It seems to me that, if we insist on using simulation hypotheses as a model for theism, this has to be narrowed still further. Theism adds the constraint that though $deity is simulating us, no-one is simulating $deity; He’s really really real and the buck stops with Him. We live in the floor just above reality’s basement; isn’t that nice.
I think that this might be what Eliezer’s quote about “ontological distinctness” refers to, but I’m not sure.
Monotheism requires that, but theism doesn’t. And unless there are some universes that are for some reason impossible to simulate, Tegmark cosmology implies that there are no universes for which there are no universes simulating them. Is-God-of is a two-place predicate.
If one were interested in salvaging the correspondence, one could argue that there’s a chain of simulators-simulating-simulators and it’s that chain (which extends down to “reality’s basement”) that theists label as a deity.
That said, I see no point in allowing ontology to get out ahead of epistemology in this area. Sure, maybe all this stuff is going on. Maybe it isn’t. Unless these conjectures actually cash out somehow in terms of different expectations about observable phenomena, there seems little point to talking about them.
It seems to me that, if we insist on using simulation hypotheses as a model for theism, this has to be narrowed still further. Theism adds the constraint that though $deity is simulating us, no-one is simulating $deity; He’s really really real and the buck stops with Him. We live in the floor just above reality’s basement; isn’t that nice.
I think that this might be what Eliezer’s quote about “ontological distinctness” refers to, but I’m not sure.
Monotheism requires that, but theism doesn’t. And unless there are some universes that are for some reason impossible to simulate, Tegmark cosmology implies that there are no universes for which there are no universes simulating them. Is-God-of is a two-place predicate.
If one were interested in salvaging the correspondence, one could argue that there’s a chain of simulators-simulating-simulators and it’s that chain (which extends down to “reality’s basement”) that theists label as a deity.
That said, I see no point in allowing ontology to get out ahead of epistemology in this area. Sure, maybe all this stuff is going on. Maybe it isn’t. Unless these conjectures actually cash out somehow in terms of different expectations about observable phenomena, there seems little point to talking about them.
Nitpick: Will isn’t the only self-identified theist you’d have to convince of that.