to like to write such a post. I'm this close to going on a Less Wrong-fast due to it being a source of akrasia with respect to my higher-order, more time-sensitive goals. I'm working full-time, launching a start-up with my wife, and training to be a sysadmin in my off-time. Anyway, I'll have to think about it.

On the other hand, I am one of those that has "gone insane" (supposedly) from x-rationality. For instance, I currently maintain a Weltanschauung I refer to as simulation-theism. This pretty much excludes me from easily identifying with the more traditional camps of atheism, theism, agnosticism, etc... I don't fit in with the atheists because well...I believe in God (the software engineer or engineers of our simulation). I don't really fit in with theists because I'm a non-realist with respect to actual infinites (which seems to rule out the possibility, even in principle, of omnipotence, omniscience, etc...), but not necessarily potential infinites (to borrow from Aristotle). I'm not an agnostic either, since I think there is a decent amount of rational evidence pushing one way rather than the other (although my subjective probability has swung back-and-forth a few times in the last couple years) and I'm not really sure what range of epistemic probabilities are supposed to constitute "not knowing" rather than just having a given degree of belief. So, I think I am particularly well suited to be part of your readership, at the very least.

Especially, I have a huge gap in my knowledge of the history of computation during roughly the Islamic Golden Age period, and I'd appreciate a post roughly on that subject.

I'm far from being an expert on science during the Islamic Golden Age (I can't even read Arabic!), but your suspicions that the computationalist view didn't spring fully formed from the brow of Leibniz is definitely on the right track. While I may be able to talk a little bit about the alchemists' view of natural processes, I'm not really all that sure how much of that work survived in the Western tradition in a form that Leibniz would have assimilated into his web-of-belief. I've got a hunch that the path between Al-Ghazâlî's Meshed and Leibniz' Leipzig is more than just 3,500 miles and 530 years.

("Computation" is pretty loose here: it's more like theory of processes in general. And I'm also interested in the history of computers. Basically, anything in the historical run-up to Leibniz' calculator and proto-algorithmic-information-theory.)

Everybody already seems to know about the advances in the mathematics of computation carried out by the Islamic scholars (algebra, duh). Less well-known is that they developed computers more or less on par with Leibniz' calculator (water clocks, astrolabes, etc...). Even less well-known still is the discrete theological-physics of the Mutakallimun.