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Comment by goto11 | Hacker News Reader

The "rationalists" were obsessed with religious ideas like the apocalypse, eternal life, separating the soul from the body, the world more real then the physical world. Instead of critically examining these ideas, they just re-framed them in tech-speak. Instead of waiting for Jesus or the Messiah to return, they are waiting for the AI.

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> But in 1963, when I was invited to evaluate the work of Alan Newell and Herbert Simon on physical symbol systems, I found to my surprise that, far from replacing philosophy, these pioneering researchers had learned a lot, directly and indirectly, from us philosophers: e.g., Hobbes’ claim that reasoning was calculating, Descartes’ mental representations, Leibniz’s idea of a ‘universal characteristic’ (a set of primitives in which all knowledge could be expressed), Kant’s claim that concepts were rules, Frege’s formalization of such rules, and Wittgenstein’s postulation of logical atoms in his Tractatus. In short, without realizing it, AI researchers were hard at work turning rationalist philosophy into a research program.

- Dreyfus, H. L. (2007). Why Heideggerian AI Failed and How Fixing it Would Require Making it More Heideggerian.

My favorite version of this is Simulation Theory, aka creationism with extra steps.

Exactly. This is how I've thought of simulation theory - that's it's essentially creationism dressed up in modern technological garb. When I've expressed this here in the past I've gotten downvotes & pushback, but I still don't see how Simulation Theory isn't just Creationism with the "god" being the programmer(s) of the simulation?

The pushback is usually along the lines of "the programmer of the simulation isn't a supernatural being like a god" but if indeed this is a simulation (I don't buy that it is) then the programmer(s) of that simulation have supernatural abilities from the perspective of those of us observing from inside the simulation.

The Simulation Theory doesn't break any known physics and still abides by the same framworks as to why the universe or life etc. came to be. It's not about explaining why we are here like Creatonism, but a probabilistic argument as to why (if you acccept the argument) most humans who end up existing, exist within a simulation after humanity has arisen naturally.

I'm not a proponent of either, but as I understand creationism there's a "divine plan" and as I understand simulationism there's just a "vast parameter search" so imo being inside a simulation would be disappointing to someone who wants an activist/interventionist/personally-interested creator-god.

Wouldn't the simulation program itself be the "divine plan"? Simulation theory implies that there is a programmer of the simulation. That programmer (or programmers) had the equivalent of a "divine plan" when they created the simulation. Whether or not they're interventionist in the simulation doesn't seem to all that important. There are creationist deists who believe that a god created everything, got it going and then lets it run on it's own without any intervention - how is that different?

When Creationists talk about a divine plan, my understanding is that they mean something with positive moral valence and where humans are significant. A simulation theory "divine plan" could be anywhere from a multiversal science experiment on which of the possible physics create the longest lasting universe or someone explicitly trying to torture us or incomprehensible beings doing something alien and incoherent or, yes, something benevolent where we are significant. I mean, sure, it's technically a metaphysical 'plan' but not really moreso than our laws of physics are if we weren't in a simulation.

I think there's a substantial difference between saying God has a plan for us and saying that our universe was likely manufactured in another for some unknown reason. Also, and I may be mistaken here, I think Creationists generally believe that the plane in which God exists is the top level (and therefore God must be a significant entity), while simulationists think it's only marginally more likely that our parent universe is not a simulation.

> I think there's a substantial difference between saying God has a plan for us and saying that our universe was likely manufactured in another for some unknown reason.

Either way it would be saying that the universe we perceive was created by an intelligent agent as opposed to by naturalistic forces. Doesn't seem to matter whether that intelligent agent had a specific plan in mind for humans or not - sure, some creationists might stress that there's a positive plan for humans specifically, but I'm not sure all creationists would say this. [There are a lot of different types of creationists - 6day creationists, intelligent designer creationists, evolutionary creationists, deists, etc. - the common denominator is that an intelligent agent initially got the universe going ]

> while simulationists think it's only marginally more likely that our parent universe is not a simulation.

so simulations all the way down?

> My favorite version of this is Simulation Theory, aka creationism with extra steps.

Might be a builtin fault in the human brain?

The average human looks around in wonder at the world, and thinks "someone or something created it!"[1]. Whether they think that the creator matches their definition of a god or their definition of an engineer is an unimportant detail.

[1] As an atheist, I used to be routinely presented with this argument, viz "Look at the irreducible complexity in the human eye/human brain/$whatever. Can you truly say that such complexity was arrived at by randomness?". Sometimes, I'd even agree with the argument that the argument that the existence of complexity is evidence of a creator of that complexity. Then I'd point out that this creator itself is complex, and hence had to have, itself, a creator...

But isn’t God fundamentally simple, according to theologians?

If we accept that, then we have to accept that complex things can be created by simple things, which means that we have to accept that the complexity we see is not evidence of a creator.

I don't know many people who were waiting for the AI. But I would consider christianity if I saw some dude walking on water. That does not happen. A creative logic puzzle solving chat bit just did though.

Yeah this is just a transition to a new form of neo-mysticism that they hope will be more satisfying than the last one—i.e. the idle speculation that a science-fictional transhumanist future will arrive any day now.

I wish them the best in discovering that you don't need elaborate symbolic fake candle ceremonies or fantasies of ascending to digital heaven to find an outlet for the human urge to collectively transcend the mundane. You can just, like, go to a music festival or a sports game or something. The sublime isn't actually supernatural. It's just an emotion. You don't need to flirt with supernaturalism to find it.

in the interest of pluralism and live/let-live though: I've found it more rewarding and interesting to learn and participate in some relatively ancient rituals than to track and attend sports games. I don't think these things need to be exclusive, and in fact it's kind of great that there's a diverse set of offerings that appeal to a diverse array of people. Of course, one hopes that we mostly recognize that we're mostly after the same or similar things, rather than talking derisively about "ball sports" or "candle ceremonies."

> Yeah this is just a transition to a new form of neo-mysticism that they hope will be more satisfying than the last one—i.e. the idle speculation that a science-fictional transhumanist future will arrive any day now.

I think just as significant a fraction of disillusioned silicon valley mindset people are swinging just as hard to the opposite pole of being basically anti-tech. I've seen a disquieting amount of Kaczynski-simping recently (and admit I may have laughed and joked along). Also, from what I've seen the renewed interest in traditional religion is fairly anti-tech -- more pointed towards medieval philosophy than the Omega Point.

> You can just, like, go to a music festival or a sports game or something

I think this is partly true (and I won't speak to music) but I will say that sports in the US are starting more are more to seem like a silicon valley/commercial product. And add to it that traditional religious institutions are in shambles.

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