especially as stated by Nick Bostrom, where it's posed as a trilemma...the whole thing rests on the assumption that a "post-human" civilization would have tremendous computing power and be able to create a simulated environment wherein the occupants would experience it as a fully "real" world, and also that artificially created, simulated entities would possess consciousness/sentience. Given those assumptions, logically, you'd have to accept that at least one of the following statements is true:
1."The fraction of human-level civilizations that reach a posthuman stage (that is, one capable of running high-fidelity ancestor simulations) is very close to zero", or
2."The fraction of posthuman civilizations that are interested in running ancestor-simulations is very close to zero", or
3."The fraction of all people with our kind of experiences that are living in a simulation is very close to one"
I suppose it also begs the question as to "what is consciousness?"
Here's the Wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_hypothesis
Our current "reality" certainly looks like somebody with a seriously cruel streak has decided they're tired of their Sims and are just going to torture us all and blow up the world. My guess: space alien invasion and/or massive natural disasters are next up. Hope it's all very entertaining for some fucker somewhere....
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