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Re:A Visiting Star Jostled Our Solar System 70,000 Years Ago by dboreham on Thursday March 22, 2018 @12:36PM (#16650203)
It isn't like creationism because it is based on some otherwise currently unexplained observations such as quantum mechanical behavior and magic physical constants. The idea is that these are exactly the sort of observations you'd see if you were in a simulated universe.

Now if we were to observe new species being created in N days, for small integer N, then I suppose your assertion about creationism would also hold.

Re:A Visiting Star Jostled Our Solar System 70,000 Years Ago by prewett on Thursday March 22, 2018 @02:27PM (#16651226)
Wouldn't a simulation have to have a creator? Unless you are postulating that a Turing-complete simulator got itself together by random chance and, by random chance, started simulating universe(s), one of which, by random chance, happens to simulate beings that can imagine a simulator simulating themselves. It seems like a simulation is a fairly strong evidence FOR a creator. Hawking's quantum bubbles seem much more like what would happen without intervention.

Also, creationism isn't limited to only 6 day creation, that's more of a modern thing by people that insist on taking Genesis 1 (which is poetry) literally. Early Christian thinkers postulated that 1 Genesis-day was actually 1000 years. Creationism just says that God created the world; how long it took and how he did it are implementation details.

Re:A Visiting Star Jostled Our Solar System 70,000 Years Ago by rhapsodic on Thursday March 22, 2018 @12:56PM (#16650418)
>It isn't like creationism because it is based on some otherwise currently unexplained observations such as quantum mechanical behavior and magic physical constants. The idea is that these are exactly the sort of observations you'd see if you were in a simulated universe.

Really? Why would you not simply "see" whatever the Creator(s) want you to "see"? After all, it's a simulation.

And it seems to me likely that Creationism originally grew out of a then-unexplained observation: "Hey, we're alive and we exist! How the heck did that happen???"

>Now if we were to observe new species being created in N days, for small integer N, then I suppose your assertion about creationism would also hold.

I'm not sure what you mean. My assertion about classic Creationism is that it's disproven bunk.

Are you saying that if "if we were to observe new species being created in N days, for small integer N" then my assertion that simulation-Creationism is also bunk would hold?

Re:A Visiting Star Jostled Our Solar System 70,000 Years Ago by baddox on Thursday March 22, 2018 @06:20PM (#16653247)
By definition, aren't all attributes of our Universe exactly what we would expect to see if we were in a simulation of a Universe with those attributes?