The linked argument doesn't require blue-tentacle-like psi phenomena. See the three bullet points that apply when there's no superintelligent influence. The planetarium hypothesis is completely disjunctive with psi arguments, and explains the Fermi paradox even in the absence of psi. It's also not just my hypothesis—there's historical precedent, as has been linked to in the post. ETA: I hope that the second, Fermi-centric half of the linked post can be judged on its own terms and inspire debate about its arguments, regardless of the various theological or paranormal claims that might exist elsewhere on the blog.
[My primary interpretation of the downvotes for this comment is basically: "I want to discourage people from talking about psi, parapsychology, or anything like that—we all know that magic doesn't exist, so we should try to explain phenomena that actually exist and that are therefore actually interesting. Admittedly you (Will_Newsome) didn't spontaneously bring up psi in your comment, and your comment is a more-or-less reasonable reply to its parent, but downvoting this comment is the easiest way to punish you for associating LessWrong with blatantly irrational speculation."]
I'm a tad annoyed that it apparently breaks my space bar - arrow keys and pgup/pgdwn work, but space does nothing.
Anyway, my basic reaction is that you give no interesting reasons for preferring a planetarium over a simulation besides philosophy of mind (most of which theories, I believe, would not predict any output difference in the absence of real qualia in a simulation) or efficiency (which to the extent we can analyze at all, weighs in strongly for simulation being more efficient).
I also don't understand how such an entity would even build a planetari...
Here.
Long story short, it's an attempt to justify the planetarium hypothesis as a solution to the Fermi paradox. The first half is a discussion of how it and things like it are relevant to the intended purview of the blog, and the second half is the meat of the post. You'll probably want to just eat the meat, which I think is relevant to the interests of many LessWrong folk.
The blog is Computational Theology. It's new. I'll be the primary poster, but others are sought. I'll likely introduce the blog and more completely describe it in its own discussion post when more posts are up, hopefully including a few from people besides me, and when the archive will give a more informative indication of what to expect from the blog. Despite theism's suspect reputation here at LessWrong I suspect many of the future posts will be of interest to this audience anyway, especially for those of you who take interest in discussion of the singularity. The blog will even occasionally touch on rationality proper. So you might want to store the fact of the blog's existence somewhere deep in the back of your head. A link to the blog's main page can be found on my LessWrong user page if you forget the url.
I'd appreciate it if comments about the substance of the post were made on the blog post itself, but if you want to discuss the content here on LessWrong then that's okay too. Any meta-level comments about presentation, typos, or the post's relevance to LessWrong, should probably be put as comments on this discussion post. Thanks all!