I can briefly try to translate the divine simplicity thing: “The perfectly reflective Platonic decision algorithm that performs optimally on all optimization problems doesn’t ‘possess’ the quality of optimizerness—it is optimization, just as it is reflectivity. Being a Platonic algorithm, it does not have inputs or outputs, but controls all programs ambiently. It has no potentiality, only actuality: everything is at equilibrium.” And so on and so forth.
I think you need to take a big step back and consider what you’ve studied and what you’ve come up with. I’m not sure where divine simplicity fits in your worldview exactly, but in the course of my own decision theory studies, I came up with an issue that seems to shoot down that concept entirely: there can be no decision algorithm that performs optimally on all optimization problems, because there are optimization problems for which the solution space is infinite, and there is an infinite chain of progressively better solutions. Worse, the universe we presently occupy appears to be infinite, and to have such chains for almost all sensible optimization criteria. The best we can do, decision-theory wise, is to bite off special cases, come up with transforms and simplifications to make those cases more broadly applicable, and fall back on imperfect heuristics for the rest.
But there’s a much bigger issue here. It looks to me like you’ve taken a few batches of concentrated confusion—the writings of old philosophers—and invented a novel interpretation to give it meaning. You then took these reinterpretations and mixed them into what started out as a sensible worldview. You’re talking about studying Aquinas and Leibniz, and this makes me very worried, because my longstanding belief is that these authors, and most others of their era, are cognitive poison that will drive you insane. Furthermore, your writings recently look to me like evidence that this may actually be happening. You should probably be looking to consolidate your findings, and to communicate them.
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 think you need to take a big step back and consider what you’ve studied and what you’ve come up with. I’m not sure where divine simplicity fits in your worldview exactly, but in the course of my own decision theory studies, I came up with an issue that seems to shoot down that concept entirely: there can be no decision algorithm that performs optimally on all optimization problems, because there are optimization problems for which the solution space is infinite, and there is an infinite chain of progressively better solutions. Worse, the universe we presently occupy appears to be infinite, and to have such chains for almost all sensible optimization criteria. The best we can do, decision-theory wise, is to bite off special cases, come up with transforms and simplifications to make those cases more broadly applicable, and fall back on imperfect heuristics for the rest.
But there’s a much bigger issue here. It looks to me like you’ve taken a few batches of concentrated confusion—the writings of old philosophers—and invented a novel interpretation to give it meaning. You then took these reinterpretations and mixed them into what started out as a sensible worldview. You’re talking about studying Aquinas and Leibniz, and this makes me very worried, because my longstanding belief is that these authors, and most others of their era, are cognitive poison that will drive you insane. Furthermore, your writings recently look to me like evidence that this may actually be happening. You should probably be looking to consolidate your findings, and to communicate them.
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.)