So I've been thinking about this simulation thing a bunch lately and while I'm curious about Scott's answer here, I'll preemptively post my followup question in case anyone else has any ideas or he wants to weigh in here:
Can you use the premises of the Simulation Argument to make similar statements regarding the availability/capability of sufficiently advanced technology that would potentially impact our coming into existence?
For instance, directed panspermia. Would at least one of the following have to be true?
1. The human species is very likely to go extinct before we can develop the capability to successfully seed the galaxy with R/DNA-based life and spawn another biosphere.
2. Any sufficiently advanced civilization is unlikely to attempt to seed other worlds with the basic building blocks of their living system so as to initiate other biospheres.
3. Our biosphere was almost certainly initiated by way of directed panspermia from another sufficiently advanced R/DNA-based civilization that has existed.
For this argument, imo, (1) seems less likely than in the simulation argument since I'd think we're closer to being able to send out small ships with hibernating microscopic life than we are to building Universe-sized simulations. (2) also seems less likely since the cost/benefit analysis of seeding other worlds seems much higher to me than building and maintaining a universe-sized simulation.
So for (3) if we assume abiogenesis started a civilization which decided to start seeding other planets which then have a chance of leading to other seeding civilizations, then we'd need to compare the likelihood of seeded life vs abiogenesis to determine how likely it is that we are an abiogenesis civilization vs a seeded civilization.
Can you use the premises of the Simulation Argument to make similar statements regarding the availability/capability of sufficiently advanced technology that would potentially impact our coming into existence?
For instance, directed panspermia. Would at least one of the following have to be true?
1. The human species is very likely to go extinct before we can develop the capability to successfully seed the galaxy with R/DNA-based life and spawn another biosphere.
2. Any sufficiently advanced civilization is unlikely to attempt to seed other worlds with the basic building blocks of their living system so as to initiate other biospheres.
3. Our biosphere was almost certainly initiated by way of directed panspermia from another sufficiently advanced R/DNA-based civilization that has existed.
For this argument, imo, (1) seems less likely than in the simulation argument since I'd think we're closer to being able to send out small ships with hibernating microscopic life than we are to building Universe-sized simulations. (2) also seems less likely since the cost/benefit analysis of seeding other worlds seems much higher to me than building and maintaining a universe-sized simulation.
So for (3) if we assume abiogenesis started a civilization which decided to start seeding other planets which then have a chance of leading to other seeding civilizations, then we'd need to compare the likelihood of seeded life vs abiogenesis to determine how likely it is that we are an abiogenesis civilization vs a seeded civilization.