prevent all the empty galaxies from going to waste

(Off-topic: Is this a decision theoretic thing or an epistemic thing? That is, do you really think the stars are actually out there to pluck in a substantial fraction of possible worlds, or are you just focusing on the worlds where they are there to pluck because it seems like we can't do nearly as much if the stars aren't real? Because I think I've come up with some good arguments against the latter and was planning on writing a post about it; but if you think the former is the case then I'd like to know what your arguments are, because I haven't seen any really convincing ones. (Katja suggested that the opposite hypothesis—that superintelligences have already eaten the stars and are just misleading us, or we are in a simulation where the stars aren't real—isn't a "simple" hypothesis, but I don't quite see why that would be.) What's nice about postulating that the stars are just an illusion is that it means there probably isn't actually a great filter, and we aren't left with huge anthropic confusions about why we're apparently so special.)