:my-hero: is being simulated at full resolution and doing all the interesting stuff! :soypoint-2:

Someone in the comments quoted Robin Hanson from all the way back in 2001:

If all simulations are not complete simulations of human history, however, there are many more implications. For example, far from the simulated people of interest, the behavior of many people might be randomly generated based on statistics from previous simulations, or come from "cached" records of previous simulated people. Some "people" in a crowd simulation might even be run by very simple programs that have them wiggle and mumble "peas and carrots" like extras supposedly did once in movie crowd scenes. Assuming you don't care as much about these fake simulated people, then all else equal you shouldn't care as much about how your actions affect the rest of the world. Also, if not all simulations last through all of human history, then the chance that your world will end soon is higher than if you were not living in a simulation. So all else equal you should care less about the future and live more for today. If our descendants tend to be more interested in simulating "pivotal" people and events from their history, then you should raise your estimate of the chances that the events and people around you will be considered pivotal to your descendants. If our descendants sometimes play parts in their simulations, if they are more likely to play more famous people, and if they tend to end simulations when they are not enjoying themselves, then you should take care to keep famous people happy, or at least interested. And if they are more likely to keep in their simulation the people they find more interesting, then you should try to stay personally interesting to the famous people around you. In sum, if you might be living in a simulation then all else equal you should care less about others, live more for today, make your world look likely to become eventually rich, expect to and try to participate in pivotal events, be entertaining and praiseworthy, and keep the famous people around you happy and interested in you.

and keep the famous people around you happy and interested in you.

:bootlicker: :farquaad-point:

Bostrom also discussed this sort of idea briefly in his original 2003 paper (p. 12-13), although he seemed to imply he thought it was more likely we'd be in a full ancestor simulation where every individual's brain was simulated in full detail rather than some people being simplified "NPCs": In addition to ancestor‐simulations, one may also consider the possibility of more selective simulations that include only a small group of humans or a single individual. The rest of humanity would then be zombies or “shadow‐ people” – humans simulated only at a level sufficient for the fully simulated people not to notice anything suspicious. It is not clear how much cheaper shadow‐people would be to simulate than real people. It is not even obvious that it is possible for an entity to behave indistinguishably from a real human and yet lack conscious experience. Even if there are such selective simulations, you should not think that you are in one of them unless you think they are much more numerous than complete simulations. There would have to be about 100 billion times as many “me‐simulations” (simulations of the life of only a single mind) as there are ancestor‐simulations in order for most simulated persons to be in me‐simulations.

TL;DR GET SCHWIFTY, MORTYYYYYYYY burp :so-true: