From: minsky@media.mit.edu (Marvin Minsky)
Subject: Non-Existence of Existence (and God,too).
Summary: I'm serious!
Cc: jbaez@riesz.mit.edu, minsky
Organization: MIT Media Laboratory
Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1992 15:43:24 GMT

In article <1992Jul31.142836.16122@galois.mit.edu> jbaez@riesz.mit.edu (John C. Baez) writes:
>In article <1992Jul31.091010.1@tnclus.tele.nokia.fi> hporopudas@tnclus.tele.nokia.fi writes:
>
>>   I would only like to say about Hanna-Maria that I'am a religious man,
>> I believe that God exists, because He is Existence Himself, and if someone
>> is arguing that Existence Himself does not exist, then he/she argues at the
>> same time that he/she himself/herself does not exist.
>
>This is one of the funnier versions of the ontological argument for the
>existence of god that I've heard.  But don't you mean to say that "I
>believe that God exists, because He/She is Existence Himself/Herself"?
>
>I believe in existence (I think) but calling it "god" is rather misleading.

I rarely disagree with John Baez.  But I think there is an important
question here.

  To say that a certain object exists is like saying that it's in the
universe.  There isn't anything wrong with that.  But then, to say
that the @i[universe] exists is saying that the universe is inside
itself - which makes no sense at all.  And the trouble is that the
ordinary way of saying things like "X exists" is a useful shortcut
that causes trouble when you try to think more about it, because what
we really should say is not a simple predicate E(x) at all, but a
relation IN(x, U) -- that is, we should say X is in Universe U.
    To see why this is serious, imagine the predicament of a person
like Tron (or you, or me) that is actually being simulated by a
Virtual Reality Program inside some computer C.  I'm not joking.
Clearly, you couldn't tell whether you were absolutely "real" or
'just' a program inside some computer C.  Because there's no way to
detect C itself.
    "OK," you might object.  "But that is a real program running in a
real computer.  So it does -- sort of -- exist."
    Yes, but now consider the program just sitting there as some
writing on paper.  Not running in a computer at all.  But simulating
the processes that you and I embody.  Then those process still have a
sort of potential performance, because the instructions specify what
happens from each step to the next.  A lower grade of existence,
perhaps, but we should still ask to what extent such an abstract
process can feel or think or have "experience"?
    And so far as I can see, the internal experience ought to be
exactly the same.  To the abstract process, each abstract pleasure,
satisfaction, or frustration or pain should be the same -- and
precisely as real -- to that abstract process, as is a real
satisfaction or frustration to a real process.  And we can make the
same statements about each of these "grades of existence":
   --P runs inside some actual computer
   --P runs only in the mind of its human programmer.. 
   --P doesn't run at all, but just sits there on paper. 
   --P isn't even written, but only imagined by someone. 
   --P isn't even imagined, but merely a "possible" program, not yet even 
conceived by anyone.

    In each such case, if P describes some simulated universe, there
is no way for the creatures inside that universe to know whether or
not their universe "actually exists" as a feature inside some larger
universe.  No answer to such a question could have any actual
consequences -- and therefore, the attribute of existence is an
inconsequential accessory!  There is no possible way to prove that our
universe itself is anything more than a "logical possibility".  So all
that religious garbage about "who created ..." is based on a simple
mistake, of postulating an unnecessary entity.  (There is a nice
complaint about this in Einstein's "Meaning of Relativity" book.) It
reaches it's most ultimately stupid form in terms like, "God created
God, of course.  Who else could have done it."
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