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Anthony Brueckner, The Simulation Argument again, Analysis, Volume 68, Issue 3, July 2008, Pages 224–226, https://doi.org/10.1093/analys/68.3.224
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Nick Bostrom has argued that given some plausible assumptions, we should believe that we are not humans but rather conscious computer simulations of humans (Bostrom 2003). I will offer a new way of thinking about Bostrom's Simulation Argument.
Bostrom envisages post-humans who create conscious minds on computers. The post-humans use their vast computing power to implement programming that ensures that ‘the computational processes of a human brain are structurally replicated in suitably fine-grained detail’, in a way that ‘would suffice for the generation of subjective experiences’ (Bostrom 2003: 244). Brian Weatherson calls these non-human, computer-generated minds Sims (Weatherson 2003). Sims have experiences which represent the Sims to be normal, embodied humans living in a Sim-free 21st century world. The post-humans thus run ancestor simulations within the artificially created, computer-instantiated minds of the Sims. Here is how Weatherson sketches the Simulation Argument: since (1) ‘the percentage of human-like agents that are Sims’ (i.e. the number of Sims divided by the number of Sims plus humans) is ‘far above 50 per cent’, and since (2) ‘we don't have any specific evidence that tells on whether we are a Sim or a human’, we should believe that we are Sims, not humans (Weatherson 2003: 425). Says Bostrom: ‘One's credence in the hypothesis that one is in a simulation should be close to unity’, given the way in which the human-like Sims vastly outnumber normal humans (Bostrom 2003: 249).
