I understand why most historical simulations would be of historically important people, but why would most or even a lot of simulations be historical simulations?
The set of all simulations is irrelevant in this case. What matters for us is the set of simulations that match our observations. For this set, historical simulations of various forms are naturally expected to be predominate.
The past can’t simulate the future, so we must be in a sim from a future timeline. Loosely speaking this leaves open historical sims and ‘fictional’ sims. From the inside they may be hard to differentiate (consider that harry potter’s world looks historical from his perspective, etc.)
If multiple levels of sim are likely, I have a simple argument that fictional sims are more likely than you’d think: for us to be in a historical sim with respect to the root physical universe, every sim level in the stack must be historical. If even one sim in the tree/stack/chain is fictional, then everything below that level is also fictional.
So ‘fiction’ is something that only increases with sim levels.
See this. Basically, if the future goes well it will have lots of computing power and if a tiny fraction of this power is used to make historical simulations most people in our situation will be living in historical simulations.
I understand why most historical simulations would be of historically important people, but why would most or even a lot of simulations be historical simulations?
The set of all simulations is irrelevant in this case. What matters for us is the set of simulations that match our observations. For this set, historical simulations of various forms are naturally expected to be predominate.
The past can’t simulate the future, so we must be in a sim from a future timeline. Loosely speaking this leaves open historical sims and ‘fictional’ sims. From the inside they may be hard to differentiate (consider that harry potter’s world looks historical from his perspective, etc.)
If multiple levels of sim are likely, I have a simple argument that fictional sims are more likely than you’d think: for us to be in a historical sim with respect to the root physical universe, every sim level in the stack must be historical. If even one sim in the tree/stack/chain is fictional, then everything below that level is also fictional.
So ‘fiction’ is something that only increases with sim levels.
See this. Basically, if the future goes well it will have lots of computing power and if a tiny fraction of this power is used to make historical simulations most people in our situation will be living in historical simulations.