s okay. If that sounds like a criticism, it's the opposite. If you're starting with the assumption that there's a God of the Christian Bible, I think you've picked a really good lifestyle. I think you have an advantage in life and I'm all for you embracing that for the rest of your life, teaching your kids, spreading the word. All for it. But let's not pretend that you're starting from zero and you're trying to logic your way into the simulation or logic your way out of Christianity. It's not the right domain. You know, if you didn't get there by logic, and I don't think most people get there by logic. You can't be talked out of it with logic. You've heard that before, right? You can't talk somebody out of something that they talked themselves into. I want to say irrationally, but that sounds like an insult and that's not what's intended. I mean, belief and faith are their own domain. Logic and facts, very important, but separate domain. They can often work together. It doesn't mean that if you have a religious belief it doesn't mean that you're somehow unable to do reason. Of course you can fit them together very well. But having a debate with somebody who's starting with the answer, I've never seen that work. And again, I want to be as complimentary to religious people as I can because I think you have a clear advantage in life. And I'm all for it.

And I also noted, and this got people pretty worked up, that when people debate the simulation theory with me, their arguments sound to me like word salad. Now, if you don't know me and you haven't followed me for a while, that would sound like I said I know the answer and you don't. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that to my ears it sounds like word salad, but there are two possibilities as somebody pointed out in the comments. One possibility is that I have the right answer and the people who have the wrong answer are confused and so it sounds like word salad. But the other possibility that's exactly equally possible is that the problem's on my end. Will you give me that? Will you give me that I'm completely aware that the reason it might sound like word salad is because my brain isn't quite processing things correctly because that would feel the same to me. So when I say it sounds like word salad, don't take that to mean I'm right and you're wrong because I don't know. I don't know who is right. I just know what it sounds like.

And I would also say that a lot of people argue the consciousness argument and they say, "But Scott, you can't get a digital being to have a consciousness and yet humans have a consciousness. So therefore you lose the argument because if these digital beings don't have a consciousness, well they're obviously not what we are because we've got a consciousness." To which I say that depends how you define consciousness. If I get to define it the way I think is a good definition of consciousness, you could definitely give that to a digital being. If you have a different definition of what consciousness is, it's entirely possible that nobody could program whatever your version is. So sometimes you think you're arguing from a common understanding, but I think that consciousness, we never really agree what that is. So I can't really have a debate with you about whether a digital being has consciousness if you don't think consciousness means the same thing that I do. So you kind of can't get there from here.

Debating the simulation hypothesis and then I saw somebody else attack my description of it as