Nick Bostrom

How would you attack my name?

Is that all right?

In Swedish, it would be Niklas Bostrom, but that was close.

Well, I have this thing called the simulation argument, which doesn't actually prove that we're in a simulation, but it tries to show that at least one of three propositions is true.

Well, I mean, you probably would be able to explain it better.

But yeah, my story is that the simulation argument tries to show that one of three propositions is true.

So let's first look at what the conclusion is and then we can see how we get there.

So the conclusion is that either almost all civilizations at our current stage of technological development go extinct before they become technologically mature.

So that's like one alternative, right?

The second is that

Amongst civilizations that do become technologically mature, there is a very strong convergence.

They all lose interest in creating a certain kind of computer simulation.

I call them ancestor simulations.

These would be

detailed simulations of people with the kind of experiences that their historical forebears had.

So that's the second alternative.

And then the third alternative is that we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation.

So that's the kind of conclusion.

Now, how does one get to that?

Suppose that the first of these alternatives does not obtain.