Luckily, that didn't get much traction.
Perhaps she’ll die.
The closer attention you pay, the more this place seems like a simulation, of some kind.
Remember that "paying close attention" should not mean focusing on the interesting coincidences. A million things happen to you every day; most of it is noise unless you assign meaning to it. This sheer quantity of events means that coincidences are pretty much guaranteed to happen on a regular basis — paying close attention just means you notice more of them.
Or maybe: both are true (to some degree) simultaneously!
> Remember that "paying close attention" should not mean focusing on the interesting coincidences.
Exactly - this, and also all the other things.
> This sheer quantity of events means that coincidences are pretty much guaranteed to happen on a regular basis — paying close attention just means you notice more of them.
I am suspicious of the word "just" in this sentence, it makes an otherwise fine sentence seem necessarily incorrect. What did you mean by it?
If we’re living in a simulation, it would be strange indeed that they’ve made it appear to be completely deterministic but with an extra sprinkling of coincidence pixie dust as experienced by Darwinistic entities which experience a self-bootstrapped illusion of free will.
So it may seem...but can you know for certain that it doesn't reflect underlying cognition, at least to some degree?
For example, let's reconsider your statement:
"Remember that "paying close attention" should not mean focusing on the interesting coincidences. A million things happen to you every day; most of it is noise unless you assign meaning to it. This sheer quantity of events means that coincidences are pretty much guaranteed to happen on a regular basis — paying close attention just means you notice more of them."
We now know that "paying close attention means you notice more of them [only coincidences, which has also been ruled out]" is not necessarily a comprehensive set of the consequences/benefits of paying very close attention - so then: what might some other plausible benefits be, for various degrees of the exercise of "paying close attention"?
(And as an aside: have you ever noticed how programmers and scientists, and their fans, regularly extol the superiority of the virtues of strict logic and epistemology, but when they are asked to practice it they often claim that it is ~stupid/dumb/meaningless/a waste of time?)
> If we’re living in a simulation, it would be strange indeed that they’ve made it appear to be completely deterministic but with an extra sprinkling of coincidence pixie dust as experienced by Darwinistic entities which experience a self-bootstrapped illusion of free will.
This makes several assumptions - for example, if we are in a simulation, you seem to be assuming a particular kind of simulation (one that people or an entity of some kind made) - what about the Plato's Allegory of the Cave style of simulation, that has substantial scientific support?
For example: "they’ve made it appear to be completely deterministic" is your experience, but not mine - materialists (not making an accusation, just saying "in general") tend to only "see" the physical realm of reality, but others also see the metaphysical realm (although ~everyone complains about the metaphysical realm, despite thinking it doesn't exist).
The best I can tell is that your argument is that it's not possible for me to provide an absolute assessment of my own opinion. And that my choice of sentence construction could have some deeper meaning. If that's what you're saying, it is—in my opinion—nothing more than empty sophistry.
How about reading my star signs next.
1) Hey, let's introduce rabbits for hunting!
2) Shit, they're eating all the grass that we want our sheep to eat
3) Let's introduce ferrets, stoats, and weasels, to eat all the rabbits!
4) Shit, they're just eating all the endemic birds
5) Uh....
We're still wrestling with Step #6 - our native beech forests (not Northern Hemisphere beech, as their Latin name makes clear - Nothofagus "false beech") will have a mass seeding event (a "mast") every few years. And when that happens, rodent populations explode, and then so too do the stoat and weasel populations.
But when the mustelids run out of rats and mice, then they move onto the birds. So, we have to poison, like crazy, as well as trap, to try to protect the birds most vulnerable to them.