sometimes I loathe FR - it keeps me awake when I really need to be asleep.
anyway, let me start off by clearing up a poorly worded statement - the simulated combatants themselves didn't do anything, as they didn't exist even as much as being the products/calculations of individually tasked processors. AFAIK, all tens-of-thousands of the simulated combatants were the calculations of a single computer, based on the files it had on each individual's characteristics. sorry for having posted so gross an error.
next: "In that it assumes as true (valid) the very thing that remains to be tested, falsified, or "proved." I.e., that simulacra have free will, such that they can, for example, willingly flee a battlefield."
no. I did explicitly state that I do NOT consider this unanticipated result an example of free will. it was, however, an unplanned and unexpected complexity of organization.
lastly: were CS Lewis alive today and active on FR CREVO threads, he might argue against the ToE, but he'd at least (very likely) trouble himself to learn what the ToE says and does not say. If more folks here did so, these threads would be a LOT less nasty.
now, at long last, I really *am* going to bed
This amoung the E adherant, too! ;^)
I think a lot of the fuss is NOT over what the ToE says; but about what many folks think that it IMPLIES!