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Viliam_Bur comments on Open Thread, September 23-29, 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion
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I noticed that in the survey results from last year that there was a large number of people who assigned a non-trivial probability to the simulation hypothesis, yet identified as atheist.
I know this is just about definitions and labels, so isn't an incredibly important issue, but I was wondering why people choose to identify that way. It seems to me that if you assign a >20% chance to us living in a computer simulation that you should also identify as agnostic.
If not, it seems like you are using a definition of god which includes all the major religions, yet excludes our possible simulators. What is the distinction that you think makes the simulation not count as theism?
Theism usually involves God as the explanation of why the world exists, and why we are conscious. In usual simulation scenarios, a world happens through physics and natural selection etc. And then a copy of part of that world is made. Yes, the copying process "made" the copy, but most explanations of how the copied world is the way it is (from the point of view of those in it) still has to do with physics, natural selection, etc. and not the copying process.
In other words, "who designed our world?" is more relevant than "who created our world?".