What We Still Don't Know - multiverses and the simulation argument

[Dr Jon]

I've just seen that Nick Bostrom has a book out this year. Looks interesting.

Maybe Bill Hicks was right - this is just a ride...

Today, a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration. That we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. There is no such thing as death, life is only a dream and we're the imagination of ourselves. Here's Tom with the weather.

 

[kyser_soze]

I have a reply in my head.

4 pints of Kronie are creating a block...but FFS, evolution is just so messy and wasteful (600 mn years of dino evolution wiped out by one fucking asteroid? Call that evidence of intelligence? More to the point consider that a characteristic on onmiscience?? Knowing all? Surely you'd be able to calculate the risk attached to an asteroid creating a cold climate so why would you ALLOW cold blooded critters to evolve?)

Unless of course, God is a bastard...

We are as private parts to boys are we to the gods...they play with us for their leisure

 

[Jo/Joe]

Does this sound like the work of an intellligent designer to you?

Only an intelligent designer with limited resources who had to make do in the end. Is that an acceptable description of god? Any Xtians out there?

 

[Jo/Joe]

More to the point consider that a characteristic on onmiscience??

And this is why I have a problem with the Xtian concept of god as omniscient, but with humans who have free will. They can't both exist together. If god knows everything, he knows how matter will behave (he wrote the laws), so he can predict accurately everything that will ever happen, which means human are not using free will when they make choices, but just acting on subconscious calculations.

 

[laptop]

Only an intelligent designer with limited resources who had to make do in the end. Is that an acceptable description of god? Any Xtians out there?

God no

That'd be a flavour of Gnosticism - which I like to define as the conviction that the world was created by a minor deity having an off day.





Which makes more intuitive sense than the alternative...

 

[kyser_soze]

Only an intelligent designer with limited resources who had to make do in the end. Is that an acceptable description of god? Any Xtians out there?

What, like a kind of cosmic Blue Peter 'build your own action man/Barbie playset' type universe?

Fuck man - just think, our existance is based on double sided sticky tape, sticky back plastic, loo rolls and old fairy liquid containers. And everyone KNOWS how fucking pikey thos BP projects looked like when they were finished...

 

[Jo/Joe]

Exactly, the kind of John Noakes we can barely conceive of with our tiny little minds. Has god ever been conceived of in this way? Can I start a new religion?

 

[Good Intentions]

Sounds a bit like Vonnegut's 'Church of God the Utterly Indifferent' to me.

 

[Loki]

I read an interesting article yonks back arguing for the multiverse theory (well it's more speculation really) - that they are like bubbles suspended in some kind of "fluid" (although bubbles with far more dimensions than we can perceive - think M theory), each with their own set of physical laws, some allowing life, some doomed to colllapse soon after birth because the physical constants don't work out.

The article speculated that it's possible that some of these bubbles could collide with unfathomable consequences. Like I said, mere speculation but an interesting idea.