On 1/18/2015 7:00 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
On Sun, Jan 18, 2015 at 6:26 PM, meekerdb <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:On 1/15/2015 6:35 PM, Jason Resch wrote:On Thu, Jan 15, 2015 at 6:01 PM, meekerdb <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: How would you define "intelligence" for this thing? Jupiter Brain / Omega Point / Result of post-singularity intelligence explosion / Platonic mind with access infinite computing resources / Dyson's sphere powered computer, take your pick. It's capable enough to run a planet-wide simulation down to whatever necessary detail it desires, and be able to infer any being's thoughts on the planet by analyzing its brain activity. Beyond that I'm not sure how to quantify or define its intelligence. I think of intelligence as the ability to observe and infer and learn. Of course the traditional God was not only the creator of everything He was also a person who knew everything and so could not learn anything. Maybe this one is only a mere demi-god then. You can only say it knows everything about its simulation. 1. Would you consider such a demi-god a theistic god for the entities within its simulation?Not necessarily. One of the defining characteristics of the theist God is that He cares about human behavior (especially when they're nude).If I understand you correctly, you're saying that even if it were demonstrated that our universe was created and is maintained by a theistic God simulating the whole universe, you would not call it a theistic God unless it happened to care about your behavior when you're nude? You will go to any stretch to avoid entertaining the possibility that atheism might be wrong.
There's already a word for the religion that says a god creates and runs things but doesn't much care about human behavior; it's called deism and deists, like Thomas Jefferson, were commonly called atheists by their political opponents.
I don't understand your complaint about avoiding disproof of atheism. I have given a fairly specific definition of it which easily admits of empirical refutation. Yaweh could show up tomorrow. It's not my fault if theism is false. You're the one that wants to fuzz out theism to mean almost anything except reductive materialism.
2. Can you rule out that some demi-god somewhere isn't simulating this planet?No. I take back my last sentence.3. Do you think the existence of such a demi-god follows from the UDA/arithmetical realism?Probably not. But in any case I'm not a fan of arithmetical realism. Truth =/= existence.You're right it doesn't. But the truth of the statement "There exists a program X that computes Y" is proof of the existence of program X which computes Y.
But "existence" only in the mathematical sense which is tautological; i.e. implicit in some axioms, which you've left unstated in your example, relying on common assumption of the Church-Turing thesis to define "computes".
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