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Cosmic Anthropomorphism

Why is there something rather than nothing? It's a hard question, obviously, and I find it hard to imagine the possibility of a satisfying answer, that anyone could give a "derivation" of existence itself with zero postulates. Nonetheless, we whittle our postulates down, pursuing elegance and simplicity in our fundamental description of the world. We approach a satisfying answer, though we'll presumably never make it all the way.

The religious will often point to God. The universe exists because God made it. It is obvious that this doesn't answer the question "Why is there something rather than nothing", it only displaces it. Now we have to ask, why does God exist? The religious don't tend to have a good answer, only that "God has always existed", or some silly argument that it isn't conceivable for God not to exist. But that isn't the point. When you claim that the universe was made by God, you are changing your fundamental postulate from "the universe" to "God". The universe is very complicated, so the ability to derive all that complexity from a simple underlying idea is alluring.

The glaring mistake with this is that God is not actually simple. God is usually conceived as a massively intelligent human-like agent, and intelligence is fundamentally very complicated!

There's an alternative: Laws of physics. Essentially all physics has ever been doing is simplifying our fundamental description of the world. It has a remarkable ability to precisely explain a broad range of phenomena with a relatively simple, unified, underlying theory. Usually, there is a trade-off between a theory's broad applicability vs its ability to make specific predictions. Physics transcends this dichotomy entirely, managing to be both maximally broad (it applies to everything) and maximally precise (it makes very specific and accurate predictions).

Though, the simplicity of physics is hard to appreciate from the outside. Physics is entrenched in high-level math, and it looks very complicated and spooky and alien to those without the right prerequisite knowledge. God, on the other hand, is a person (or at least, he resembles one). Humans tend to have an intuitive understanding of humans, so explaining phenomena in terms of human-like intelligence feels simpler to most people, even though it's actually much more complicated. I think this is why gods are so prevalent in humans' broad attempts to explain the world. High level physics, though simple, is not built into our intuitions in the same way that human interaction is, so explaining things in terms of human-like behavior tends to satisfy people more.

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This is an example of "Cosmic Anthropomorphism" (alternatively, "anthropomorphization", or "anthropocentrism"). Anthropomorphic understanding is stuck in a fundamentally human-centered perspective, and cannot understand the world on its own terms. This anthropomorphism is "cosmic" when it is so deep, that one's fundamental understanding of the universe is infected by it. Here is another example.

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The simulation hypothesis goes like this: We suppose that it's possible for humans to create a very good simulation of the world. If that's the case, it's reasonable to assume the people in the simulation would themselves create simulations. The result is a large chain of simulations within simulations. Since it's unlikely that the simulated humans would be aware that they are simulated, and because there are many simulated worlds and only one real world, the chances that our world is the real one are very low.

There are many ways to criticize this reasoning, but the problem most obvious to me is the egregious cosmic anthropomorphism. You're trying to understand what is "outside" using your "inside" tools. You've supposed that reality as we know it might be embedded within some outer reality, and you assume that outer reality should have humans in it. You've found a human mechanism for creating worlds within worlds, so you assume that this is the single dominant mechanism, and that most worlds are created by humans.

Why should the simulation be made by humans? Why not some kind of alien creature? Or, for that matter, why a creature at all, why not some "natural" process, perhaps beyond our understanding? Why should the "outside" world share any resemblance to ours?

Think of it this way: You are a Minecraft Villager. A player lives nearby, and you notice they've gotten very good with redstone. So, you wonder: Is it possible to simulate an entire world out of redstone machinery? Naturally, you conclude that if so, then there must be many simulated Minecraft worlds within Minecraft worlds, and that you, a Minecraft villager, are likely to be simulated. Other villagers criticize your reasoning. "It can't be possible to simulate an entire Minecraft world within a Minecraft world! There isn't enough redstone to achieve this!"

We know that Minecraft villagers are simulated. But these oddly intelligent villagers are being very presumptuous when they speculate about the "outside" world. Their arguments about redstone are irrelevant, because they can't understand that redstone does not even exist in the "outside" world. Our world is entirely alien to them! They have no basis with which to speculate about our world, because the simulated world is their only frame of reference.

I think it is entirely possible that there is an "outside" to our reality. But jumping to the conclusion that we must be a "simulation" derived from a familiar realm of humans is massively presumptuous, I think, and it's a direct result of having a fundamentally human-centered understanding of the world.