Abstract
Preston Greene (2020) argues that we should not conduct simulation investigations
because of the risk that we might be terminated if our world is a simulation designed to
research various counterfactuals about the world of the simulators. In response, we
propose a sequence of arguments, most of which have the form of an "even if”
response to anyone unmoved by our previous arguments. It runs thus: (i) if simulation
is possible, then simulators are as likely to care about simulating simulations as they
are likely to care about simulating basement (i.e. non-simulated) worlds. But (ii) even if
simulations are interested only in simulating basement worlds the discovery that we
are in a simulation will have little or no impact on the evolution of ordinary events. But
(iii) even if discovering that we are in a simulation impacts the evolution of ordinary
events, the effects of seeming to do so could also happen in a basement world, and
might be the subject of interesting counterfactuals in the basement world Finally, (iv)
there is little reason to think that there is a catastrophic effect from successful
simulation probes, and no argument from the precautionary principle can be used to
leverage the negligible credence one ought have in this. Thus, if we do develop a
simulation probe, then let’s do it.