God as Programmer, Admin, and API for The Simulation?

Reading over these ideas of Whitehead:

Whitehead thus sees God and the world as fulfilling one another. He sees entities in the world as fluent and changing things that yearn for a permanence which only God can provide by taking them into God's self, thereafter changing God and affecting the rest of the universe throughout time. On the other hand, he sees God as permanent but as deficient in actuality and change: alone, God is merely eternally unrealized possibilities, and requires the world to actualize them. God gives creatures permanence, while the creatures give God actuality and change

It made me think Marcus Arvan's Peer to Peer Hypothesis:

It's a curious fact that it seems to many of us that no matter how complete a physical explanation might be, such an explanation could never possibly account for consciousness (i.e. the "soul"). The P2P hypothesis predicts and explains this problem. Observers trapped in a P2P simulation would be convinced--just as many of us are--that there is something about their subjective point-of-view that cannot be captured in the physics of their world. And they would be right. The hardware upon which the simulation is running--the processing apparatus (viz. DVD laser apparatus/processor)--would comprise their subjective point-of-view, and be inaccessible to them within the simulation. More generally, the P2P model holds a reality like ours is comprised by two fundamentally different types of things: (A) "hardware" (i.e. consciousness/measurement appartus), and (B) "software" (i.e. physical information) interacting.

There are broadly two theories of time in philosophy, the "A-theory" which says that time passes (viz. a "moving spotlight"), and the "B-theory" which says that time is nothing more than an ordered series of events (viz. time just is some events ordered before/after others). Both theories seem to face problems. A-theories seem hopelessly mysterious. B-theories seem to face problems making sense of change (i.e. if an ordered series of events is all that time is, how does time pass?). The P2P Hypothesis provides a new answer: one that synthesizes both positions via a kind of mechanism/model that we already understand. When I go to play back a CD, the CD is a series of ordered information, and that information is experienced in real-time moving forward only insofar as a distinct observation-mechanism (the CD-player's processor) reads the information. This suggests that in order to make sense of time (i.e. it's being ordered and moving), we need a dualist theory--and the P2P Hypothesis gives us a concrete example of how such a dualist theory works.

So God's Body is the Res Potentia Kauffman talks about in his quantum consciousness theory, the Sea of Possibility. This is also expressible in a different way as potential paths we users can take in the Simulation. Whitehead presents this as theological - God gaining meaning from the actions of his creations choosing paths. Arvan gives us an explanation of how particular possibilities are realized while also explaining superposition:

1. The location of any "object" within the simulation is a computational superposition, i.e. an object represented at position A on computer A, position B on computer B, position C on computer C, etc. will be coded, at the level of the whole simulation, as being simultaneously in positions A, B, C, etc. (superimposed in all of those locations at once).
   
2. "The" location of any object or property in a P2P simulation is therefore also indeterminate, given that each computer on the network has its own representation of where "the" object or property is, and there is no dedicated server on the network to represent where the object or property "really" is (any object or property "really" is represented at many different positions on the network, thanks to slightly different representations on many computers all operating in parallel), 
   
3. Any measurement taken by any single measurement device a P2P network also thereby affects the network as a whole (since what one computer measures will affect what other computers on the network are likely to measure at any given instant), giving rise to a massive measurement problem (one can only measure an object is on the network by disturbing the entire network, thereby altering where other computers on the network will represent the particle as being).
   
4. Because different machines on the network represent the same object in slightly different positions at any given instant (with some number n of machines representing a given object at position P, some other number n* of machines representing a given object at position P*, etc.) a dynamical description of where a given object/property probably is in the environment will have features of a wave (viz. an amplitude equivalent to the number of computers representing the object at a given instant, and wavelength equivalent to dynamical change of how many computers represent the object at a given point at the next instant). 
   
5. By a similar token, any particular measurement on any particular computer will result in the observation of the object as located at a specific point.
   
6. Any particular measurement on any particular computer will result in the appearance of a “collapse” of wave-like dynamics of the simulation into a single, determinate measurement.
   
7. It is also a natural result of a peer-to-peer network that single objects can “split in two”, becoming entangled (in a peer-to-peer network multiple computers can, in a manner of speaking, get slightly out of phase, with one or more computers on the network coding for the particle passing through a boundary, while one or more other computers on the network coding for the particle to bounce backwards – in which case, if the coding is right, all of the computers on the network will treat the “two” resulting objects as simply later continuants of what was previously a single object).
   
8. All time measurements in a P2P simulation are relative to observers.  Each measurement device on a P2P simulation (i.e. game console) has its own internal clock, and there is no universal clock or standard of time that all machines share.
   
9. Because the quantized data comprising the physical information of a P2P simulation will have to be separated/non-continuous much as there are "spaces" between pits of data on a CD/DVD/Blu-Ray disc (see image below), there must be within any such simulation something akin to the Planck length, an absolute minimum length below which measurements of space-time cannot be taken in principle (a feature of our world for which, at present, "there is no proven physical significance"). 
   

I left God being the Users, though I think it fits nicely with Idealism/Neo-Platonism I don't think either Whitehead nor Arvan would necessarily agree with the statement.

Also not sure if we run into difficulties in making the User and Simulation both part of God's Body, though perhaps we're the mitochondria in that Body? :-)

This gets into that One vs Many question, where proponents seem divided - for good reason! - on whether reconciliation into the One is naught but Oblivion...

Quantum Realism, Chapter 1: The physical world as a virtual reality

We take our world to be an objective reality, but is it? The assumption that the physical world exists in and of itself has struggled to assimilate the findings of modern physics for some time now. An objective space and time should just "be", but space contracts and time dilates in our world. Objective things should just inherently exist, but electrons are probability of existence smears that spread, tunnel, superpose and entangle in physically impossible ways. Cosmology now says that the entire physical universe just popped up, out of nothing about fourteen billion years ago. This is not how an objective reality should behave!"

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"In modern physics strange theories are routine, e.g. in many-worlds theory each quantum event divides all reality, so everything that can happen does happen, in an inconceivable multiverse of parallel worlds (Everett, 1957). In the inflationary model, the physical universe is just one of many bubble universes (Guth, 1998) and string theory has six extra dimensions curled up and hidden from view. In M-theory, the universe floats on a fifth dimension “brane” we can’t see (Gribbin, 2000) p177-180 and others suggest we are one of two universes that collide and retreat in an eternal cycle (J. Khoury, 2001). The days when physics just described the physical world we see are long gone.

Yet the findings of physics are equally strange: the sun bends light by curving the space around it; the earth’s gravity slows down time; and atomic clocks tick faster on tall buildings than they do on the ground. Movement also slows down time, so an atomic clock on an aircraft ticks slower than a synchronized one on the ground (Hafele & Keating, 1972), and moving objects become heavier with speed as well. In our world, space, time and mass vary but the speed of light is strangely constant.

If relativity is strange then quantum theory is even stranger: in Young's experiment one electron goes through two slits at once to interfere with itself; entangled photons ignore speed of light limits; the vacuum of space exerts pressure; and gamma radiation is entirely random, i.e. physically uncaused. Einstein, who was as open to new ideas as anyone, thought quantum theory made no sense, and it doesn’t"

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"...There are equations, proofs and applications, but the models that work make no physical sense, e.g. in Feynman's sum over histories an electron travels all possible paths between two points at once, but how can one electron do that? Theory should increase understanding, but in physics it seems to take it away. In wave-particle duality particles morph into waves, denying the very sense of what waves and particles are. Given a choice between meaning and mathematics, physics chose the latter and it shows. Quantum theory still isn’t taught in high schools because who can teach what makes no sense? Modern physics is a mathematical feast that at its core is entirely empty of meaning. It is a hollow science, built on impressive equations about quantum states that everyone agrees don’t exist! And physics has chosen this way of no meaning as a deliberate strategy..."

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"It is not generally realized that the new structures of quantum theory and relativity are built on the old foundation of physical realism. If the physical world is real, trying to smash matter into its basic bits in particle accelerators makes sense. Yet the idea of a continuous universe made up of elementary point particles makes no more sense than a complete universe that always was. An object with an inherent mass needs a substance that extends in space. So it has left and right parts that by the same logic have still finer parts, and so on ad infinitum. The current response is that the universe consists of point particles with no extent, but how can something with no extent have mass? And since a billion points of no extent take up no more space than one, how then do extended objects form? It was then necessary to invent invisible fields continuous in space to keep these “points of no extent” apart by force. Finally, as every force needs a particle cause, the fields had to act by creating virtual particle agents, e.g. virtual photons. This masterpiece of circularity is immune to science, as a virtual photon is just a physical photon that can never be observed, as it is created and destroyed in the effect instant. Only physicists can see them, in equations and Feynman diagrams, which is good enough.

All was well, until new effects like neutron decay implied new forces and new invisible fields whose virtual particles had mass. The solution, in what was by now a well-oiled machine, was that another field created the virtual particles of the first field, and so the Higgs search began. The Higgs boson is the virtual particle created by an invisible field to explain another virtual particle created by another invisible field to explain an actual effect (neutron decay). Given dark energy and dark matter, it explains at best 4% of the mass of the universe, but the standard model needs it, so when after fifty years CERN found a million, million, million, millionth of a second signal in the possible range, physics was relieved. There is no evidence this “particle” has any effect on mass at all, but the standard model survives."

I think of the big question when thinking about the kind of Idealist Computationalism that seems to go into the Divine Simulation Hypothesis is what does it mean for God to be the Programmer? Or for God to be the Program?

Is God's will expressed directly by His/Her/Its/Their Will, but ascertained by us to be a kind of program based on our understanding? Or is there some necessity involved here, that our reality is in fact a program being run on God's body/mind/whatever?

I think of the big question when thinking about the kind of Idealist Computationalism that seems to go into the Divine Simulation Hypothesis is what does it mean for God to be the Programmer? Or for God to be the Program?

Is God's will expressed directly by His/Her/Its/Their Will, but ascertained by us to be a kind of program based on our understanding? Or is there some necessity involved here, that our reality is in fact a program being run on God's body/mind/whatever?

A quick google search for something that linked Functional Programming and Idealism discovered this, might be of interest? ->

Descartes, Berkeley and Functional Reactive Programming

The object-oriented and reactive approaches give two different answers to our thought experiment because they embody two contradictory philosophies of epistemology: Rationalism, popularized by Descartes in the late 1600s, and Empiricism popularized by Berkeley in the early 1700s.

Berkeley called this concept Subjective Idealism. Idealism because it asserts only thoughts or ideas exist, and subjective because reality is dependent on the subjects that perceive it. In my opinion, Subjective Idealism is the philosophy underpinning reactive programming.

n OOP we create objects that encapsulate some kind of behavior. We then construct programs which are networked relationships of these objects. Our program is structurally a graph.

In FRP we create pipelines of functions that encapsulate causal relationships. Pipelines are then merged and branched to give the graph-like structure of an object-oriented program. However, there is an important limitation on the types of functions. Only pure functions are allowed. That is, functions that cannot effect anything outside themselves. In our example, the Ear object cannot change how the Air object vibrated. This constraint ensures that our pipelines have a well-defined direction from cause to effect. In terms of structure, this means our program is a directed acyclic graph (DAG).

To reason about software, we must think of it as a sequence of causal relationships. We must be able to order the program. Mathematically, a graph can be ordered if and only if it is a DAG. This is true no matter how you write your program. Whether you choose OOP, FRP or XYZ. What’s special about FRP, though, is that ordering is enforced by the pattern.

To keep on this track of God as Programmer/Program/etc, an interesting section of the IEP article on the philosophy of Leibniz:

Space and time, according to Leibniz, are thus the hypostatizations of ideal relations, which are real insofar as they symbolize real differences in substances, but illusions to the extent that (i) space or time are taken as a thing in itself, or (ii) spatial/temporal relations are taken to be irreducibly exterior to substances, or (iii) extension or duration are taken to be a real or even fundamental property of substances. Take the analogy of a virtual reality computer program. What one sees on the screen (or in a specially designed virtual reality headset) is the illusion of space and time. Within the computer's memory are just numbers (and ultimately mere binary information) linked together. These numbers describe in an essentially non-spatial and temporal way a virtual space and time, within which things can "exist," "move" and "do things." For example, in the computer's memory might be stored the number seven, corresponding to a bird. This, in turn, is linked to four further numbers representing three dimensions of space and one of time--that is, the bird's position. Suppose further the computer contains also the number one, corresponding to the viewer and again linked to four further numbers for the viewer's position, plus another three giving the direction in which the viewer's virtual eyes are looking. The bird appears in the viewer's headset, then, when the fourth number associated with the bird is the same as the viewer's fourth number (they are together in time), and when the first three numbers of the bird (its position in virtual space) are in a certain algebraic relation to the number representing the viewer's position and point of view. Space and time are reduced to non-spatial and non-temporal numbers. For Leibniz, God in this analogy apprehends these numbers as numbers, rather than through their translation into space and time.