don’t worry if we happen to live in a simulation.

That means it knows these experiments are going to happen. If it cares about the results, it can fake them. Assuming for some reason that it made a mistake in designing the cosmic background radiation (why are we assuming this, again?), it can correct that mistake now, or cause the experimental apparatus to report the wrong data, or do one of a million other things that would prevent us from learning we are in a simulation. The Times’ argument requires that simulators are so powerful that they can create entire universes, so on-top-of-things that they will know the moment we figure out their game – but also so incompetent that they can’t react to a warning published several years in advance in America’s largest newspaper. There’s another argument for the same conclusion: the premises of the simulation argument suggest this isn’t the simulators’ first rodeo. Each simulator civilization must simulate 1000s or millions of universes. Presumably we’re not the first to think of checking the cosmic background radiation. Do you think the simulators just destroy all of them when they reach radio-wave-technology, and never think about fixing the background radiation mismatch or adding in some fail-safe to make sure the experiments return the wrong results?

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