31–40 of 57 posts
I don't understand how your model hopes to capture any of the essential features of God as known to academic philosophers. You mention Godel incompleteness, but this only applies to sets of axioms which can be generated algorithmically. Furthermore, pure logic reveals that a transcendental first cause must be eternal, changeless (without the universe), non-physical, most likely having a mind with free will, etc. Your…
The author is missing a key element in his model of life, one which significantly affects the outcome of the thought experiment: his simple loops are independent, they have no shared state. Real existence is not so clean---living beings are constantly being altered by their environment, and conversely altering it. It would be impossible to simply 'save the state' of a living being without saving the state of the enti…
Shared state/memory seems more like a representation of the Borg ;)
"Like most people, questions about the existence of God and all things spiritual plague me frequently. I want to believe in such things, especially when it comes to continuity of my consciousness. I don’t like the idea of disappearing when I die." One way to address this is to deal with these thoughts rather than entering a philosophical rat hole of trying to simulate our existence and find an analogy to the computer…
This is the omnipotence paradox[1]. I often help friends and relatives understand why my religion (or lack thereof, actually) is `Tooth Fairy Agnosticism' by asking them whether or not God can create a stone that He can't lift.
> Better to live a life of good deeds and actions then worry about what's next.
I agree. This is how I try to live my life, but it's hard to stop worrying when you have severe thanatophobia[2] like I do.
"Like most people, questions about the existence of God and all things spiritual plague me frequently. I want to believe in such things, especially when it comes to continuity of my consciousness. I don’t like the idea of disappearing when I die." One way to address this is to deal with these thoughts rather than entering a philosophical rat hole of trying to simulate our existence and find an analogy to the computer…
> If God exists then God has powers that make Him imperceptible; if God doesn't exist then He's imperceptible. You can't tell the difference. This is the omnipotence paradox[1]. I often help friends and relatives understand why my religion (or lack thereof, actually) is `Tooth Fairy Agnosticism' by asking them whether or not God can create a stone that He can't lift. > Better to live a life of good deeds and actions…
Lol, I've heard little kids ask that at church. Never heard an adult seriously ask that though, usually just as a gag.
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Lots of "migth be" and "seems to be" in that article. I don't think we understand it or can replicate it in the laboratory.
Are you claiming that lack of current understanding proves a fundamental impossibility of doing so?
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That's part of the problem :)
Then the question of whether software can have consciousness is meaningless. As Dijkstra said, "The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim."
The closest thing to a definition would be something that experiences Qualia, but then you'd ask me to define Qualia, and at this point I can't give an objective non-circular definition.
David Chalmers does a good job of explaining it
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> If God exists then God has powers that make Him imperceptible; if God doesn't exist then He's imperceptible. You can't tell the difference. This is the omnipotence paradox[1]. I often help friends and relatives understand why my religion (or lack thereof, actually) is `Tooth Fairy Agnosticism' by asking them whether or not God can create a stone that He can't lift. > Better to live a life of good deeds and actions…
> This is the omnipotence paradox[1]. I often help friends and relatives understand why my religion (or lack thereof, actually) is `Tooth Fairy Agnosticism' by asking them whether or not God can create a stone that He can't lift. Lol, I've heard little kids ask that at church. Never heard an adult seriously ask that though, usually just as a gag.
Did you happen to overhear any of them getting an answer? I'd love to read about how some church-going parents (guardians?) explain the omnipotence paradox to youngsters. In my experience, at least, I find that Jews treat the matter gracefully while managing to `uphold the faith', if you will.
> Never heard an adult seriously ask that though, usually just as a gag.
You don't know many Tooth Fairy Agnostics, do you?
I don't understand how your model hopes to capture any of the essential features of God as known to academic philosophers. You mention Godel incompleteness, but this only applies to sets of axioms which can be generated algorithmically. Furthermore, pure logic reveals that a transcendental first cause must be eternal, changeless (without the universe), non-physical, most likely having a mind with free will, etc. Your…
most likely having a mind with free will What does that even mean outside of the physical universe?
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It's really interesting to think about the theological implications of simulationism. If the world were really structured as described in the article (which is not the point he was making, I'm just having fun), then one has to wonder what the purpose of having simulated, self-contained intelligences would be. I like to think about the implications of a specific purpose and I have a favorite. Suppose one was trying to…
Then in that view, "God" doesn't really care about each of us more than a programmer cares about the thousands of solutions that are created and destroyed while the program is running to reach a single best. Somehow, I don't think most religious people (with exceptions like Deists) will feel comfortable with that possibility ;)
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> This is the omnipotence paradox[1]. I often help friends and relatives understand why my religion (or lack thereof, actually) is `Tooth Fairy Agnosticism' by asking them whether or not God can create a stone that He can't lift. Lol, I've heard little kids ask that at church. Never heard an adult seriously ask that though, usually just as a gag.
> Lol, I've heard little kids ask that at church. Did you happen to overhear any of them getting an answer? I'd love to read about how some church-going parents (guardians?) explain the omnipotence paradox to youngsters. In my experience, at least, I find that Jews treat the matter gracefully while managing to `uphold the faith', if you will. > Never heard an adult seriously ask that though, usually just as a gag. Yo…
The natural numbers can be algorithmically generated. Consider streams in Computer Science, for example. But note that the existence of streams does not imply the existence of an actual infinity in the computer's memory, only an algorithm to reach any finite member of the infinite set.
As mentioned elsewhere. If God is the first cause of the physical universe, then his existence is necessary (in the philosophical sense) and therefore changeless (in the philosophical sense) and therefore eternal (as his existence is necessary - and he exists entirely apart from time).
Once you start to enter into a discussion of infinite things like omnipotence, omniscience, necessary existence, etc, you enter the realm of infinite cardinalities, transfinite induction, the axiom of choice, Hilbert's Hotel, Russel's paradox, and so on. Philosophers have understood the issues regarding God's natural attributes for thousands of years, but only in the last 100 or so years have we had the mathematics to start saying things about infinities that are not nonsensical.
Consider that, as a human being, you are only aware of the present. You remember the past, and you have no knowledge of the future. Now imagine a being who is as aware of the past as He is of the present. This is one who calls himself "I am". He says, "before Abraham was, I am". Or, he calls himself the "Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End". We aren't talking about a being with changing state and an awareness only of the present, as you or I. We have to be very careful with our intuition when examining such a subject.
Only the most rigorous and methodical mathematical argument can hope to establish anything positive or negative about such an entity.