From: Dan Fabulich (dfabulich@warpmail.net)
Date: Thu Jun 05 2003 - 22:20:32 MDT
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
> 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".
Does SL4 have a FAQ or a glossary or something? Where's the
infrastructure? ;)
> > 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".
That's my thinking as well. (I was responding mostly to Rafal when I
raised this argument, who seemed to be arguing that there was a "God" in
some possible world, but not, you know, THIS one.)
I think the only good response would have to be one in which the theist
gave her own sketch of a logically consistent world (surely we'd never get
it to be provably mathematically consistent) in which a being with maximal
greatness exists. But, as we've seen, it's not easy to do this. I
suppose the jury is still out as to whether it's ever been done, but I
think your sketch argument should, by itself, be adequate to show that no
one could ever produce a relevant counter-sketch.
If someone did put together a plausible consistent counter-sketch, we'd
have to conclude that one of them wasn't *really* a possible world.
Theists certainly have some arguments in mind for this: I think they'd
consider a simple sketch of cellular automata vulnerable to cosmological
arguments: "how could a universe like that have come into existence?"
they might ask. (Where, presumably, they think they have a consistent
answer for their *own* sketch.)
> 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.
Interestingly, some theists think that if that were really *all* there
was, then *they* would be disproven: something with basically nice motives
is obviously nowhere near the infinitely benevolent being they had in
mind, and if there isn't one of those, well, they consider themselves to
have lost the argument.
-Dan
-unless you love someone-
-nothing else makes any sense-
e.e. cummings
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