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Not quite the UF Philosophy Corner | by MatthewDBA | 2009-05-08 07:30:42 |
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Huge difference. | by Peace_man | 2009-05-08 08:21:37 |
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The problem is | by MatthewDBA | 2009-05-08 08:53:04 |
| That would depend largely on the expectations... |
by Sharku |
2009-05-08 10:16:15 |
...of the person you meet. If you're applying for a job, the interviewer will put much higher importance in your infinite precision calculator over e.g. your blood type or whether you have any hereditary diseases, whereas if you're going for e.g. blood or organ donation the focus will shift towards those areas.
All other things being equal whether you did or didn't write that calculator will matter very little in someone's experience of you, other than the addition/omission of a single line to your wiki page: "In 19xx, Matthew wrote an infinite-precision calculator.".
That's beside the point though, as that's not the original question. The original question, translated to your programming metaphor would be something like: "How does that bit of GPL code I used feel about being included in my program, and does it even realize the difference between the two codebases?"
Okay, breaking away from the programming metaphor now, because to stretch it further will get hairy real soon: suppose we're the GPL code inside the universe then what hardware is all of this running on, etc. Big can of worms, don't want to open it.
Suppose we are the odd ones out in the universe, and everything else around us was created by something else. I think it stands to reason that by observing the rest of the universe we have a fairly good chance of discerning some style or maker's mark which we'd recognize if we ever got to meet that maker. Same if we are built like the rest of the universe and we somehow happen across something that isn't.
There are lots of everyday situations like that: performances of plays/music pieces/songs, cooking of dishes, where you can still recognize the end result but with an unmistakable personal twist of the performer, cook...
That is assuming a couple of things of course. That there are multiple ways of making a planet or universe that's still recognizable as a planet or universe, if there's only one way to do it, deity A's work becomes indistinguishable from deity B. By extension, that also assumes that omnipotent beings actually do put their personal touch in their work. If by some convention they all decided to do things the same way, even though there are more ways to do it, then you're back to square one.
Biggest assumption of all though is our prior knowledge. If you're somehow in a knowledge vacuum and you happen upon some omnipotent being, it really doesn't make any difference whether you specifically were created by it or not. Prior knowledge is really important here, because without it, you won't be able to see the hands of the maker in the work, nor will you be able to recognize the maker from their work. Without the ability to see the connections there won't be any significant difference in experience.
A lot of text to say "It's in the eye of the beholder", but I really do think that's what it would boil down to.
I'm sorry, this is going to be a post and run. I have to get dinner ready and while I was thinking this over and typing this out I had a phonecall from a friend. I'm going over to his place after dinner and probably won't be back on until much later tonight, if at all. |
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