What of the doomsday argument? It can be summed up like this. There is a bag of marbles. You take a marble from the bag at random. You know that the number of black marbles in the bag was chosen by the roll of a 1000 sided die. If the die rolls 1 (where almost every civilisation is wiped out before producing a lot of people), there will be few black marbles in the bag. But if the dice does not roll 1, almost all of the marbles will be black, because there are so many. If you exist before the 22^nd century, you’ve pulled out a white marble. If you exist after that, you’ve pulled out a black marble. If there are 15 marbles in the bag (these numbers are rounded) and the 1000 sided die rolls any other number than 1, all 15 marbles are black. If the die roll was 1, at least 1 marble is white. To get a white marble would be highly unlikely, but, there it is... or so you think.

The factor you didn’t take into account is that you might have been hypnotised to see a black marble as a white marble (this is the analogue of a future civilisation creating simulations of the 21^st century with simulated people occupying that simulation). You were under hypnosis during the session, so you don’t remember what you have or haven’t been hypnotised to see. Even if it’s a 1 in 10 chance that you’ve been hypnotised to see a black marble as a white marble, it’s still 100 times as likely as getting a real white marble. The odds of the marble you took from the bag being a real white marble is at least 1 in 100. 99% likely, when you see a white marble, it is really a black marble, so you rightly conclude that your marble is black (and therefore you live in the future).

The next thing to determine is the intentions of the simulator. Have they left any clues in the way humanity has been treated (in this simulation in the past)? Is our world like a weird sci-fi movie scenario; maybe a bit too fantastical to be believed? How many parallels can you spot? Good may lose battles in movies, but they never lose wars. Good always wins in the end. Is this the same in our world? Will we get a good ending, like in the movies? Is the world packed with drama, like in the films? Is our suffering real; are there any ethical hurdles to future generations faking unethical situations, like our world? Think about it.