the reason is any one who is smart enough to simulate us will also be smart enough to stop us messing up with the simulation. Nick Bostrom's rationale against

the reason is any one who is smart enough to simulate us will also be smart enough to stop us messing up with the simulation. Nick Bostrom's rationale against this objection: (1) the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a “posthuman” stage; (2) any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof); (3) we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation. It follows that the belief that there is a significant chance that we will one day become posthumans who run ancestor-simulations is false, unless we are currently living in a simulation. If we are in a simulation, doesn’t that undermine the reasoning in the simulation argument? The simulation argument relies on an assumption about the technological capabilities of a mature civilization. Our evidence for this assumption is empirical: it is based on our best theories about the physical limits of computation and the kinds of constructions that could be built with advanced molecular manufacturing techniques etc., and our confidence in these theories rests ultimately on observations of the world we see around us. But if we are in a simulation, then how could we trust these observations? Might they not inform us only about the simulated reality and not about any hypothesized underlying of reality in which the simulation is being run? And if so, does this not undermine the simulation argument by casting doubt on its empirical assumptions? If we reflect more carefully on this objection, however, we see that it fails. The claim that we cannot have any information about the underlying reality if we are in a simulation is false. In a simulation, we can certainly know the following two conditional claims: A. If we are in a simulation, then the underlying reality is such as to permit simulations, it contains at least one such simulation, and (3) is true. B. If we are not in a simulation, then the empirical evidence noted in the simulation argument is veridical taken at face value, suggesting that a technologically mature civilization would have the ability to create vast number of simulations; and consequently, by the simulation argument, there is a very high probability at least one of the disjuncts in (1)-(3) is true. Since we either are, or are not, in a simulation, we can conclude, even if we are in a simulation, that at least one of the disjuncts (1)-(3) is true. Source: http://www.simulation-argument.com/faq.html http://www.simulation-argument.com/faq.html