[gratalis]

My favorite exchange on the topic from "Matter" by Iain M. Banks where one character explains their argument, based on morality, for why he believes they are living in the base layer of reality and not a simulation:

Xide Hyrlis: "War, famine, disease, genocide. Death, in a million different forms, often painful and protracted for the poor individual wretches involved. What god would so arrange the universe to predispose its creations to experience such suffering, or be the cause of it in others? What master of simulations or arbitrator of a game would set up the initial conditions to the same pitiless effect? God or programmer, the charge would be the same: that of near-infinitely sadistic cruelty; deliberate, premeditated barbarism on an unspeakably horrific scale."

Choubris Holse: "Of course, your god could just be a bastard."