From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Thu Jun 05 2003 - 19:44:09 MDT
Dan Fabulich wrote:
> Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
>
>> If you define "God" as an entity which pervades all areas of all
>> Level IV Processes,
>
> "Level IV Processes" is not easily Googled. Care to give a hint?
Sorry, sometimes I start thinking everyone hangs out on SL4... Tegmark,
"Parallel Worlds". Tegmark's Level I is simple distance in an infinite
open universe; Tegmark Level II is other inflationary bubbles; Tegmark
Level III is many-worlds theory; Tegmark Level IV is the Platonic
existence of all possible worlds, which I've taken to calling "Processes".
Our own Process is named "Bayesia".
> Certainly if you think "God" (according to this definition) exists in
> some hubblebubble or other, you should think "God" exists in all
> hubblebubbles. Similarly for all Everett world-histories. And, you
> know, similarly for all possible worlds.
Then it follows that if "God" does not exist in any possible world (Level
IV Process), "God" does not exist in any world. So I'd say fairly
obviously "God" does not exist, since anyone can sketch out mathematically
consistent cellular automata in which there is provably no "God". But
this says nothing interesting in the argument against theism. If there
were an entity with command over the entire Process of Bayesia, existing
at the root level of the enclosing reality with no comparable entities
nearby (i.e., not a Corbinian Otaku), with interestingly posthuman yet
basically nice motives, who intervened from time to time in our world to
create miracles, atheism would be disproven. Playing with definitions to
avoid the blow would be cheating. This is what makes atheism falsifiable.
-- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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