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Lumifer comments on Newcomb, Bostrom, Calvin: Credence and the strange path to a finite afterlife - Less Wrong Discussion

7 Post author: crmflynn 02 November 2015 11:03PM

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Comment author: Lumifer 10 November 2015 05:36:16PM *  1 point [-]

They did not really “create” this world so much as organized certain aspects of the environment. ... If I am in the environment of a video game, I do not think that anyone has created a different world, I just think that they have created a different environment by arranging bits of pre-existing world.

That's what creation is. The issue here is inside view / outside view. Take Pac-Man. From the outside, you arranged bits of existing world to make the Pac-Man world. From the inside, you have no idea that such things as clouds, or marmosets, or airplanes exist: your world consists of walls, dots, and ghosts.

and “defying” it is not really any more miraculous than me breaking the Mars off of a diorama of the solar system

Outside/inside view again. If I saw Mars arbitrarily breaking out of its orbit and go careening off to somewhere, that would look pretty miraculous to me.

I think that for you, “gods” emerge as a being grows in power, whereas I tend to think that divinity implies something different not just in scale, but in type.

I agree about the difference in type. It is here: these beings are not of this world. The difference between you and a character in a MMORG is a difference in type.

Re one/two-boxers, see my answer to the other post...

Comment author: crmflynn 12 November 2015 06:16:11AM 0 points [-]

I agree with you about the inside / outside view. I also think I agree with you about the characteristics of the simulators in relationship to the simulation.

I think I just have a vaguely different, and perhaps personal, sense of how I would define "divine" and "god." If we are in a simulation, I would not consider the simulators gods. Very powerful people, but not gods. If they tried to argue with me that they were gods because they were made of a lot of organic molecules whereas I was just information in a machine, I would suggested it was a distinction without a difference. Show me the uncaused cause or something outside of physics and we can talk

Comment author: Lumifer 12 November 2015 05:22:46PM 0 points [-]

I would suggested it was a distinction without a difference.

There is a classic answer to this :-/

Show me the uncaused cause or something outside of physics and we can talk

In the context of the simulated world uncaused causes and breaking physics are easy. Hack the simulation, write directly to the memory, and all things are possible.

It's just the inside/outside view again.

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