[LogicalBorg]

I think there are two versions of the simulation hypothesis. The first version is that we are in a simulation that is run in the future with ourselves as ancestors. The second version is that we're simulated by aliens.

The first version seems wrong to me. Time is not a random variable. Either it is really the year 2019 and no such simulations of 2019 exist yet, or it is really the year 2100 and the year 2019 doesn't exist anymore. You can't choose at random between different years since they don't exist at the same time.

The alien version doesn't have that problem but it's also implausible since aliens have not been proven to exist and there is no particular reason for aliens to simulate us.

This discussion reminds me of Elon Musk's interest in traveling to Mars. Imagine you want to go to Mars and are too lazy to build a rocket to go there. So instead you go out to the desert to a place that looks exactly like Mars. Then you say this place in the desert looks exactly like a million places on Mars. You pick a place at random, which means that you inevitably pick a place on Mars. Then you say, "The odds are a million to one that I'm not standing on Mars right now! Because I picked Mars!"

That argument is just as bogus as the simulation argument. Probability isn't a cheap form of space travel and it's not a cheap form of time travel either. If you want to stand on Mars you're going to have to build an actual rocket and go there, not a probability experiment. If you want to experience virtual reality you're going to have to build it. You can't just probability it into existence by wishful thinking.

[vchak1]

Neither, IMHO. The thing doing the simulation need not exist inside the simulation, or have any physical resemblance to any concept inside the simulation.

[ThomPete]

But who simulate the aliens then?