Jaan Tallinn makes this argument in his 2012 presentation "Why Now? A Quest in Metaphysics". (A lot of the talk is just an introduction to big-multiverse anthropics and the intelligence explosion; skip to 24:00 for the relevant part.)
Elon Musk thinks that the probability that we're the base reality is almost 0 because on top of the base reality there could be infinitely many simulations.
But if you think about it and ask yourself how the base reality can exist unless it's being simulated, there doesn't seem to be a conceivable answer. So it might be the case that we're living in a simulation fractal and anything that's simulation should be regarded as real in the same way as what we conventionally regard as the base reality, even if the realities we simulate are not as fleshed out as our own reality (which start to look 'fabricated' and fuzzy at the quantum scale so to speak).
If they don't want you to know that you're simulated , it's definitely not what they would simulate. That's a big plot hole in The Matrix. How do you know what the want?
Probably AI development and alignment is something that civilizations want to simulate. Seems like a given civilization will simulate this much more than any other time in history. We live during the development of AI, is this evidence that we live in a simulation?
I’m confused by the anthropic principle-y aspects of this (a neolithic person wouldn’t see their time of existence as evidence against simulation theory). Has this argument been made before? If so where should I read about it?