people seem to put credence in it even before Will’s argument.
This is kind of tangential, but some of the reasons that people put credence in it before Will’s argument are very similar to Will’s argument, so one has to make sure to not update on the same argument twice. Most of the force from the original simulation argument comes from the intuition that ancestor simulations are particularly interesting. (Bostrom’s trilemma isn’t nearly as interesting for a randomly chosen time-and-space chunk of the universe, because the most likely solution is that nobody ever hade any reason to simulate it.) Why would simulations of early humans be particularly interesting? I’d guess that this bottoms out in them having disproportionately much influence over the universe relative to how cheap they are to simulate, which is very close to the argument that Will is making.
Ok, I see.
This is kind of tangential, but some of the reasons that people put credence in it before Will’s argument are very similar to Will’s argument, so one has to make sure to not update on the same argument twice. Most of the force from the original simulation argument comes from the intuition that ancestor simulations are particularly interesting. (Bostrom’s trilemma isn’t nearly as interesting for a randomly chosen time-and-space chunk of the universe, because the most likely solution is that nobody ever hade any reason to simulate it.) Why would simulations of early humans be particularly interesting? I’d guess that this bottoms out in them having disproportionately much influence over the universe relative to how cheap they are to simulate, which is very close to the argument that Will is making.