Ross Douthat: evaluation

Transcript context

…I have a basic question about, what does it mean to be religious? Let’s say I believe in the simulation hypothesis, which comes from Nick Bostrom. Robin Hanson has cited it. The notion that, if we can make a lot of simulations, there’s a pretty good chance we are ourselves living in one. How does believing in the simulation argument differ from being religious? Outside the sphere of normal life, how do we distinguish what we might call a god from what we might call — I don’t know — whoever created the simulation? I think, functionally, the simulation hypothesis is doing some of the work of a polytheistic or Gnostic religion, where whoever is running the simulation, the version of advanced consciousness that is capable of effectively creating and sustaining our world and presumably however many trillions of others they have running inside their simulator — that entity is not the creator god of classical theism. It’s not the God of Christianity, but I think it’s reasonable to describe, again, this hypothetical simulation runner as a small-g god, certainly. You could regard it as the way that Gnostics regarded the demiurge, the intermediate spiritual power that created this world and was responsible for all its misery and woe. The Gnostics would say, “Therefore, you need to get past that demiurge and escape to the higher level where the true God waits, who actually created the whole thing, the whole shebang.” Maybe they would say, “He didn’t create the whole shebang.” I don’t want to overstate my familiarity with the intricacies of Gnosticism. Or you could be a kind of polytheist. There are forms of polytheism that are arguably compatible with an ultimate monotheism. You could say, “Okay, there may be an absolute god beyond the simulators.” I would say, if you could convince me of the simulation hypothesis, I would still say there probably has to be a god beyond the simulators. But the simulators themselves are in the position of gods to us. I guess where I would say that view crosses over from analysis to religion is the point at which you start trying to figure out what is your relationship to the simulators. Should you have one? I think you probably should. If you actually believe you’re in a simulation, you should try and figure out, what do the simulators want from you? Do they have your best interests at heart? If you think they do, then you should be trying to bring yourself into alignment, if you will, with whatever they have in mind. If you think they don’t, then I would suggest trying to send up prayers to whatever powers might be out there that could rescue you from the simulators’ hands. Either way, I think the simulation hypothesis is, in effect, an acknowledgment that there’s no escape from religious questions. I think the failure of the hypothesizers, maybe, is not fully taking seriously the implication that we might be the playthings of secondary gods. You sound surprisingly close to the demiurge hypothesis. Clearly, you believe creation is possible, and you don’t dismiss Bayesian reasoning. How much weight you give it is an open question. Why not think there are multiple layers of God? What we think of as God is just part of the chain. In Bayesian terms, if a god created us, well, some being could have created that god. Why aren’t you led to that as a view with pretty high probability?…

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