Nick Bostrom

I'm not sure.

I mean, I don't know that this is inevitable.

Maybe there are a lot of humanoid species that never developed computers.

I don't know.

I mean, it suffices that some civilizations do develop computers and then more advanced computers of the type we can already see are physically possible, although we cannot build.

But certainly it's consistent with a lot of civilizations failing to reach even our stage of development.

I mean, I think if you're asking about inevitability, even if it's not relevant for the simulation argument, it's kind of interesting.

You want to, I guess, define what point in time, if it's inevitable.

It seems like the farther back you go, if you sort of reran evolution from that point, the less likely that you would get something similar to what we have today.

If you started with just bacteria, who knows, maybe the chances would be very small, perhaps.

that you would get an intelligent technological species.

But if it started like 50,000 years ago, then, I mean, my guess would be we were already pretty well underway and it was just a matter of time.

What do you have to say about that?

Well, I mean, on the latter, I think it wouldn't prove or disprove God.

I think it's an independent question, whether we are in a simulation versus whether God exists.

So I don't see any necessary connection there.

On the free will, I think...

we would have as much free will in the simulation as we would without the simulation.

I'm a compatibilist myself, so I think that even if we are living in a deterministic physical universe, that that would be consistent with us having, in the relevant sense, free will.

But you might have a different view on the metaphysics of free will, but I don't think the fact that we would be in a simulation would necessarily change that.