On Apr 19, 2005, at 7:16 AM, Robert J. Chassell wrote:
A related issue: what, if anything, prevents this understanding of a deity from being different than Tipler's suggestion that we are, probabilistically speaking, a simulation running in an antiquarian AI's supercomputer?
Well, to the extent that an involved god/prime mover type entity would be as falsifiable as Tipler's suggestion (read: not falsifiable at all), nothing, I think.
Tipler's ideas really aren't very fresh; in some ways they're basically reformulations of Hindu and possibly Gnostic worldviews. A more recent example would be the first _Matrix_ movie or, a little farther back in time, the later works of Philip K. Dick.
After all, that entity's supercomputer is also necessary, else `all of creation would come to a halt and we would cease to exist.' Moreover, the antiquarian may, or may not, respond to prayers and/or works by his simulations. And his purposes may be hard for a simulation to figure out.
Hmm. Not sure if the simulator would want to respond to prayers, if the idea is to more or less recreate the universe. Wouldn't that represent a corruption of the experiment and thus its outcome?
Or hey, how about this -- this isn't the first simulation run. Maybe it's the millionth. And the simulator is bored, bored, bored, and so is now playing with the runtime parameters while the program is in operation.
Or maybe our universe is now on display in some hyperdimensional children's museum, in the hands-on (or pseudopods-on) exhibit wing, and it's up to the young (brood, hatchlings) to determine which prayers are answered and which are not.
-- Warren Ockrassa, Publisher/Editor, nightwares Books http://books.nightwares.com/ Current work in progress "The Seven-Year Mirror" http://www.nightwares.com/books/ockrassa/Flat_Out.pdf
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