The Simulation Question
Can the creation be superior to the creator?
In certain aspects, the creation can be vastly superior to the creator, yes. Most of what humans create vastly exceeds human capability. Perhaps creation is a way to indirectly achieve what is unachievable by us, a substitute, an intermediary step towards accomplishment that is beyond us directly. Perhaps this is the motivation of the demiurge behind demiurgia.
We can’t accomplish insane computation speeds, so we instead invest our time in creating computation apparatuses that will end up saving us more aggregate time than it took to develop them. We can’t lift heavy things, so we lift slightly heavy things to build massive cranes that can lift for us much more than we could ever hope to lift unaided. We fail to accurately and timely access our memories when we need them, so we create filing systems and digital storage to retrieve information instantly and on demand.
Many manmade creations are better than man: manmade machines are stronger than man. Manmade AI is faster than man.
And manmade gods are more influential than man.
How?
If a conscious demiurge exists, it is unbound by human morality. Not even close. A “god” would be unaccountable, indifferent, petty, vindictive, unethical, tyrannical, narcissistic, and quite merciless.
Consider: Humans got to the point of sterilising city-dwelling stray animals to spare their young a life of horror, hunger, and brutal, untimely death. It’s an act of mercy, of ‘humanity’. Notice how we use the word ‘humanity’ and not ‘divinity’ to describe mercy and compassion. No, this is not hubris; it is descriptive accuracy.
We sterilise and we control reproduction because we understand that it is better not to exist than to be thrust into a short, nightmarish existence for no reason, without good chances of at least thriving, whatever that’s even worth. And that we do for animals. For human children, civilised parents tend to limit themselves to 1-2 kids or none, or to as many as they are certain they can provide well enough for. This is the rationale behind planning your offspring, and not just procreating without limit. Uncivilised human animals, on the other hand, pay no consideration to the well-being of their offspring, so they parent as many children as they physically can, which results in perpetually traumatising cycles of abuse. Yes, parental neglect is child abuse.
We understand that a life condemned to squalor is a life not worth starting in the first place. This is why we sterilise strays whose offspring have no hope of thriving. This is why we limit the children we we have. It’s being humane.
It’s mercy. It’s morality.
On the other hand, the creator of this reality has no such moral considerations; not empathy, not compassion. Nothing. “God” obviously holds no responsibility towards its creations. A simple logical deduction proves this.
Morally, god it beneath us.
Why?
Because many (not all) humans are capable of much higher morality than the demiurge. We are capable of much more virtue, more humility in owning our responsibility towards the lives we bring to this world. We haven’t even touched on the creation of true, conscious artificial intelligence, yet we already debate the ethics of such an undertaking, something that the demiurge of this reality obviously didn’t bother with.
Perhaps this is the purpose of our existence: to create higher ideals for a creator bereft of them, or incapable of them unaided by its creations.
So, yes, the creation can be better than the creator in many ways. In this instance of this reality, the creation holds the capacity to be more moral, more ethical, more virtuous than the creator — demonstrably so. The creation cannot judge or condemn the creator, since the creation cannot exceed the creator’s control of power dynamics. But the creation can possess an opinion. And the creator can do what it pleases.
Perhaps it is this absolute, lonely power that renders the creator incapable of morality.
But let us be honest here: we are petrified of the creator, which is why we desperately need to attribute to it virtues that are beyond it. This is sacramental Stockholm syndrome: ennobling our divine tyrant to justify our suffering, and thus give our pain meaning.
Meaning mitigates our fear and anguish; even deluded meaning (especially so).
P.S.: I don’t tolerate insufferably obnoxious and perpetually offended feminists. The fact that I use the term “man” to refer to humanity does not translate to male supremacy, except in the minds of feminism-afflicted schizophrenics. If anything, this double meaning of the word “man” (one meaning adult male and the other humanity) takes away from masculinity, and grants greater weight to the feminine, a term whose meaning is special and exclusive. So spare me the female supremacist victimhood privilege nonsense.
Interesting hypothesis. You know me though, I think that the demiurge and the demiurgia are one in the same. A reflection of one another. A game of the old switcheroo, like the prince and the pauper. You know, where the king imagines himself a beggar in a dream. Perhaps the creator is using the creation puppets like a Sunday school lesson to teach itself morals. The puppet becomes a felt Jesus.
As far as all the inventions man has made to overcome his inherent weakness – like super computers and cranes, I think those things are actually handicaps and destructive to the human animal. It’s right there with religion and agriculture and all the other undermining, enslaving things humans came up with. The real jewels of creation coming from the human mind are those stemming from imagination, a truly human trait. Things like wonderful stories and works of art. And why shouldn't we be stellar at imagination, since the notion of our entire existence and the realm we inhabit are figments of the imagination.
Hmm…thanks for another thought jerker.
Here are some takes that hit me while reading it.
1) cities are primarily a result of the inbred cumulative psychopathy of the worship of rulers. Thus sterilization of animals, say, is a ‘necessary’ but cruel insanity to cope with fall out of the greater insanity.
2) human made creations (technology) has done much (more?) to build and maintain the psychopathic ruler paradigm than liberate humans. Often the ‘side effects’ create more insane top down/dominate nature solutions that are also often Hegelian dialect tools.
The greatest sin may have been thinking the inventions our cleverness was superior to that which evolved (from what I strongly suspect is a higher intellect and wisdom).