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Herculean engineer plays Conway's game of life: can the Conwayesque character tell s/he is a collection of pixels/boxels?

Let's suppose we're Herculean engineers fiddling with Conway's game of life.  We are able to construct Conwayesque rational beings.  Could such a being infer or come at least suspect that he/she/it is the product of our engineering?  After all, such a creature "exists" only in virtue of our having constituted filled spaces that function as matter-equivalents and rules of transformation that function as equivalents to the laws of nature.  We do not interact with characters within the game in the same sense that one character interacts with another.

If the answer is yes, then it would seem to follow that any a priori agnostic position about existence of a god, God, or demigod within our own lifeworld is thereby excluded.  The the Conwayesque rational animal can infer the existence of the engineer/creator of its respective game, then, inasmuch as the game is an adequate analogy of our own lifeworld, it would seem by analogy that we can do the same as the creature we have created.

If the answer is no, then it would follow that the absence of evidence is not the evidence of the absence of such an engineer (I hate saying anything that sounds like it might have come from the mouth of Don Rumsfeld, but there you are). 

Other interesting considerations (such as the impossibility of an infinite series of engineered engineers & the need for an 1st engineer that is identical with the laws of logic) will have to wait...

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