Omniscience and omnipotence are nice and simple, but "morally perfect" is a word that hides a lot of complexity. Complexity comparable to that of a human mind.

I would allow ideal rational agents, as long as their utility functions were simple (Edit: by "allow" I mean they don't get the very strong prohibition that a human::morally_perfect agent does) , and their relationship to the world was simple (omniscience and omnipotence are a simple relationship to the world). Our world does not appear to be optimized according to a utility function simpler than the equations of physics. And an ideal rational agent with no limitations to its capability is a little bit more complicated than its own utility function. So "just the laws of physics" wins over "agent enforcing the laws of physics." (Edit: in fact, now that I think of it this way, "universe which follows the rules of moral perfection by itself" wins over "universe which follows the rules of moral perfection because there is an ideal rational agent that makes it do so.")

A first approximation to what I want to draw a distinction between is parts of a hypothesis that are correlated with the rest of the parts, and parts that aren't, so that and adding them decreases the probability of the hypothesis more. In the extreme case, if a part of a hypothesis is logically deduced from the other parts, then it's perfectly correlated and doesn't decrease the probability at all.

When we look at a hypothesis, (to simplify, assume that all the parts can be put into groups such that everything within a group has probability 1 conditioned on the other things in the group, and all groups are independent). Usually, we're going to pick something from each group and say, "These are the fundamentals of my hypothesis, everything else is derived from them". And see what we can predict when you put them together. For example, Maxwell's equations are a nice group of things that aren't really implied by each other, and together, you can make all kinds of interesting predictions by them. You don't want to penalize electromagnetics for complexity because of all the different forms of the equations you could derive from them. Only for the number of equations there are, and how complicated they are.

The choice within the groups is arbitrary. But pick a thing from each group, and if this is a hypothesis about all reality, then those things are the fundamental nature of reality if your hypothesis is true. Picking a different thing from each group is just naming the fundamental nature of reality differently.

This of course needs tweaking I don't know how to do for the general case. But...

If your theory is something like, "There are many universes, most of them not fine-tuned for life. Perhaps most that are fine-tuned for life don't have intelligent life. We have these equations and whatever that predict that. They also predict that some of that intelligent life is going to run simulations, and that the simulated people are going to be much more numerous than the 'real' ones, so we're probably the simulated ones, which means there are mind(s) who constructed our 'universe'." And you've worked out that that's what the equations and whatever predict. Then those equations are the fundamental nature of reality, not the simulation overlords, because simulation overlords follow from the equations, and you don't have to pay a conjunction penalty for every feature of the simulation overlords. Just for every feature of the equations and whatever.

You are allowed to get away with simulation overlords even if you don't know the exact equations that predict them, and if you haven't done all the work of making all the predictions with hardcore math, because simulation overlords have a bunch of plausible explanations, how you could derive them from something simple like that, because they are allowed to have causal history. They are allowed to not always have existed. So you can use the "lots of different universes, sometimes they give rise to intelligent life, selection effect on which ones we can observe" magic wand to get experiences of beings in simulations from universes with simple rules.

But Abrahamic and deistic gods are eternal. They have always been minds. Which makes that kind of complexity-reducing correlation impossible (or greatly reduces its strength) for hypotheses with them.

That's what I was trying to get at. If that's not what ontologically basic means, well, I don't think I have any more reason to learn what it means than other philosophical terms I don't know.

Perhaps I'm misusing the phrase "ontologically basic," I admit my sole source for what it means is Eliezer Yudkowsky's summary of Richard Carrier's definition of the supernatural, "ontologically basic mental things, mental entities that cannot be reduced to nonmental entities." Minds are complicated, and I think Occam's razor should be applied to the fundamental nature of reality directly. If a mind is part of the fundamental nature of reality, then it can't be a result of simpler things like human minds appear to be, and there is no lessening the complexity penalty.

It seemed pretty obvious to me that MIRI thinks defenses cannot be made, whether or not such a list exists, and wants easier ways to convince people that defenses cannot be made. Thus the part that said: "We would especially like suggestions which are plausible given technology that normal scientists would expect in the next 15 years. So limited involvement of advanced nanotechnology and quantum computers would be appreciated. "

I think theism (not to be confused with deism, simulationism, or anything similar) is a position only a crazy person could defend because: 1. God is an ontologically basic mental entity. Huge Occam penalty.

1. The original texts the theisms these philosophers probably adhere to require extreme garage-dragoning to avoid making a demonstrably false claim. What's left after the garage-dragoning is either deism or an agent with an extremely complicated utility function, with no plausible explanation for why this utility function is as it is.

2. I've already listened to some of their arguments, and they've been word games that attempt to get information about reality out without putting any information in, or fake explanations that push existing mystery into an equal or greater amount of mystery in God's utility function. (Example: "Why is the universe fine-tuned for life? Because God wanted to create life, so he tuned it up." well, why is God fine-tuned to be the kind of god who would want to create life?) If they had evidence anywhere close to the amount that would be required to convince someone without a rigged prior, I would have heard it.

I don't have any respect for deism either. It still has the ontologically basic mental entity problem, but at least it avoids the garage-dragoning. I don't think simulationism is crazy, but I don't assign >0.5 probability to it.

I pay attention to theists when they are talking about things besides theism. But I have stopped paying attention to theists about theism.

I don't take the argument from expert opinion here seriously because:

A. We have a good explanation of why they would be wrong.

B. Philosophy is not a discipline that reliably tracks the truth. Or converges to anything, really. See this. On topics that have been debated for centuries, many don't even have an answer that 50% of philosophers can agree on. In spite of this, and in spite of the base rate among the general population for atheism, 72.8% of these philosophers surveyed were atheists. If you just look at philosophy of religion there's a huge selection effect because a religious person is much more likely to think it's worth studying.

the alternative theories still have major problems, problems which theism avoids. I bet if you list the problems, I can show you that theism doesn't avoid them.

Edit: formatting.

Theistic philosophers raised as atheists? Hmm, here is a question you could ask:

"Remember your past self, 3 years before you became a theist. And think, not of the reasons for being a theist you know now, but the one that originally convinced you. What was the reason, and if you could travel back in time and describe that reason, would that past self agree that that was a good reason to become a theist?"

Mestroyer keeps saying this is a personality flaw of mine

An imaginary anorexic says: "I don't eat 5 supersize McDonalds meals a day. My doctor keeps saying this is a personality flaw of mine."

I don't pay attention to theistic philosophers (at least not anymore, and I haven't for a while). There's seeking evidence and arguments that could change your mind, and then there's wasting your time on crazy people as some kind of ritual because that's the kind of thing you think rationalists are supposed to do.

If a few decades is enough to make an FAI, we could build one and either have it deal with the aliens, or have it upload everyone, put them in static storage, and send a few Von Neumann probes faster than it would be economical for aliens to send them to catch us if they are interested in maximum spread, instead of maximum speed, to galaxies which will soon be outside the aliens' cosmological horizon.