I think one logical correlation following from the Simulation Argument is underappreciated in the correlations.
I spotted this in the uncorrelated data already:
P Supernatural: 6.68 + 20.271 (0, 0, 1) [1386]
P God: 8.26 + 21.088 (0, 0.01, 3) [1376]
P Simulation 24.31 + 28.2 (1, 10, 50) [1320]
Shouldn’t evidence for simulations—and apparently the median belief is 10% for simulation—be evidence for Supernatural influences, for which there is 0% median belief (not even 0.01). After all a simulation implies a simulator and thus a more complex ‘outer world’ doing the simulation and thus disabling occams razor style arguments against gods.
Admittedly there is a small correlation:
P God/P Simulation .110 (1296)
Interestingly this is on the same order as
P Aliens/P Simulation .098 (1308)
but there is no correlation listed between P Aliens/P God. Thus my initial hypothesis that aliens running the simulation of gods being the argument behind the 0.11 correlation is invalid.
Shouldn’t evidence for simulations—and apparently the median belief is 10% for simulation—be evidence for Supernatural influences
A simulation is still a naturalistic non-supernatural thing, and it would just mean we see less of the universe than we thought we do. The question was, after all:
What is the probability that there is a god, defined as a supernatural intelligent entity who created the universe?
It depends on your definition of supernatural, and most people on LessWrong seem to have a very narrow definition of supernatural. I think Eliezer once wrote a post about it, but I don’t believe he cited any references. Some definitions of supernatural would require many people on here to revise their estimate significantly upward. I took the lack of a definition to mean we should use any and all possible definitions of supernatural when considering the question, which is why I picked 100 percent. There’s actually been a discussion on whether simulations imply God, and most answered no. I thought the reasoning some used for that was rather peculiar. That discussion of course didn’t include any citations either.
You’re thinking of this one, and he cited Carrier, and we have this argument after every survey.
At this point it’s a Tradition, and putting “ARGH LOOK JUST USE CARRIER’S DEFINITION” on the survey itself would just spoil it :)
I actually calibrated my P(God) and P(Supernatural) based on P(Simulation), figuring that getting an exact figure for cases where (~Simulation & Supernatural) are basically noise.
I forgot what I actually defined “God” as for my probability estimation, as well as the actual estimation.
a simulation implies a simulator and thus a more complex ‘outer world’ doing the simulation and thus disabling occams razor style arguments against gods.
I don’t know what you mean by “complexity” here, but it doesn’t seem based on MML like the arguments you refer to.
Think of a simulation as an implementation of the rules of physics. The rules of physics have a certain complexity in the sense of necessary bits to encode them (basically whatever complexity measure you prefer, just may not assume prior knowledge of course). If the implementation is faithful, then an observer in the simulation can at best determine this complexity. By occams razor he would take that as the complexity of his universe.
If the implementation has bugs (e.g. rounding imprecision or range limits or erroneous special cases) these create a kind of different physics which to the inhabitants could in pricinciple be discernible and and increase the complexity measure—possibly quite a lot because it exposes parts of the implementation logic with all its details. I seem to remember that physicists considered this and actually looked for these kind of rounding errors. Other kinds of complexity could hide in e.g. the random number generator used to make probabilistic choices.
Now I wouldn’t call the above kind of ‘bug’ supernatural nor the implementators gods. But another kind of the simulations divergence from the normal rules could count: If the implementor chose to a) select specific instances of probabilisitc choices or b) locally diverge from the ‘physics’ and establish e.g. an information channel between the simulation and the simulator. These could create effects compatible with theology. Strictly a physicist wouldn’t call this supernatural as it has a perfectly satisfactory constructivistic mechanistic explanation (it just assumes one more level of indirection). But if we take ‘our universe’ to mean that what the implementor called the simulation, then it seems to fit.
And I don’t see why you would choose to ignore the outer world like that. Modern physics includes all sorts of (potential) alternate realities!
ETA: Also, the parent seems to me like the opposite of what you said before, namely, “a simulation implies a simulator and thus a more complex ‘outer world’ doing the simulation”.
I don’t ‘choose’ to ignore the outer world. To make ‘supernatural’ or ‘god’ not trivially empty sets I have to come up with a sensible concept (in the sense of either appealing to intuition or theology or both) of these. One is to take ‘universe’ to mean some entity differentiatable (at least conceptually) from an outer/enclosing universe (which includes its ‘creator’ or creaing process). The concept of a creator god is of course quite common in theology and even if this leaves open the source of outer universe came from that doesn’t necessarily preclude the nesting to begin with.
Note: I didn’t down-vote you. I think you may validly ask why I chose this distinction.
I know you didn’t down-vote me, that was Eugene Nier. Why you didn’t up-vote me is another question.
And others have mentioned the “fundamentally mental” definition which seems at work here. The simulation hypothesis would technically give us reason to ask whether it really makes sense to assume the programmer(s) run on their own set of rules, which don’t mention minds. And yet it still feels like we shouldn’t believe the outer world will change its laws in the sense of all air turning to butterflies (or the outer-world equivalent) in the next second (our time). This feeling even seems somewhat reasonable, since a change to the outer world could easily affect ours. The grue-bleen problem means we would still need some more technical form of Occam’s Razor to even explain what we/I believe there.
If there’s one simulation, there are many simulations. Any given “simulation God” can only interfere with their own simulation. Interfered-with simulations diverge, not-interfered-with simulations converge. Thus, at any given point, I should expect to be in the not-interfered-with simulation. “God”, if you can call it that, but not “Supernatural” because this prime mover cannot affect the world.
I probably used the wrong word; rather, they don’t diverge, they end up looking the same. If initial state is the same, and physics are the same, then calculation will end up the same likewise. In that sense, every interaction by simulation Gods with the sim is increases the bit count of the description of the world you find yourself in. (Unless the world of our simulation God is so much simpler that it’s easier to describe our world by looking at their world. But that seems implausible.)
I think one logical correlation following from the Simulation Argument is underappreciated in the correlations.
I spotted this in the uncorrelated data already:
P Supernatural: 6.68 + 20.271 (0, 0, 1) [1386]
P God: 8.26 + 21.088 (0, 0.01, 3) [1376]
P Simulation 24.31 + 28.2 (1, 10, 50) [1320]
Shouldn’t evidence for simulations—and apparently the median belief is 10% for simulation—be evidence for Supernatural influences, for which there is 0% median belief (not even 0.01). After all a simulation implies a simulator and thus a more complex ‘outer world’ doing the simulation and thus disabling occams razor style arguments against gods.
Admittedly there is a small correlation:
P God/P Simulation .110 (1296)
Interestingly this is on the same order as
P Aliens/P Simulation .098 (1308)
but there is no correlation listed between P Aliens/P God. Thus my initial hypothesis that aliens running the simulation of gods being the argument behind the 0.11 correlation is invalid.
Note that I mentioned simulation as weak argument for theism earlier.
A simulation is still a naturalistic non-supernatural thing, and it would just mean we see less of the universe than we thought we do. The question was, after all:
See my answer to hairyfigment. Does that help?
I think you’re looking at it backward. You are trying to understand what the implications of a survey response are. This is the explanation.
Your philosophical objection to the logic behind the explanation doesn’t make it not the explanation.
It depends on your definition of supernatural, and most people on LessWrong seem to have a very narrow definition of supernatural. I think Eliezer once wrote a post about it, but I don’t believe he cited any references. Some definitions of supernatural would require many people on here to revise their estimate significantly upward. I took the lack of a definition to mean we should use any and all possible definitions of supernatural when considering the question, which is why I picked 100 percent. There’s actually been a discussion on whether simulations imply God, and most answered no. I thought the reasoning some used for that was rather peculiar. That discussion of course didn’t include any citations either.
You’re thinking of this one, and he cited Carrier, and we have this argument after every survey. At this point it’s a Tradition, and putting “ARGH LOOK JUST USE CARRIER’S DEFINITION” on the survey itself would just spoil it :)
Oh yeah, that one. I’d probably just get annoyed if they said to use Carrier since I hate that definition, so I guess the status quo works for me.
I actually calibrated my P(God) and P(Supernatural) based on P(Simulation), figuring that getting an exact figure for cases where (~Simulation & Supernatural) are basically noise.
I forgot what I actually defined “God” as for my probability estimation, as well as the actual estimation.
I don’t know what you mean by “complexity” here, but it doesn’t seem based on MML like the arguments you refer to.
Think of a simulation as an implementation of the rules of physics. The rules of physics have a certain complexity in the sense of necessary bits to encode them (basically whatever complexity measure you prefer, just may not assume prior knowledge of course). If the implementation is faithful, then an observer in the simulation can at best determine this complexity. By occams razor he would take that as the complexity of his universe.
If the implementation has bugs (e.g. rounding imprecision or range limits or erroneous special cases) these create a kind of different physics which to the inhabitants could in pricinciple be discernible and and increase the complexity measure—possibly quite a lot because it exposes parts of the implementation logic with all its details. I seem to remember that physicists considered this and actually looked for these kind of rounding errors. Other kinds of complexity could hide in e.g. the random number generator used to make probabilistic choices.
Now I wouldn’t call the above kind of ‘bug’ supernatural nor the implementators gods. But another kind of the simulations divergence from the normal rules could count: If the implementor chose to a) select specific instances of probabilisitc choices or b) locally diverge from the ‘physics’ and establish e.g. an information channel between the simulation and the simulator. These could create effects compatible with theology. Strictly a physicist wouldn’t call this supernatural as it has a perfectly satisfactory constructivistic mechanistic explanation (it just assumes one more level of indirection). But if we take ‘our universe’ to mean that what the implementor called the simulation, then it seems to fit.
And I don’t see why you would choose to ignore the outer world like that. Modern physics includes all sorts of (potential) alternate realities!
ETA: Also, the parent seems to me like the opposite of what you said before, namely, “a simulation implies a simulator and thus a more complex ‘outer world’ doing the simulation”.
I don’t ‘choose’ to ignore the outer world. To make ‘supernatural’ or ‘god’ not trivially empty sets I have to come up with a sensible concept (in the sense of either appealing to intuition or theology or both) of these. One is to take ‘universe’ to mean some entity differentiatable (at least conceptually) from an outer/enclosing universe (which includes its ‘creator’ or creaing process). The concept of a creator god is of course quite common in theology and even if this leaves open the source of outer universe came from that doesn’t necessarily preclude the nesting to begin with.
Note: I didn’t down-vote you. I think you may validly ask why I chose this distinction.
I know you didn’t down-vote me, that was Eugene Nier. Why you didn’t up-vote me is another question.
And others have mentioned the “fundamentally mental” definition which seems at work here. The simulation hypothesis would technically give us reason to ask whether it really makes sense to assume the programmer(s) run on their own set of rules, which don’t mention minds. And yet it still feels like we shouldn’t believe the outer world will change its laws in the sense of all air turning to butterflies (or the outer-world equivalent) in the next second (our time). This feeling even seems somewhat reasonable, since a change to the outer world could easily affect ours. The grue-bleen problem means we would still need some more technical form of Occam’s Razor to even explain what we/I believe there.
Huh? How do you know? I know how to find out about whole posts. But comments?
I tend to not up-vote questions which just ask e.g. for clarification except where this has clearly a general or novel aspect.
If there’s one simulation, there are many simulations. Any given “simulation God” can only interfere with their own simulation. Interfered-with simulations diverge, not-interfered-with simulations converge. Thus, at any given point, I should expect to be in the not-interfered-with simulation. “God”, if you can call it that, but not “Supernatural” because this prime mover cannot affect the world.
Why would they converge?
I probably used the wrong word; rather, they don’t diverge, they end up looking the same. If initial state is the same, and physics are the same, then calculation will end up the same likewise. In that sense, every interaction by simulation Gods with the sim is increases the bit count of the description of the world you find yourself in. (Unless the world of our simulation God is so much simpler that it’s easier to describe our world by looking at their world. But that seems implausible.)