I don’t think this affects your central point, but I’d expect a fairly large class of simulations to have exactly one miracle in them, and I don’t think your argument weighs against this.
For example, someone with a question like “what if technology X had been discovered 100 years earlier?” might run a simulation with exactly one miraculous intervention to cause technology X to be discovered at the time of the simulator’s choosing. Or “what if WW2 had ended differently?” could lead to a simulation with exactly one miraculous intervention to change the outcome of the war, etc.
Similarly, simulations about alternate rules (“what if humans had psychic powers?”) might choose to start when things are getting interesting (e.g. when humans evolve, or when civilization kicks off) rather than starting with the big bang, and might fill in the history before that point from some other data source (e.g. basement reality), and then the simulation will have exactly one miraculous discontinuity in its history (at the moment the simulation started). h/t to (major spoilers)
(It has occurred to me that “that’s when the simulation started” is a possible explanation for (at most one of) various historical discontinuities like the year the singularity was canceled, though I don’t give it much credence.)
This doesn’t change your take-away that you shouldn’t expect miracles in the future.
I don’t think this affects your central point, but I’d expect a fairly large class of simulations to have exactly one miracle in them, and I don’t think your argument weighs against this.
For example, someone with a question like “what if technology X had been discovered 100 years earlier?” might run a simulation with exactly one miraculous intervention to cause technology X to be discovered at the time of the simulator’s choosing. Or “what if WW2 had ended differently?” could lead to a simulation with exactly one miraculous intervention to change the outcome of the war, etc.
Similarly, simulations about alternate rules (“what if humans had psychic powers?”) might choose to start when things are getting interesting (e.g. when humans evolve, or when civilization kicks off) rather than starting with the big bang, and might fill in the history before that point from some other data source (e.g. basement reality), and then the simulation will have exactly one miraculous discontinuity in its history (at the moment the simulation started). h/t to (major spoilers)
the novel Ra by qntm
(It has occurred to me that “that’s when the simulation started” is a possible explanation for (at most one of) various historical discontinuities like the year the singularity was canceled, though I don’t give it much credence.)
This doesn’t change your take-away that you shouldn’t expect miracles in the future.