I think it’s more likely than not that simulating a world like our own would be regarded as ethically impermissible. Creating a simulated universe which contains things like, for example, the Killing Fields of Cambodia, seems like the sort of thing that would be likely to be forbidden by general consensus if we still had any sort of self-governance at the point where it became a possibility.
Plus, while I’ve encountered plenty of people who suggest that somebody would want to create such a simulation, I haven’t yet known anyone to assert that they would want to make such a simulation.
I don’t understand why you’re leaping from “simulators are not our descendants” to “simulators do not resemble us closely enough to meaningfully call them ‘people.’” If I were in the position to create universe simulations, rather than simulating my ancestors, I would be much more interested in simulating people in what, from our perspective, is a wholly invented world (although, as I said before, I would not regard creating a world with as much suffering as we observe as ethically permissible.) I would assign a far higher probability to simulators simulating a world with beings which are relatable to them than a world with beings unrelatable to them, provided they simulate a world with beings in it at all, but their own ancestors are only a tiny fraction of relatable being space.
I think it’s more likely than not that simulating a world like our own would be regarded as ethically impermissible. Creating a simulated universe which contains things like, for example, the Killing Fields of Cambodia, seems like the sort of thing that would be likely to be forbidden by general consensus if we still had any sort of self-governance at the point where it became a possibility.
Plus, while I’ve encountered plenty of people who suggest that somebody would want to create such a simulation, I haven’t yet known anyone to assert that they would want to make such a simulation.
I don’t understand why you’re leaping from “simulators are not our descendants” to “simulators do not resemble us closely enough to meaningfully call them ‘people.’” If I were in the position to create universe simulations, rather than simulating my ancestors, I would be much more interested in simulating people in what, from our perspective, is a wholly invented world (although, as I said before, I would not regard creating a world with as much suffering as we observe as ethically permissible.) I would assign a far higher probability to simulators simulating a world with beings which are relatable to them than a world with beings unrelatable to them, provided they simulate a world with beings in it at all, but their own ancestors are only a tiny fraction of relatable being space.