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True enough. This is why the simulation hypothesis is so interesting - i.e. the notion we are all living in a perfect VR simulation that never glitches. Scienc

True enough. This is why the simulation hypothesis is so interesting - i.e. the notion we are all living in a perfect VR simulation that never glitches. Science can't be used to address the veracity of that hypothesis, much to the apparent dismay of the fundamentalist atheists. I really lost interest in Richard Dawkins after he said something like "I won't answer silly questions about whether chairs and tables are real". Similarly, one could argue that supernatural beings from alternative universes are constantly intervening in local events, but they make sure to do it only when the scientists aren't watching. Personally I don't really care if we're working out the rules of the simulation or the rules of base reality, as we can't distinguish between the two.

whatshisface 5y ago
>Similarly, one could argue that supernatural beings from alternative universes are constantly intervening in local events, but they make sure to do it only when the scientists aren't watching. The atheism catechism already has an entry for this, it's the teapot hypotheses. It goes, "nobody can refute my claim that there is a teapot in the asteroid belt, but nobody should believe it either." That sounds like a good argument to me although I don't know the metaphysical philosophical details of why. (Occam's razor?) No matter our stances in abstract epistemology we must all agree we can't go around believing every irrefutable claim we or anyone else thinks of, at minimum because many are contradictory.
dragonwriter 5y ago
> Science can't be used to address the veracity of that hypothesis Thus, it is not a hypothesis but a conjecture. (Or, perhaps more accurately, an omphaloskeptic intellectual autoeroticism.) > much to the apparent dismay of the fundamentalist atheists Neither a fundamentalist nor an atheist myself, but I’ve never seen any of the latter “dismayed” by the fact that people can string together words to create a proposition outside of the domain of scientific inquiry. > Similarly, one could argue that supernatural beings from alternative universes are constantly intervening in local events One could assert that easily, but to argue it one would need first to establish some framework in which something could be offered to support that conclusion.
- ModernMech 5y ago
  > omphaloskeptic intellectual autoeroticism. You could have made your point without being rude to the parent.
powersnail 5y ago
Nothing can be used to address the veracity of that hypothesis. It's the same as saying I have a monster in my closet, which is invisible, undetectable, and never interfere with any object in any manner. Or that I'm just a cloud of consciousness dreaming about this entire experience, human, earth, the universe all being my imagination. I don't see why it would dismay an atheist specifically. It's just an untestifiable statement like many other metaphysical thought experiments. Surely anyone with a basic read of philosophy would have encountered some.
implements 5y ago
> True enough. This is why the simulation hypothesis is so interesting - i.e. the notion we are all living in a perfect VR simulation that never glitches. That’s not the hypothesis, afaik - we’re beings generated inside the simulation rather than ‘brains in a vat’ experiencing it. Science could address veracity if (say) whatever was running the simulation chose to make it apparent, either directly (by revelation) or by some quirk of how physics operated, for example if we detected some (reflected) method to control how reality was being generated. Saying that, I’ve pondered that giving every person their own entire universe where they had free will but everyone else was a simulated non-player character was one way of solving the religious problem of evil - nothing evil actually happens to real humans, it’s just a scripted set of tests to see whether the particular individual chooses to be good or bad.
- aspenmayer 5y ago
  I think that’s just moving the goalposts; evil still exists in the mind of the evildoer.
oh_sigh 5y ago
From your last sentence, it sounds like you agree with Dawkins. Isn't a question that is epistemologically unanswerable a silly question?

whatshisface 5y ago

>Similarly, one could argue that supernatural beings from alternative universes are constantly intervening in local events, but they make sure to do it only when the scientists aren't watching. The atheism catechism already has an entry for this, it's the teapot hypotheses. It goes, "nobody can refute my claim that there is a teapot in the asteroid belt, but nobody should believe it either." That sounds like a good argument to me although I don't know the metaphysical philosophical details of why. (Occam's razor?) No matter our stances in abstract epistemology we must all agree we can't go around believing every irrefutable claim we or anyone else thinks of, at minimum because many are contradictory.

dragonwriter 5y ago

> Science can't be used to address the veracity of that hypothesis Thus, it is not a hypothesis but a conjecture. (Or, perhaps more accurately, an omphaloskeptic intellectual autoeroticism.) > much to the apparent dismay of the fundamentalist atheists Neither a fundamentalist nor an atheist myself, but I’ve never seen any of the latter “dismayed” by the fact that people can string together words to create a proposition outside of the domain of scientific inquiry. > Similarly, one could argue that supernatural beings from alternative universes are constantly intervening in local events One could assert that easily, but to argue it one would need first to establish some framework in which something could be offered to support that conclusion.

ModernMech 5y ago
> omphaloskeptic intellectual autoeroticism. You could have made your point without being rude to the parent.

powersnail 5y ago

Nothing can be used to address the veracity of that hypothesis. It's the same as saying I have a monster in my closet, which is invisible, undetectable, and never interfere with any object in any manner. Or that I'm just a cloud of consciousness dreaming about this entire experience, human, earth, the universe all being my imagination. I don't see why it would dismay an atheist specifically. It's just an untestifiable statement like many other metaphysical thought experiments. Surely anyone with a basic read of philosophy would have encountered some.

implements 5y ago

> True enough. This is why the simulation hypothesis is so interesting - i.e. the notion we are all living in a perfect VR simulation that never glitches. That’s not the hypothesis, afaik - we’re beings generated inside the simulation rather than ‘brains in a vat’ experiencing it. Science could address veracity if (say) whatever was running the simulation chose to make it apparent, either directly (by revelation) or by some quirk of how physics operated, for example if we detected some (reflected) method to control how reality was being generated. Saying that, I’ve pondered that giving every person their own entire universe where they had free will but everyone else was a simulated non-player character was one way of solving the religious problem of evil - nothing evil actually happens to real humans, it’s just a scripted set of tests to see whether the particular individual chooses to be good or bad.

aspenmayer 5y ago
I think that’s just moving the goalposts; evil still exists in the mind of the evildoer.

oh_sigh 5y ago

From your last sentence, it sounds like you agree with Dawkins. Isn't a question that is epistemologically unanswerable a silly question?