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.
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.