Read the papers and tell me how they are identical. You made that claim. Understanding what I mean by “carefully constructed” will require that anyway.

AnimalMuppets comment suggests all if A, then B arguments are equivalent; but how you show this is true is the actual argument. I’ve not seen anyone argue that creation being possible would imply creation and I’m not sure how AnimalMuppet or any creationist could possibly get there, but Bostrom et al make a reasoned argument.

▲

olddustytrail 6 days ago | parent [-]

What papers? Give me something solid to go on here.

What is the practical difference? If it's so obvious it should be straightforward to point it out!

Edit: let me put it more bluntly. If God had created the universe 6000 years ago and just made it seem older, how could you tell the difference from the creator of a simulation doing exactly the same thing?

▲

cgriswald 6 days ago | parent [-]

Let me be blunt. If you have to ask "What papers?" you're almost certainly talking about what you imagine the simulation hypothesis to be, and not the simulation hypothesis. (I acknowledge that even 'believers' have often not read any papers on it.) Both a google search or a look at the Wikipedia page would get you started. But you can find Bostrom's philosophical argument here: https://simulation-argument.com/simulation/ (And if you find it interesting, he and others have written follow up papers.

The practical difference is that you can reason about simulation and potentially prove or disprove it. It is potentially testable (and papers have been written suggesting ways we might do so). Although the simulators would be extremely powerful from our point of view, they aren't posited to be omniscient and perfect. It is also possible to address Bostrom's arguments directly with reason. I argued that whether we are in a simulation or not, we cannot be in a Bostrom-style simulation because as I understand his argument it necessitates infinite computation and either infinite energy or infinite time; any of which, in my opinion, break his argument. I also think I could make a case that test-ability itself disproves it.

	▲	staticman2 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		You seem to be confusing the Simuluation Argument with the Simulation Hypothesis. https://simulation-argument.com/faq/#faq-2 The latter is absolutely insane creationist nonsense. Bostrom even says it can be proven by a pop up announcing we are in a simulation, which sounds like exactly the sort of thing you'd maybe expect God to do to prove the truth of the bible. Wikipedia attributes the simulation hypothesis as having origins as far back as the "Butterfly Dream" of Zhuangzi from ancient China, not Bostrom's paper.