From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Thu Apr 03 2003 - 12:24:25 MST
Samantha Atkins wrote:
> Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
>
>> Samantha Atkins wrote:
>>
>>> Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
>>>
>>>> I would also need the other revised beliefs that tell me to
>>>> interpret sensory miracles as the actions of a consiliently
>>>> existing God, rather than hallucinations or an enclosing
>>>> simulation.
>>>
>>> But wouldn't your criteria mean that God would have to be a being
>>> among other beings within the framework of what, to be God, would
>>> be God's creation? I guess you're safe from theism because this
>>> looks like a clearly impossible hoop to jump through.
>>
>> Does not follow. God could be the framework, or could be outside the
>> framework, or whatever it is the theologians insist on. The only
>> requirement for consilience is that the explanation be consistent.
>> Physics is consilient with biology, for example, and physics is not a
>> lifeform among other lifeforms.
>
> So what does a purported creator being consistent with the creation
> look like? Or is that not the criteria you would use?
An example of inconsistency is the assertion that God predates all physics
and existence, yet contains complex dynamic structure, and behaves in an
anthropomorphic fashion, showing emotions that are the signature of
sustained natural selection in a game-theoretical context. The simplest
explanation for memes containing such assertions is that they are the
confabulations of storytellers who lacked the scientific knowledge and
investigative mindset to detect the inconsistencies in their own stories,
and simply made stuff up that sounded good to them, while transparently
ridiculous from the view of later centuries. It is conceptually possible
that despite such storytelling having a clear and consilient explanation
as fiction, there is nonetheless some even simpler explanation under which
it is true. But I am not holding my breath.
Similarly, the successive theological rationalization of such
confabulations farther and farther away from the original unpalatable
fictions has produced a great deal of extremely vague spirituality. This
vague spirituality allows people with moderate levels of scientific
literacy to deceive themselves without believing things so blatantly
ridiculous that they would lose their self-respect. But such defensive
rationalization is not any more likely to be correct, nor will the new
fictions produced be able to fool anyone with a higher level of scientific
knowledge or less eagerness to be deceived.
-- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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