Seems to be missing a critical recursive dependency. Namely, it would also be consistent to think that in the future, once humanity is technically capable of running the historical simulations with simulated humans that would not be able to distinguish it from reality, the humanity would also conclude that it would be highly unethical to expose simulated humans to any significant degree of suffering, and based on that ends up refraining from running historically-accurate simulations. Very few, if any, such simulations are ever created, therefore it’s highly likely that we are actually not in a simulation, and the explanation for the evils of the world is that it’s not a simulation!
Certainly, it is possible, but I see little to guarantee our descendants won’t create simulations that are like the world we live in now.
Our descendants may well not regard sims as having the same rights as persons.
Even if they do, if even a small number of rogue beings (or nations etc.) conducted such simulations, unethical as they may be, it is possible that simulations would soon outnumber real people- especially for critical junctures in history (e.g., right before the discovery of AGI.)
The essay gives at least two ethical reasons which, in my view at least, may offer enough good to outweigh the suffering- such that even a person who cared deeply about sims might still sanction the existence of a world in which they suffer to achieve their aims.
So given those factors, we may be in a simulation, and given that, I think an interesting question is “is our being in a simulation compatible with our simulators being good people”
Seems to be missing a critical recursive dependency. Namely, it would also be consistent to think that in the future, once humanity is technically capable of running the historical simulations with simulated humans that would not be able to distinguish it from reality, the humanity would also conclude that it would be highly unethical to expose simulated humans to any significant degree of suffering, and based on that ends up refraining from running historically-accurate simulations. Very few, if any, such simulations are ever created, therefore it’s highly likely that we are actually not in a simulation, and the explanation for the evils of the world is that it’s not a simulation!
Certainly, it is possible, but I see little to guarantee our descendants won’t create simulations that are like the world we live in now.
Our descendants may well not regard sims as having the same rights as persons.
Even if they do, if even a small number of rogue beings (or nations etc.) conducted such simulations, unethical as they may be, it is possible that simulations would soon outnumber real people- especially for critical junctures in history (e.g., right before the discovery of AGI.)
The essay gives at least two ethical reasons which, in my view at least, may offer enough good to outweigh the suffering- such that even a person who cared deeply about sims might still sanction the existence of a world in which they suffer to achieve their aims.
So given those factors, we may be in a simulation, and given that, I think an interesting question is “is our being in a simulation compatible with our simulators being good people”