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I guess you're right, I had translated it into a modern analogous concern. Its interesting to think about. Do the same arguments I've already made apply? So: I

I guess you're right, I had translated it into a modern analogous concern. Its interesting to think about. Do the same arguments I've already made apply? So: If the universe is determinsitic then God only has omniscient predestination is he/they are able to model the whole universe is their etheral mind as a hyper detailed simulation. Because even God can't skip ahead in those calculations just because its 'deterministic'. Something actually has to do the work to do the "determining". Even if their supernatural powers allow them to skirt around the huge size of the simulation and the problem of sensitive dependance on initial conditions its still a very redundant exercise because the simulation then becomes an exact copy of the universe. Lets say God can run this simulation faster than the original - then 'our' universe becomes a redundant laggard and the real action is happening inside the Gods Mind Model one. And you're still in the situation where nobody knows what our supposedly 'determinsitic' brains are going to do until someone crunches the impossible universe sized numbers to work it out. So still in this scenario we have something akin to Free Will although I hold to my argument that Free Will as originally conceived is a meaningless confused concept that sounds very reassuring to people but doesn't make any sense (I did X but in completely identical conditions I would have been free to do Y). If you don't agree with this assertion that a determinstic system has to be actually determined to find out where it goes - if you posit that God could just magically 'jump' to some future state of the universe without running the model in between - then all bets are off because even the supposed Free Will they imbued us with could also be subject to that same magical prediction process.

shkkmo 2y ago
> Because even God can't skip ahead in those calculations just because its 'deterministic'. Something actually has to do the work to do the "determining". I think you haven't internallized what "omniscient" actually means. Your statement is probably true about non-omniscient beings but I don't see how you can make that assertion about an omniscient state. More likely I suspect that you just don't believe omniscience is possible. There has been a LOT of theological discussion of this topic, most of which I am not familiar with. I do believe in something like "omniscience", but base it in the ubiquity of math, not the omnipotence of an alleged creator. Mathematical structure exists independent of the human mind. When we calculate the result of a calculation or prove a new theorom, we are not creating something new, but uncovering pre-existing structure. This is why such truths can be independently discovered and verified. I think this mathematic structure is the fundemental nature of reality. Every possible variation of every possible simulation exists without needing any specifc "reality" to be running that simulation inside it. (Though, for every finite simulation, there would be infinite other finite simulations that contain it.)

shkkmo 2y ago

> Because even God can't skip ahead in those calculations just because its 'deterministic'. Something actually has to do the work to do the "determining". I think you haven't internallized what "omniscient" actually means. Your statement is probably true about non-omniscient beings but I don't see how you can make that assertion about an omniscient state. More likely I suspect that you just don't believe omniscience is possible. There has been a LOT of theological discussion of this topic, most of which I am not familiar with. I do believe in something like "omniscience", but base it in the ubiquity of math, not the omnipotence of an alleged creator. Mathematical structure exists independent of the human mind. When we calculate the result of a calculation or prove a new theorom, we are not creating something new, but uncovering pre-existing structure. This is why such truths can be independently discovered and verified. I think this mathematic structure is the fundemental nature of reality. Every possible variation of every possible simulation exists without needing any specifc "reality" to be running that simulation inside it. (Though, for every finite simulation, there would be infinite other finite simulations that contain it.)