this post was submitted on 17 Apr 2024
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How's it any different from creationism?
Order of operations.
Creationism says "there was nothing other than something that always existed (don't ask how it existed), and then it created this universe."
Simulation theory, particularly ancestor simulation theory, says that a chaotic universe very similar to the one we find ourselves in spontaneously came to exist with or without design, but that eventually that universe reached a point where it could simulate itself and we're in that copy.
The first requires an intelligent being effectively pre-existing everything else. Simulation theory allows for the intelligent beings creating our particular version of things to have evolved from everything else having existed first.
That's a pretty important difference.
That just sounds like creationism with extra steps. Many people have the belief that a god created the universe and then life evolved spontaneously.
Again, you're reversing the order.
The steps in simulation theory pretty much mean that 'God' evolved too. Which is again, a very big difference.
There's not a lot of religions that have beliefs even tangentially like that. I can only think of two off the top of my head, which were slightly related and both long dead.
It would still imply that an external being had created the simulation in the first place, which would fall under creationism. Lots of religions try to claim they're completely different from one another. The way I see it, it's two sides of the same coin.
There are degrees of similarity. But arguably it would be better to term it 'recreationism' as the original framework isn't necessarily created by any intentioned being.
I don't see similarity. I see people using different words to describe the same thing while being purposefully vague about how it's supposedly different from creationism.
So if you draw a picture from scratch, and if an AI sees your picture and draws nearly the same thing on its own, you think those two things are effectively the same situation?
This isn't a thread to discuss drawing. It doesn't matter if there's a million simulations between us and "base reality", the original simulation that started it all would've been created by someone. If the universe we are observing was the result of someone's creation, that someone is no different from a god. What simulation theory is doing is replacing the old bearded man in the sky with the great computer nerd in the sky.
Just to clarify, I'm not dunking on creationism or religion in general. I just find it slightly amusing how a lot of the people who dunk on creationism and otherwise do not believe in a god think that simulation theory is completely different because it's describing the same type of belief but with different wording.
Yeah, right. What could a thread about simulation possibly have to do with things like Plato's analogy of the form of a bed, the physical bed, and a drawing of the physical bed?
"Doesn't look like anything to me."