God created man and the universe (or was contemplating doing so) and he felt it was necessary to introduce some ethics and morality, but also some concept of choice and free will. This led to grace, sin, forgiveness and redemption.

But god also understood it would be unfair to unload this responsibility on his children, that he had to know what they went through, and how they suffered. In other words, he needed to confront the same choices and temptations and pain his children did.

So he created a simulation, and injected himself into it, and made it so he also had doubt and fear and would suffer as they did. In his simulated existence, his memory of his godhood and immortality, his omniscience and omnipotence, was deliberately suppressed. He had to face the same horrors that could conceivably fall on any man with only his own faith and virtue to guide him through it. He understood god had no right to ask of his creation any more than he was willing to accept himself.

Perhaps this is the metaphor used by First Century philosophers to tangle with some of the same questions we’re dealing with here.

But to see how those effects might propagate through the continuum, it may be necessary to execute the Full Monty. Like for example, will his capsule choice lead to humans developing a Galactic Empire a thousand centuries later?

Actually, I kind of like the idea of the souls created in the simulation NOT being the point of the simulation, but just an unfortunate by-product. That sounds a lot more like how I believe our present universe is organized, with God as a comedian. The Great Programmer has other questions he’s working on, he may not care how we turn out; he may not even know we’re here.

How concerned are you about the bacteria in your garden soil, or in the evolutionary destiny of your intestinal flora? My universe is neither hostile nor benign. Its indifferent.

But that’s a bit of anthropocentrism, assuming that the simulation is local and all about us. That would be a Matrix-style simulation–on-demand, as needed, when looked-at–which is actually a highly rational way of running a simulation. It not only uses the minimum required resources, but it includes only the minimum data to answer your question. If you want to know whether Nero will take the red or blue pill, you don’t need to simulate all 10⁵²⁸ or whatever hydrogen atoms in the universe, you just need to simulate the subset in Nero’s vicinity. To be manageable, a simulation has to limit itself to relevant data.

I doubt the utility of running a whole-universe simulation like you posit, to answer general physics questions like the effect of varying Planck’s constant. You can do that with a tiny subset of the whole universe, because after you’ve made your first few trillion observations, there won’t be a lot more to learn. If you’ve seen 10¹²⁸ protons, you’ve seen ‘em all.

And even if they knew we were here, they could still just as easily write us out of the program, just as a novelist could eliminate a minor character because he does nothing to advance the plot.

Then I guess we’d better get our shit together and start advancing the plot, eh?

But don’t worry, if it happens, reboot or shutdown will be painless.

I promise.