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Simulated reality and *ism
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First off, let me say thanks for taking the time to write all that - and to the other posters.Given a simulated universe, you can't infer anything about what is simulating it from within the simulation. You would need information about the outside universe to infer anything about it.
Ok - that's an important and powerful argument to address.
Whether I agree with that argument depends on what you mean by 'infer':
There's a sense in which I agree with your argument completely:
If you are in a simulated universe, then you can't say anything for certain about the outside universe. You certainly couldn't ever make an argument like: "There are planets our universe, therefore there are planets in the outside universe" and claim that you had hence deductively shown that the outside universe contained planets.
Nonetheless, I do think that it is reasonable to attempt to make some 'inferences', in an inductive kind of way.
You might say that you are only interested in deductive argument, leading from one set of certain facts to the next.
That's an understandable position, but I will attempt to convince you otherwise:
A) I think that almost all we have to work with, on questions like this, is inductive reasoning. (You might say "Ah-ha - thus strong agnosticism!" here, but bear with me.)
I think its not unreasonable to reason inductively about these things, given the lack of other information.
I think we do this all the time.
If someone shows me a 'foo' and says "the attribute of this 'foo' is 'bar'", and then shows me another 'foo' and says "whats the attribute of this 'foo'?" I'm going to guess 'bar'.
Its a very low confidence guess; but I think that its the rational guess to make. (No?)
To make it clearer - if I guess something else, and they say "the attribute of this second 'foo' was also 'bar'. Now, what is the attribute of this third 'foo'?" I think pretty much everyone is going to guess 'bar' at that point. They certainly will guess 'bar' after a 1000 examples of 'bar', unless they are *very* stubborn.
But if the first and second results count as evidence for the third, then the first counts as evidence for the second. Weak evidence, but evidence nonetheless.
C) I don't think that the fact that we don't have solid evidence to work with, in a deductive framework, does not mean we can claim to have no value for P(god).
You always have to have a P(god). It might be a P(god) with such a low confidence value, that you think its not very useful in your other reasoning, and perhaps thus you describe yourself as 'agnostic'.
But I would say that the situation is really as described by the following pictures:
http://imgur.com/GoGNHvL,UBuUjts#0
http://imgur.com/GoGNHvL,UBuUjts#1
You might take issue with where I've put certain groups (As an aside, I'd be really interested in surveying people on those three axes, and seeing where most of the density is. I'm sure someone must have done this before, though?). (You can think of the single axis I specified in my original post as a projection/transformation of this.)
I argue that there's always a P(god) in there, though.
The idea of 'god' is a prevalent idea in our cultures, and it claims to have such consequences (e.g. you will go to hell if you get it wrong; other similar ideas are deeply ingrained in our culture) that I actually think you can't really avoid thinking about P(god) at some point.
If you want to reason about what this P(god) is, you've got to deal with inductive and low certainty argument.
I hope that makes some sort of an argument about why it is necessary, and at least somewhat meaningful to try and reason in this manner.
I should say that I'm quite willing - maybe even eager - to have any error in my reasoning pointed out.
Nor do i see why a universe that contains ours and is like ours would have intelligences that were not naturally occurring within the context of their universe like ours.
I should clarify this: I'm not saying that the intelligences in the 'baseline' or 'outermost' universe would not be naturally occurring, like we'd normally believe that we naturally occurred in this universe. I'm not arguing for a deity in the 'outermost' universe. I'm willing to believe that such a universe spontaneously arose, as per the Hawking style-of-argument mentioned earlier. What I'm arguing is whether we should believe that our universe has an intelligent creator, and I'm just using 'deity', or 'god' as terms of convenience for that omnipotent programmer-creator. I think those terms are appropriate ones with which to describe a programmer-creator, even a programmer creator who might perhaps be subject to the inviolable laws of the universe that contains them. I think the existence of such a programmer-creator, or 'god', still provides a problem for strong atheism, which is my argument here.
I'm trying to make an argument that changes the 'prior' we'd have on the existence of a creator of our universe, or a randomly chosen (perhaps simulated) universe, rather than argue that 'outermost' or 'naturally occurring' universes come with mysterious deities.
To put it another way, for the purposes of this argument, if I was to be convinced this universe was not a simulation, then I would be willing to believe there was probably no god.I think unguided is a better word than dumb precisely because it's not the product of an intelligence. It moves forward blindly. It doesn't receive guidance to avoid mistakes, it makes them and lets them die horribly. It receives feedback, but no guidance.
Fair enough - this is just a difference between our word choice, rather than meaning.
I'm quite happy to accept your words. I will just note that, in optimisation terminology, that feedback would often be called 'guidance'. For example, if you look at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_computation, it says "Evolutionary computation uses iterative progress, such as growth or development in a population. This population is then selected in a guided random search using parallel processing to achieve the desired end. Such processes are often inspired by biological mechanisms of evolution.".
Not to get into a discussion of optimisation, or EC - just to note that, as a trivial aside, in the language of optimisation, guidance does not necessarily imply a higher intelligence.I can however understand this use of the word dumb, although I think dumb used in this way implies a deficient intellect when there is no intellect behind it whatsoever.
Fair point.Nope, I'm attempting to say I'm not sure whether your word choice is because you are trying to say something for which dumb is a poor word or because you have contempt for evolution.
I do have a slight skepticism for certain aspects of evolution, actually. As someone who thinks he has a more developed intuition about the relative sizes of search spaces than the average joe, I am slightly troubled by the very large amounts of evolutionary iterations required to effectively favour genotypic information (genes) based purely on their phenotypic manifestations, given the huge amounts of noise present, and the apparently complex mapping from the genes to the selection-level-features. That really bothers me. It makes me wonder if the simple models of evolution that are in the heads of most people you might talk to really make sense at all, other than as useful metaphors, like you might use to explain evolution to a child.
But overall, I wouldn't say I have contempt for whats clearly a great theory, and I'm overall going to just trust that if there were deep computational problems, the mathematical evolutionary biologists would have blown the whistle by now. A slight skepticism remains, though; and a deep skepticism of those who argue that their simple layman's model of darwinian evolution is sufficient to explain everything, as if you can just ignore the issue of whether 'deep time' is deep enough. I mean, its trivial to make a really smart AI, if you don't need to worry about computation time, too.If you're a simulation than your ability to perceive the simulation is itself simulated. Similarly, anything you can conceive is simulation.
Yes. At one level, I don't think that is the obstacle some people might believe it to be.
I firmly believe that the simulation of a mind, is a mind in its own right. Many would disagree with that, but I'm fairly convinced.
Aside that, we're back to the argument I gave above.
This if of course true, at a level. But not at the level which is useful to us, which is to reason about our minds as entities.If you can't come up with an explanation for something it's because you haven't been simulated to.
Given a simulated universe.
If I blindfold someone, and they can't see, then, if we are in a simulation, it is of course true that they can't see because they are in a simulation in which they can't see.
But, it is also more usefully true that they can't see because another entity in the simulation - me - has put a blindfold on them.
I hope that makes sense.And I read that post, I did, and honestly thought it a load of waffle. You make inferences based on the simulation about things outside the simulation, because you want to. Because you've got to do something with your time.
I hope that I've helped a little by my attempt above in this post; if not, and if you can't point out where the problem is, then I don't think we can go much further.You talk about dealing in probabilities, but nothing you talk about seems related to probability.
I mean, 'deal with probabilities', as opposed to dealing with deductive boolean logic. My point is that I'm not trying to prove theorems about the outside world, I'm trying to modify probabilities about it - probabilities which we have to have anyway.
And it is reasonable to say you can modify or reason about relative probabilities about the world outside the simulation.
e.g.:
Clearly P(in_a_simulation) <= P(in_a_simulation AND simulator_is_humanoid)
Maybe statements of that type aren't useful, though - but we can make them - no?You even get close to my own viewpoint at one point.
You can't tell the difference. And if you could, if you could prove the universe you inhabit is a simulation, all it would tell you is that none of it is real. It still wouldn't tell you anything about the universe outside the simulation. It still wouldn't tell you whether or not you are real.(I've been assuming that the inhabitants of the simulation are part of it, but there's also the brain in a vat scenario, where the inhabitants are real and the universe isn't.)
Again, tried deal with that above.
Lets neglect the brain-in-vat-scenario, for simplicity - but definitely a fair point that its another possibility.No I'm pointing out the null is based upon the question being asked and the hypothesis under test. For all the difficulty in deciding what the null result of an experiment is, or what it means, it is based upon other factors
I disagree. Also I was using the concept of the null hypothesis to illustrate my idea of why someone else took the line of reasoning that they did. It's reasoning that I would agree with myself, and I see absolutely no reason to object to the null hypothesis in the question 'is there a creator' being 'no'.
If I were to ask 'are potatoes a thing?' The null hypothesis would be no. It would be rejected out of hand by most people, self included (I ate some today) and the default position would be 'yes', possibly followed by an insult to my intelligence. The null is not always the default position, it's what's being rejected.
Lets back up a bit on the 'null' issue.
If you were saying that:
(1) the default position, in the presence of uncertainty, should be one of atheism, unless there is evidence to the contrary,
AND
if you were somehow using an argument about what should be 'the null' as *evidence* for (1), then I have an issue with your logic.
Otherwise, I don't think I do.
My point is that, in the usual frequentist model in which the null hypothesis shows up (which arguably isn't even useful when trying to reason about these probabilities of 'once-off' or non-repeated events) you can set the null to be whatever you want - all that changes is how you later interpret the evidence you see.
That someone might set 'the null' in a hypothetical experiment in which to evaluate evidence for a creator, to 'there is no creator', isn't at all evidence or argument that a rational default position is 'that there be no creator'.
That's the only point I'm trying to make. Perhaps you weren't saying anything to the contrary.
I may have taken your post up wrong when I started talking about 'the null', so perhaps you weren't saying.Kind of like how it's misleading to talk about probabilities given an assumption of something inherently unknowable?
I argue that it is not misleading to do so. I argue its always reasonable to talk about the subjective degree of belief in a binary proposition.
Although, your certainty about that degree of belief could be very low. (You could capture this with a sketch of the probability density function of a typical member of each of the the groups (theist, agnostics, etc) I mentioned, if you wanted to express it in that way.)
Anyway -
Lets say I tell you that I made a machine that tossed a coin in a sealed room, which was then blown up.
Its inherently unknowable, for practical purposes, whether it came up heads or tails, right?
But we'll probably both say that the probability it came up heads was about 0.5
And, again, the probability that it came up heads, and that it was raining that day, is less again.
So, are we not there talking about probabilities of something inherently unknowable, in a way that makes sense?That would still be the null. It would be easier to argue that the null should be rejected because within the simulation, simulations require a simulated creator, but assuming the simulation infers anything about outside the simulation from within the simulation would be a fallacy.
The opening is fine for my purposes:
Why assume the creator of the simulation is a deity?
They would have power like a deities but in the actual universe they could just be another monkey in shoes. Particularly if we are making inferences based on the simulation. And their power is over things which are not real.
I hope I fixed that misunderstanding above - the simulation being run by 'monkey in shoes' is fine for my purposes.
Again, if I had to guess, I'd guess I was most likely to be simulated by another biped a bit like us; etc.Why would it be reasonable to venerate them? Because you say so?
Well, if it turned out the universe had a creator, I think I'd feel a certain respect for them.
Maybe venerate is too strong.Because they have power over you? Because they made you to feel fear and suffering for their amusement,
Now you are describing a psychopath. I'd hope that the fear and suffering were in some way an unintended, or a necessary, consequence.
Otherwise, yes, I wouldn't be happy with them.
If I lived in a simulation, I would like to know it, and I wouldn't take felling 'fake' so seriously as I think most people would.and then let you know you were fake as well,
(See above.)and then let you know you were fake as well,
and that your fear and suffering is meaningless except for the amusement of a random person who happens to have the power of a deity over you not because they are a deity, but because you're not a real person.
I think you misunderstand the distances between the universe being a simulation, that simulation having a creator, that creator being a deity, that deity being worthy of respect, and any of that knowledge being any way useful.
The way I see it is the null hypothesis is whats being rejected first. It might be the status quo, it might be something else. It depends on the question.In the case of agnosticism, uncertainty about whether or not there is a god, the most basic answer to the question is yes or no, you can't prove a negative so no becomes the null hypothesis, the one which must be rejected to move on.
I believe you are incorrect there, and making an error of reasoning.
I agree that the default position should be that there is no god, based on my inductive experience of the world, and the priors I get from it - e.g. arguments like occams razor. (Absent arguments like the one in this thread.)
But 'you cant prove a negative so no becomes the null hypothesis' is wrong.
You could just as easily set the other hypothesis up as the null, absent those prior beliefs about the world I just mentioned.
You are talking about a yes-or-no question.
The framing of the question doesn't change the probability of the outcome; only our prior beliefs and experiences of the world do.
If the world in your language was 'no-god', then you'd be trying to argue about whether or not there is a no-god, and you cant prove a negative so no becomes the null hypothesis.I can't prove god exists, no one can prove to me that god exists (I won't use zombrex here because I really don't want to put words in his mouth), so I can not reject the null hypothesis. This does not inherently reject the other hypothesis either (lets call it H1) it just doesn't support it. I can not assert H1: A god exists, without rejecting H0: That no god exists. I'm caught between two unproven hypotheses, one unassertable, one unrejectable. While unsure of the correct answer, the only one assertable is the null, and that only by dint of h1 being unassertable, in this way agnosticism could lead to defaulting to atheism, exactly through your 'without evidence, assert no' path.
I got the impression from zombrex's comments that he was following a similar line of thinking.
And yes such reasoning is often wrong. The true test of character for someone who claims to use such reasoning is changing their mind when new evidence allows the rejection of H0, something which is very difficult to do, particularly with questions like this one, or those in science, where the balance has remained unchanged for years, decades, or even generations.0 -
You started the thread by stating you find the simulation argument plausible. There must be reasons why you find it plausible, perhaps they are differnet to mine, but I would be interested in hearing them.
I've read a bunch of books on AI, philosophy of AI, that sort of thing.
I've come to believe that there are unlikely to be philosophical/theoretical obstacles to executing a consciousness on hardware different from our biological brains.
I don't believe there is a difference between a simulation of a mind and a mind.
I'm a CS guy. Every day, I run programs on physical hardware, and on virtual machines. It makes no difference to the programs. A sorting algorithm running on the virtual machine is the same sorting algorithm running on the physical hardware.
The observable universe is very big, and seems to have a lot of energy in it, which could perhaps, in time, be harnessed to make some pretty big computers.The most convincing argument for simulation that I have heard goes as follows:
1. If humans continue to evolve at an exponential rate, creating VR universes will become a reality and sooner than we can currently imagine.
Im not convinced we'll continue to evolve at an exponential rate.
We might slow down.
We seem to be speeding up still, but its not clear that will continue.
A lot of growth, in the presence of finite resources, looks nearly exponential, before you discover its actually sigmoidal.
Its getting vastly harder to make the good performance gains in computation speed, using existing techniques. We're seeing indications the GPU performance increase is starting to slow down.
Maybe people will come up with other ways, though.
I think we are still making big progress intellectually. I also think we are making big progress with software, with learning about machine learning, and statistics.
Not so sure about AI, but some people say that will follow.
If it does, then we'll have simulations.2. When we get to the point of creating VR universes, we will logically want to simulate historical periods for all kinds of reasons, studying how evolution progressed, how diseases developed, or just curiosity (how much fun would it be to simulate early hominids).
3. If 1 and 2 are true, then the probability that we are in a simulation is very high.
Yes, I would think that if we keep expanding our capabilities, we'll eventually start making a lot of simulations. The first IF is pretty big, but I think we'll get there in the end, unless we kill ourselves first, or get hit by a rock or a virus or whatever.When I say evidence I mean the current evidence we have regarding our universe and what it suggests. The first paper that really caught my eye on the subject was by Brian Whitworth which attempted to answer some of the apparent paradoxes between our observed objective reality and the increasingly strange theories of theoretical physics.
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0801/0801.0337.pdf
Thanks. Ill take a look at the paper. Obviously, I'm skeptical of anyone writing anything in this general subject :-) I also might not have the physics chops to make any sense of it.
Thats what me and Sycopat have been going back-and-forward on.If we are in a VR simulation then I agree with other posters and yourself that we cannot directly perceive what is behind the simulation. However, that does not mean we cannot conceive of how a VR world would behave, given the evidence we uncover regarding our universe.Increasingly the evidence seems to point to an information based reality built from a ground state of the quantum vacuum (the zero point field) that effectively allows all outcomes. The key question is what is it that organizes these potential outcomes into the objective reality we perceive. Where I think Krauss' argument falls down is although he can argue that a ground state quantum vacuum is "nothing", for anything to exist that we observe as physical depends on the very specific and precise laws of quantum mechanics. Where did these laws come from? Whitworth makes a strong argument that a VR universe based on information processing is a much simpler explanation than objective reality being all there is.
I'll take a look - but already Im starting to think I wont be able to interpret it
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... hence I'm an atheist.
An atheist is someone who rejects the claims of theists. Its that simple.
How right or wrong they are is largely irrelevant to the much more important question of do they know they are right or wrong. If their claims were some how accurate they are not right because they know the truth, they are right by virtue of simply guessing and some how ending up right anyway.
Someone could guess this weeks lotto results and by pure fluke get it right, but that doesn't mean I believe them when they say they "know" this weeks results before the draw.
An atheists is simply someone who believes theists are making sh*t up, irrespective of whether that made up sh*t some how by pure coincidence ends up actually be accurate. It is still made up sh*t because the person making it up has no basis to assert its accuracy.
People focus way to much on attacking atheists by saying "How do you know that God doesn't exist". Which is the wrong question. I've no idea if God exists (though I suspect it is unlikely). The real question should be How do theists know God exists. And the answer is they don't.
Hence I'm an atheist.
By your definition, its not important what an atheists value for P(god), the probability that god exists, is.
Rather, an atheist is someone who believes that the people who have a high P(god) have a certainty thats wrong.
Hmm, I'm not sure that works.
The question then, is couldn't you be an atheist that believes in God? An atheist with a high value for P(god)?
But then, you would be a theist. As you reject the claims of theists, you thus can't be one. Therefore you must have a low value for P(god), the probability that God exists.
Thus you are taking a position on it, just as much as they are.
My picture above still holds.
All that is left to discuss, then, is whose position is more rational, given available evidence.0 -
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By your definition, its not important what an atheists value for P(god), the probability that god exists, is.
No more important than it is important what an atheists give a value for a multiverse, or the value for an infinite loop of universes, or anything else you can think of.
There are an infinite number of things you can imagine that might be responsible for the universe. Because of the prominence of religion in human culture we have given a special place to the idea that an intelligence created the universe, but in reality there is no more reason to entertain this idea than there is to entertain any of the other millions of other things you can imagine might have caused the universe.
It is like when a Christian says "What do you think about Jesus", to which one feels like replying "Not a lot more than I think about the other 100 billion people who have existed" (100 billion is an estimate of the number of people who have existed since about 10,000 years ago).
It is only Christians who say Jesus is special and should be considered as a special case, and it is only theists who say that the God hypothesis is special and should be given special consideration.Rather, an atheist is someone who believes that the people who have a high P(god) have a certainty thats wrong.
A certainty that is misplaced. "Wrong" is too loses a term, as I explained I can guess a number and that guess can be "right" but that doesn't mean I knew it was right before hand.
Theists don't know a god exists, they just think one does. This is independent to whether one actually does or not, but if one does it is a coincidence.
Therefore pondering how an atheists knows that a god doesn't exist is the wrong question.
Replace "god" with "multiverse" and it should be clearer. A person might claim they know that the multiverse exists, and I can say "No you don't", without making any statement as to whether I believe the multiverse exists or not (I have no idea if the multiverse exists).
No only does it work, it is the only thing that worksHmm, I'm not sure that works.
The alternative is an atheist is someone who proclaims they know there was no intelligent creator of the universe. How the heck would they know that? How would you even arrive at that conclusion?The question then, is couldn't you be an atheist that believes in God? An atheist with a high value for P(god)?
Which "god"?
Again this is the issue. We know nothing about these concepts except through the claims of theists.But then, you would be a theist. As you reject the claims of theists, you thus can't be one.
And if I reject the claims of theists how would I even know about the concept of "god" in the first placeTherefore you must have a low value for P(god), the probability that God exists.
I don't have to assign any value to the probability that God exist because I've no method to assess that.
Seriously, what is the aversion people have to "I have no freaking idea" as a valid answer.
Answer me this, what is the probably that something you don't know and have never imagined, exists?0 -
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First off, let me say thanks for taking the time to write all that - and to the other posters.
Ok - that's an important and powerful argument to address.
Whether I agree with that argument depends on what you mean by 'infer':
There's a sense in which I agree with your argument completely:
If you are in a simulated universe, then you can't say anything for certain about the outside universe. You certainly couldn't ever make an argument like: "There are planets our universe, therefore there are planets in the outside universe" and claim that you had hence deductively shown that the outside universe contained planets.
Nonetheless, I do think that it is reasonable to attempt to make some 'inferences', in an inductive kind of way.
You might say that you are only interested in deductive argument, leading from one set of certain facts to the next.
That's an understandable position, but I will attempt to convince you otherwise:
A) I think that almost all we have to work with, on questions like this, is inductive reasoning. (You might say "Ah-ha - thus strong agnosticism!" here, but bear with me.)
There are creators of simulations in our universe, therefore there are creators of simulations in the outside universe is exactly the same argument as the planets one but I'm not actually wanting anyone to claim anything deductive about the non-simulation, my argument is actually that inductive reasoning is inappropriate and unreasonable to use in this situation.
To expand on this, I'll start from the example you gave: I think its not unreasonable to reason inductively about these things, given the lack of other information.
I think we do this all the time.
If someone shows me a 'foo' and says "the attribute of this 'foo' is 'bar'", and then shows me another 'foo' and says "whats the attribute of this 'foo'?" I'm going to guess 'bar'.
Its a very low confidence guess; but I think that its the rational guess to make. (No?)
To make it clearer - if I guess something else, and they say "the attribute of this second 'foo' was also 'bar'. Now, what is the attribute of this third 'foo'?" I think pretty much everyone is going to guess 'bar' at that point. They certainly will guess 'bar' after a 1000 examples of 'bar', unless they are *very* stubborn.
But if the first and second results count as evidence for the third, then the first counts as evidence for the second. Weak evidence, but evidence nonetheless.
I can follow this point but to bring it on a bit, to develop why I feel inductive reasoning like this is pointless in regards to simulation vs. outside, is that you're not being given two foos. You're being given foo and not-foo. Simulation and Not-Simulation.
Foo is bar.
foo is not not-foo
but not foo is also bar
That is not just unreasonable. It is not even logical.
(The funny coincidence of this is it's not even logical to expect to be able to apply the logic of our universe to a universe which may be simulating it.)C) I don't think that the fact that we don't have solid evidence to work with, in a deductive framework, does not mean we can claim to have no value for P(god).
You always have to have a P(god). It might be a P(god) with such a low confidence value, that you think its not very useful in your other reasoning, and perhaps thus you describe yourself as 'agnostic'.
But I would say that the situation is really as described by the following pictures:
http://imgur.com/GoGNHvL,UBuUjts#0
http://imgur.com/GoGNHvL,UBuUjts#1
You might take issue with where I've put certain groups (As an aside, I'd be really interested in surveying people on those three axes, and seeing where most of the density is. I'm sure someone must have done this before, though?). (You can think of the single axis I specified in my original post as a projection/transformation of this.)
I don't really have an issue with where you've put the groups (although I think the Z-axis is unnecessary, considering the Y is also a 'certainty' measure)
However, I take issue with your claim we must always have a P(god). Images and concepts like this can be useful in explaining the differences between positions, but anyone claiming any value for P(god) is just using an arbitrary number.I argue that there's always a P(god) in there, though.
The idea of 'god' is a prevalent idea in our cultures, and it claims to have such consequences (e.g. you will go to hell if you get it wrong; other similar ideas are deeply ingrained in our culture) that I actually think you can't really avoid thinking about P(god) at some point.
If you want to reason about what this P(god) is, you've got to deal with inductive and low certainty argument.
I'd agree with the idea that most people will eventually think about the liklihood of god, however I don't think there's always a P(god) because it is impossible to assess the P(god) and as such anyone who decides there is a specific P(god) is just self-assigning an arbitrary number for something you have no way of measuring.
It's not an actual probability value, just a point between 0 and 1. Any certainty measure is likewise arbitrary.
You're not inducing anything when you assign these values because you don't have a prior to base them off of.
And assigning an arbitrary number to an unknown variable strikes me as a huge flaw in reasoning, let alone across multiple unknown variables.I hope that makes some sort of an argument about why it is necessary, and at least somewhat meaningful to try and reason in this manner.
I should say that I'm quite willing - maybe even eager - to have any error in my reasoning pointed out.
I hope I have pointed them out.I should clarify this: I'm not saying that the intelligences in the 'baseline' or 'outermost' universe would not be naturally occurring, like we'd normally believe that we naturally occurred in this universe. I'm not arguing for a deity in the 'outermost' universe. I'm willing to believe that such a universe spontaneously arose, as per the Hawking style-of-argument mentioned earlier. What I'm arguing is whether we should believe that our universe has an intelligent creator, and I'm just using 'deity', or 'god' as terms of convenience for that omnipotent programmer-creator. I think those terms are appropriate ones with which to describe a programmer-creator, even a programmer creator who might perhaps be subject to the inviolable laws of the universe that contains them. I think the existence of such a programmer-creator, or 'god', still provides a problem for strong atheism, which is my argument here.
Then why consistently refer to such creator intelligences as a deity or god? If they are not a god I don't see how they cause any problem for atheism. Just as another example of the inherent differences between a not-simulation and a simulation: if they are a programmer-creator but the mechanism of their creation is knowable, natural, and possibly even reproducible, but they are subject to the laws of the Not-Simulation then they are by definition not omnipotent.I'm trying to make an argument that changes the 'prior' we'd have on the existence of a creator of our universe, or a randomly chosen (perhaps simulated) universe, rather than argue that 'outermost' or 'naturally occurring' universes come with mysterious deities.
To put it another way, for the purposes of this argument, if I was to be convinced this universe was not a simulation, then I would be willing to believe there was probably no god.
But I don't see how it changes the prior. Without applying inductive reasoning incorrectly.Fair enough - this is just a difference between our word choice, rather than meaning.
Then I think I'm happy to drop that discussion, although out of interest I will say:as if you can just ignore the issue of whether 'deep time' is deep enough.
That issues not being ignored, but a laymans model is usually so oversimplified it would overestimate substantially the amount of deep time needed for certain things, because they tend to focus on small iterative mutational adaption and ignore large scale shifts (largely because they are massively disadvantageous and it's thought likely to require a large shift in selective pressures to survive. Such as the mass extinction of it's predators or washing up somewhere uninhabited.)
Anyway, moving on.Yes. At one level, I don't think that is the obstacle some people might believe it to be.
I firmly believe that the simulation of a mind, is a mind in its own right. Many would disagree with that, but I'm fairly convinced.
Aside that, we're back to the argument I gave above.
I don't agree, I don't entirely disagree, as from one point of view a mind is a simulation, whether the universe it's in is or not, but it's not really my point, which is that a mind within the simulation is an element of and part of and bound by the simulation, in the same way our minds are elements are part of and bound by our universe whether it is a simulation or not.
In which case I have to wait for you to address what I see as the flaws in your reasoning.This if of course true, at a level. But not at the level which is useful to us, which is to reason about our minds as entities.
If I blindfold someone, and they can't see, then, if we are in a simulation, it is of course true that they can't see because they are in a simulation in which they can't see.
But, it is also more usefully true that they can't see because another entity in the simulation - me - has put a blindfold on them.
I hope that makes sense.
It does make sense, but you're seperating the simulation from an element within the simulation. They can't see because the simulation is simulating their inability to see. The simulation of you putting the simulation of the blindfold over the simulation of their eyes remain part of the simulation of their inability to see. It may be more useful to your thinking to conceive of these things as different but to mine they are not different. They are all just parts of the same simulation.I hope that I've helped a little by my attempt above in this post; if not, and if you can't point out where the problem is, then I don't think we can go much further.
It actually did, I want to give you credit for that, although despite pointing out the problem I suspect we may be reaching the end of our dialogue anyway.I mean, 'deal with probabilities', as opposed to dealing with deductive boolean logic. My point is that I'm not trying to prove theorems about the outside world, I'm trying to modify probabilities about it - probabilities which we have to have anyway.
I think I've explained why I fundamentally disagree on 'having' to have a probability, and why such arbitrary values are not probabilities, but I can understand you wanting to use probability theory as the framework for your thinking about the arbitrary values you've decided on.And it is reasonable to say you can modify or reason about relative probabilities about the world outside the simulation.
e.g.:
Clearly P(in_a_simulation) <= P(in_a_simulation AND simulator_is_humanoid)
Maybe statements of that type aren't useful, though - but we can make them - no?
I disagree with the idea that you can 'modify' an unknown probability, or reason about the probability of an unknown without having something to base it on, and we can't base our expectations of not-universe on the universe.
You can make such statements but they are ultimately just metaphors using arbitrary values. (Also, I'm not sure from your statement if you mean X∩Y, or XUY. The signage implies the union, but the rhs would be better represented as an intersection.)Again, tried deal with that above.
Lets neglect the brain-in-vat-scenario, for simplicity - but definitely a fair point that its another possibility.
Happy to.Lets back up a bit on the 'null' issue.
If you were saying that:
(1) the default position, in the presence of uncertainty, should be one of atheism, unless there is evidence to the contrary,
AND
if you were somehow using an argument about what should be 'the null' as *evidence* for (1), then I have an issue with your logic.
Otherwise, I don't think I do.
No, I am not saying it's evidence for 1. The null hypothesis is not evidence for itself.I argue that it is not misleading to do so. I argue its always reasonable to talk about the subjective degree of belief in a binary proposition.
Although, your certainty about that degree of belief could be very low. (You could capture this with a sketch of the probability density function of a typical member of each of the the groups (theist, agnostics, etc) I mentioned, if you wanted to express it in that way.)
Anyway -
Lets say I tell you that I made a machine that tossed a coin in a sealed room, which was then blown up.
Its inherently unknowable, for practical purposes, whether it came up heads or tails, right?
But we'll probably both say that the probability it came up heads was about 0.5
And, again, the probability that it came up heads, and that it was raining that day, is less again.
So, are we not there talking about probabilities of something inherently unknowable, in a way that makes sense?
No, because we know the coin has two sides and presumably whether or not they are both equal.
We can't know the result, but we can know the probability of the result based on the size of the sample space and the evenness of it's distribution.
It's not an apt analogy because what we are discussing is a topic with an unknown sample space, and an unknown distribution.
We have no idea what the actual options are, nor what their liklihoods are, only that many of the proposed idea's are mutually exclusive.I hope I fixed that misunderstanding above - the simulation being run by 'monkey in shoes' is fine for my purposes.
Really? I don't see how a monkey in shoes qualifies as a deity.Well, if it turned out the universe had a creator, I think I'd feel a certain respect for them.
Maybe venerate is too strong.
Now you are describing a psychopath. I'd hope that the fear and suffering were in some way an unintended, or a necessary, consequence.
Otherwise, yes, I wouldn't be happy with them.
You'ld hope? i thought you were inferring from our universe? Inferring from our universe, and the uses to which we put simulations, not forgetting that I find the idea distasteful, which is more likely: the simulation has a purpose or is a fancy version of the sims?If I lived in a simulation, I would like to know it, and I wouldn't take felling 'fake' so seriously as I think most people would.
Only because you already seem to be already telling yourself the simulation has a purpose other than entertainment.I believe you are incorrect there, and making an error of reasoning.
Then consider it shorthand for why you can't restate the question so that the positions of H1 and H0 are reversed.
Which seems to be what you're trying with your talk of 'no-god'.
All your swapping is terminology, not which one is the null, and moving the negative into the question is the linguistic equivalent of multiplying by -1 and hoping no one notices.
However, as the discussion this arose from has moved on and these posts are getting increasingly long despite my best attempts at brevity I'm going to drop the subject of the null now.0 -
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No more important than it is important what an atheists give a value for a multiverse, or the value for an infinite loop of universes, or anything else you can think of.
There are an infinite number of things you can imagine that might be responsible for the universe. Because of the prominence of religion in human culture we have given a special place to the idea that an intelligence created the universe, but in reality there is no more reason to entertain this idea than there is to entertain any of the other millions of other things you can imagine might have caused the universe.
I still have a difficulty with that bit.
I can accept the idea that the universe spontaneously arose.
I dont really understand those things, my physics knowledge doesnt go that far; but I trust the physicists to some extent, and if the physicists can provide an argument that is a little bit like 'things spontaneously arise - look at those particles' and 'look, here are singularities which violate your normal ideas of casuality, thats evidence that your normal ideas of causality dont always apply' then Im prepared to accept that the universe might not need any cause.
But, if I'm living in this universe, and its 200 years in the future, and humans are simulating other (less complex?) universes, then I think I'm going to consider it more likely that an intelligence is simulating our universe, than at least some of 'the other millions of things I could imagine might have caused the universe'. E.g. imagining that a non-intelligent optimising system has created the universe.It is like when a Christian says "What do you think about Jesus", to which one feels like replying "Not a lot more than I think about the other 100 billion people who have existed" (100 billion is an estimate of the number of people who have existed since about 10,000 years ago).
It is only Christians who say Jesus is special and should be considered as a special case, and it is only theists who say that the God hypothesis is special and should be given special consideration.
A certainty that is misplaced. "Wrong" is too loses a term, as I explained I can guess a number and that guess can be "right" but that doesn't mean I knew it was right before hand.
Theists don't know a god exists, they just think one does. This is independent to whether one actually does or not, but if one does it is a coincidence.
Therefore pondering how an atheists knows that a god doesn't exist is the wrong question.
Replace "god" with "multiverse" and it should be clearer. A person might claim they know that the multiverse exists, and I can say "No you don't", without making any statement as to whether I believe the multiverse exists or not (I have no idea if the multiverse exists).
No only does it work, it is the only thing that works
The alternative is an atheist is someone who proclaims they know there was no intelligent creator of the universe. How the heck would they know that? How would you even arrive at that conclusion?
Which "god"?
Again this is the issue. We know nothing about these concepts except through the claims of theists.
And if I reject the claims of theists how would I even know about the concept of "god" in the first place
I'm not sure about that argument.
I accept your argument that any specific chosen set of theistic beliefs, chosen from a broad space of theistic beliefs, in the absence of any evidence which elevates them above the other possible beliefs, are a priori unlikely to be true.
But can't a reasonable person describe a statement such as "there exists a creator intelligence"? Absent the framework of any particular existing theistic religion? Then try and reason about the truth or falsity of that statement, or the probability of its truth?I don't have to assign any value to the probability that God exist because I've no method to assess that.
Seriously, what is the aversion people have to "I have no freaking idea" as a valid answer.
Answer me this, what is the probably that something you don't know and have never imagined, exists?
In your last question, you are asking me to estimate the probability that X exists, but you are explicitly not telling me anything about X.
Well, thats not entirely true - you told me its something I dont know, and never imagined. Its not clear whether you mean X is outside the category of things I could have known or imagined, or whether X is just not one of the specific things I knew or imagined; that does make a difference, but I dont think thats the intention of your question.
I think your question is mean to be "estimate the probability of X, where Im telling you nothing about X - it doesnt even necessarily have to be something you know or could have imagined".
As Im sure you intend, thats a really hard question. I don't even know where to start.
We arent even limited to the set of things that could conceivably exist.
Im not sure I can sensibly reply to that question?
But I dont think its analogous to asking about P(God).
You have no trouble giving a low probability that any particular theistic god (god_1, god_2 etc) exists, as I understand it? You also seem to have no problem saying that the sum of the probabilities P(god_1 or god_2 ... or god_n) for all the theistic religions that exist is also low?
If we abstract a certain aspect of the existing religions - the general belief in some intelligent creator - we can define a space of possible theisms that share this aspect.
Why then cannot we then ask 'what is the reasonable degree of belief that any of the religions in this space could be correct'? We cant we call this P(God), and reason about it?
Its not defined purely in terms of existing religions - instead its an abstraction and generalisation of one of the ideas common to those religions - and surely its meaningful to reason about its probability?0 -
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there is a critical point I would like to make on the issue of a universe from nothing:
The nothing Krauss and Hawkins refer to is not "nothing" as we normally think of it, it is a scientific defintion of nothing called the quantum vacuum. How a field of energy can be defined as nothing is beyond me and its a view that I don't think is shared by many physicists. In my view Krauss in particular has made anti religious dogma out of his theory.If nothing in our universe came from nothing, how can an entire universe come from nothing (actual nothing, not Krauss' nothing)? .. The big bang theory contradicts any theory that states the universe is objectively real and complete in itself. How can an objective reality, existing in and of itself, be created out of nothing?".
Time 1.13.00 + of this:
has Krauss directly explaining why what you've said is false - if you're going to reference him in just about every post try not to misrepresent what he says my man
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sponsoredwalk wrote: »Time 1.13.00 + of this has Krauss directly explaining why what you've said is false - if you're going to reference him in just about every post try not to misrepresent what he says my man
Rather than wasting my time listening to an hour of an Islamist who knows nothing about Physics and a Physicist who knows nothing about Theology shouting at each other, can you briefly explain in your own words where I am wrong about Krauss.. thanks.. my man 0 -
Rather than wasting my time listening to an hour of an Islamist who knows nothing about Physics and a Physicist who knows nothing about Theology shouting at each other, can you briefly explain in your own words where I am wrong about Krauss.. thanks.. my man
Within a minute & a half he's said everything he has to say as regards your misrepresentation, 1.13.00 - 1.14.30. It's interesting that the "Islamist who knows nothing about physics" makes the same argument you've made in here...0 -
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No, the Islamist asked a valid question similar to the one I initially posed (on the definition of nothing), and a 30 second sound bite answer is hardly enough to explore such a big question.
Tzortzis assumed Krauss was talking about quantum vacuum's the same way you assumed Krauss was talking about quantum vacuum's, when in fact (as far as I can discern) he's talking about a related, but distinct, idea that doesn't involve the quantum vacuum or the "fields of energy" you've referenced. I haven't read his book but the point I'm trying to make is that if he's going to correct someone in the video by saying "there's no quantum" then when you say "quantum vacuum" I'd say you've most likely misunderstood him:The nothing Krauss and Hawkins refer to is not "nothing" as we normally think of it, it is a scientific defintion of nothing called the quantum vacuum.
From the video:
Krauss (1.13.35): "What's my nothing?"
Tzortzis: "Your nothing ..."
Krauss: "What is my nothing?"
Tzortzis: "Your nothing is quantum"
Krauss: "No"
Tzortzis: "It is"
Krauss: "No: no space; no time; no laws; no - nothing..."
Tzortzis: "But that's still the quantum... haze..."
Krauss: "No"
Tzortzis: "That is"
Krauss: "No, no quantum - there's no universe, there's no universe, nothing - zero, zip, nada..."
Since he specifically says "nothing" & "no quantum", & the vacuum described above isn't as empty as Krauss would have you believe, at best I can explain your misrepresentation of his argument as an understandable confusion of similar ideas, summed up here:According to present-day understanding of what is called the vacuum state or the quantum vacuum, it is "by no means a simple empty space",[1] and again: "it is a mistake to think of any physical vacuum as some absolutely empty void."[2] According to quantum mechanics, the vacuum state is not truly empty but instead contains fleeting electromagnetic waves and particles that pop into and out of existence.[3][4][5]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_state
I would imagine you read his book through the lens of the quantum vacuum & misinterpreted a lot of what he said not realizing he was following something along the lines of "Vilenkin’s 'tunneling from literally nothing'" ideas, a misunderstanding I wouldn't feel bad about falling privy to because this stuff is fcuking tough & I've done that myself in my own way in my own contextsThe idea of a universe from nothing as I understand iit comes in al least two main forms.There may be others too. The first was suggested by Edward Tryon who suggested the uvierse may have zero not energy and hence may be the reuslt a fluctuation from a vacuum.
The second is from Alex Velinkin who suggested that space and time themselves can tunnel into existence from a state with no space and time. This is not from a vacuum. The only thing that eixsts here is the laws of physics which somehow exists even when there is no universe.
The first idea dates back to the ealry 70's and the second to the early 80's.
In the media interest in these ideas has increased recently especially after LAwrence Krauss has publicised them. Before that it was ALan Guth who promoted them, but that was in the age before youtube.
http://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=4216817&postcount=3
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_genesis
http://debunkingwlc.wordpress.com/2010/08/11/alexander-vilenkins-model-of-cosmic-origins/
Correct me if I am wrong, Krauss' theory in essence is that the laws of quantum physics can produce everything we observe in the universe, or any number of universes for that matter. I fully agree with this. Where did the laws of QM come from? Perhaps you can point me to where Krauss explains this, or perhaps you can explain it yourself.. or did they also come from nothing?
If I were you I would check my links following the rabbit hole deeper to get the answers to the questions you seek, my only point was to correct you on the quantum vacuum stuff, & by the way you could learn a great deal from someone who knows nothing about a subject 0 -
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sponsoredwalk wrote: »Tzortzis assumed Krauss was talking about quantum vacuum's the same way you assumed Krauss was talking about quantum vacuum's, when in fact (as far as I can discern) he's talking about a related, but distinct, idea that doesn't involve the quantum vacuum or the "fields of energy" you've referenced. I haven't read his book but the point I'm trying to make is that if he's going to correct someone in the video by saying "there's no quantum" then when you say "quantum vacuum" I'd say you've most likely misunderstood him:
If I were you I would check my links following the rabbit hole deeper to get the answers to the questions you seek, my only point was to correct you on the quantum vacuum stuff, & by the way you could learn a great deal from someone who knows nothing about a subject
Don't worry, I've been down the rabbit hole more times than you can imagine
Krauss is basing his theory on QFT which is the quantum field. QFT suggests that any physical reality is possible, anything from "nothing" to what we observe as our objective universe. When Krauss says "there's no quantum" he is not being truly honest, as quantum is the most fundamental theory we know of, and is the basis of his own theory. You simply cannot get away from quantum, it is the most fundamental theory there is. Everything that is possible in our universe stems from quantum theory, you cannot state "there's no quantum", except to a non scientific audience.
Open your mind and start asking the tough questions. Why is it that in every interview Krauss claims there is no need for a creator due to his theory. Why does he reference Dawkins so much? Why did Dawkins wax so lyrically in the preface to his book, claiming this was the final nail in the theist coffin? Why are Dawkins and Krauss on a world tour arguing against theism? Should they not be doing science, which is what they are good at?
Dawkins and Krauss, when challenged, concede that science does not address the God question. Why do they spend so much of their time on the God question? Think about it.0
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