Divine simplicity is a hypothesis, what you say is strong evidence against that hypothesis. But I think it’s still a coherent hypothesis. At the very least we can talk about Goedelian stuff or NFL theorems to counterargue a bunch of the stronger ‘omnipotence, omniscience’ stuff… but things are all weird when you’re that abstract; you can just say, “okay, well, this agent is multipartite and so even if one part has one Chaitin’s constant this other part has another Chaitin’s constant and so you can get around it”, or something, but I doubt that actually works or makes sense. On the other hand it’s always really unclear to me when the math is or isn’t being used outside its intended domain. Basically I notice I am confused when I try to steel man “optimal decision policy” arguments, for or against. (There’s also this other thing that’s like “optimal given boundedness” but I think that doesn’t count.)
I disagree about Aquinas and Leibniz. I see them as putting forth basically sane hypotheses that are probably wrong but probably at least a little relevant for our decision policies. I don’t think that theology is a useful area of study, not when we have decision theory, but I really don’t think that Leibniz especially was off track with his theology. (I dunno if you missed my comments about how he was really thinking in terms of the intuitions behind algorithmic information theory?)
I have significant familiarity with Aquinas, and I do not see anything worth reading Aquinas for, save perhaps arguing with theists. Insofar as there are interesting ideas in his writing, they are better presented elsewhere (particularly in modern work with the benefit of greatly improved knowledge and methods), with greater clarity and without so much nonsense mixed in. Recommending that people read Aquinas, or castigating them for not having read Aquinas, seems like a recipe for wasting their time.
Divine simplicity is a hypothesis, what you say is strong evidence against that hypothesis. But I think it’s still a coherent hypothesis. At the very least we can talk about Goedelian stuff or NFL theorems to counterargue a bunch of the stronger ‘omnipotence, omniscience’ stuff… but things are all weird when you’re that abstract; you can just say, “okay, well, this agent is multipartite and so even if one part has one Chaitin’s constant this other part has another Chaitin’s constant and so you can get around it”, or something, but I doubt that actually works or makes sense. On the other hand it’s always really unclear to me when the math is or isn’t being used outside its intended domain. Basically I notice I am confused when I try to steel man “optimal decision policy” arguments, for or against. (There’s also this other thing that’s like “optimal given boundedness” but I think that doesn’t count.)
I disagree about Aquinas and Leibniz. I see them as putting forth basically sane hypotheses that are probably wrong but probably at least a little relevant for our decision policies. I don’t think that theology is a useful area of study, not when we have decision theory, but I really don’t think that Leibniz especially was off track with his theology. (I dunno if you missed my comments about how he was really thinking in terms of the intuitions behind algorithmic information theory?)
I have significant familiarity with Aquinas, and I do not see anything worth reading Aquinas for, save perhaps arguing with theists. Insofar as there are interesting ideas in his writing, they are better presented elsewhere (particularly in modern work with the benefit of greatly improved knowledge and methods), with greater clarity and without so much nonsense mixed in. Recommending that people read Aquinas, or castigating them for not having read Aquinas, seems like a recipe for wasting their time.
(I agree with this.)