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Message from discussion Sick of the PI debate let's try another angle
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John Schilling  
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 More options Sep 14 1999, 3:00 am
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
From: schil...@spock.usc.edu (John Schilling)
Date: 1999/09/14
Subject: Re: Sick of the PI debate let's try another angle
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w...@yahoo.com (William Clifford) writes:
>On Mon, 13 Sep 1999 21:10:30 -0400, "Tony Suessine"
><asuessineREM...@gatecom.com> wrote:
>>Ok I am looking for the most skeptical people to respond.
>>(totally against any higher intelligence creating the universe
>>God, Aliens doesn't matter)
>>Instead of focusing on why PI can't do it.  What would convince
>>you?  It much be part of basic science/physics/mathematics.
>>i.e. nothing that a race 10,000 years more advanced than us
>>couldn't trick us with.   I can't think of much.  Most is ridiculous.
>Are you sure you want this as a condition? Any evidence that a given
>diety could give us for his/her/their existence could certainly be
>forged by other godlike entities. How could we possibly tell the
>difference between God and a Godlike fake?

I think he is trying to make a distinction between "merely" ultra-advanced
tecnology and literal, theological omnipotence.  At least in the abstract
this is a distinction worth making.  A basic taxonomy:

    Type I God:  Sufficiently advanced technology.  Can do absolutely
                 anything within the framework of natural, physical law.

    Type II God:  Can rewrite physical law to order.  Probably created
                  this universe and wrote its physical law in the first
                  place.

    Type III God:  Not subject to laws of mathematics and logic.  Can
                   maintain irresistible force and immovable object at
                   same time.  1 + 1 + 1 = 1?  No problem?

Whether or not Type II/III Gods even *can* exist is of course questionable,
but we need to be clear on what we are talking about.

As far as convincing evidence is concerned, Sagan's suggestion of messages
encoded in basic mathematical constants might work, modulo concerns about
implementation and statistical ambiguity.  But if the value of pi or e or
radical 2 has been unambiguously written to order, there's a Type III God
at work.

For a Type II God, use the same mechanism but with dimensionless physical
constants like the fine-structure constant or the electron/proton mass ratio.

Type I Gods can just perform suitably impressive physical feats.  Set up
a wormhole transit system to dump a couple hundred blue-white supergiants
into a constellation ten light-years out spelling "Yes, Earthlings, I Exist".

--
*John Schilling                    * "Anything worth doing,         *
*Member:AIAA,NRA,ACLU,SAS,LP       *  is worth doing for money"     *
*Chief Scientist & General Partner *    -13th Rule of Acquisition   *
*White Elephant Research, LLC      * "There is no substitute        *
*schil...@spock.usc.edu            *  for success"                  *
*661-951-9107 or 661-275-6795      *    -58th Rule of Acquisition   *


 
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