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vi21maobk9vp comments on Pascal's wager re-examined - Less Wrong
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On games...
If we consider games with a big population of modeled characters (we are obviously in a game with many characters), strategies of various kinds and multiplayer RPGs come forth.
In multiplayer RPGs, logical behaviour for a killed character is either to reincarnate anew (player character, some NPCs), respawn as previously seen (simpler NPCs - not observed in our world? or maybe some amoebas..) or vanish forever. Player characters in games are not supposed to be stuck in a state they cannot change; and emulating NPCs in player-inaccessible afterlife needs some separate reason for programmers to do.
In strategies, player is far from all-powerful, and eternal fixed-state afterlife for in-game creatures is a state where they are modeled but again cannot affect gameplay.
Of course, more complicated game will be invented; but if we consider a game some mixture of entertainment and competition, heaven and especially hell as depicted in some religions make little sense. Maybe Greek-style Hades where heros occasionally descend can make sense from gameplay point of view; but it is still far from hell. Eternal nearly-fixed state of a player character will make player quit; eternal nearly-fixed state of NPC while simulating its cognitive process still seems pointless...
...unless the player gets to play torturer. These kinds of minigames do seem to exist, but are far from being dominant direction. Let's hope they will stay this way.
I think we can take it that we're not in a multiplayer game, since we don't think that we're players. It's possible that players would agree to have their memories wiped before starting the game, but this seems unlikely.
Anyway, the multiplayer game hypothesis is incompatible with the simulation argument. You need only one large multiplayer game for one universe of players, assuming each player can play only one game at a time.
First,in a multiplayer game you still can have more NPCs than players. Players do not show that they are special because it would break the rules / spoil the fun / lead to their player character locked up as insane.
Second, maybe they too find it tedious to control every single muscle of the character body. So they gave some weak - by their standards - AI, and control the character via nudging desires and choices. Have you ever felt that you doubt which of a few decision to chose and then suddenly decide? The player has finally clicked a menu item of a few provided by your intelligence.
Third, for huge number of NPCs relative to number of players you could set up a strategy. Not like a Civilization, but like a Dwarf Fortress or SimCity - some ideas suddenly become commonplace and autonomous agents try to implement them.
The issue is not the ratio of NPCs to players. The issue is the number of players per simulation. If you assume a multiplayer game, you don't need as many simulations, and we no longer assign a high probability to us being in a simulation.
A multiplayer game may have a reasonable world limit size, and inter-world movement isn't implemented yet (whether it would be inside one universe, as in Eve Online, or between disjunct universes). So the simultaneous simulation count goes somewhat down, but there are still many and new ones are launched as population grows...
In the multiplayer game the players might be different deities not different people.