Thank you for the response! That is very interesting how similar that "King's Disease" discussion sounds! Did you have any thoughts about whether that logic was correct or not? If so - Would you mind sharing with me?

I read through the rules of engagement after you shared the thread with me. Thanks for sending that. One of the things I could have done better is presented the question in a more interesting/relevant context. For instance, posting about the Doomsday Argument (The flavor that uses birth rank, not years the earth has existed) probably would have been more relevant, while asking a similar philosophical question (as the premise of the Doomsday Argument is that we should assume we are not in an outlier outcome).

Video : Nick Bostrom on Doomsday Argument (In respect to birth rank) https://closertotruth.com/video/bosni-006/

Lastly, I appreciate you being kind about the shortcomings of my post and still engaging with it.

Hopefully some of the context I've added has tightened up the question

Thanks!

Thanks for your post! "Fame is not necessarily an indicator of center" is a great response because I think it gets further to the heart of the philosophical question here. The key word to me is "necessarily". I agree it's not necessarily an indicator of being at the center of a simulation.

What would be the appropriate conclusion if someone thinks there's just a slight chance that fame indicates one is the center of a simulation? There is a 7,999,999,999 in 8,000,000,000 chance a person would not be the most famous person in the world if they are not the center of a simulation (99.9999999875%). Would the most famous person have to be at least 99.9999999875% sure that fame is not an indicator of being at the center of a simulation? If they can't get to that confidence level (which seems inevitable), would they then have to accept it's more likely than not they are the center of a simulation?

I'm thinking there is a hole to poke in that logic but I can't pinpoint what it is.

Appreciated reading your response!

Thanks for your reply Joshs. I think you make some really good points. I would agree that there is a lot of ambiguity in regards to what is and what is not a mind. Maybe I should be asking - Should a famous person conclude it's more likely than not that they are at the center of a simulation because they are famous? That the outcome of being famous is evidence that others are not conscious at all.

I'm very open to holes being poked in this being a relevant illustration but I often think of the core question of mine in terms of this scenario. Imagine someone said they shuffled a deck of cards numbered 1, 2, 3,...all the way up to 1 billion. You then draw a card from the top of the deck and get the card with number 1 on it. It seems like the person should assume something happened, it intuitively feels like getting card numbered 1 is significant. At the same time there was a 1 in 1 billion chance of getting any card. Should the person who draws card numbered 1 assume something is going on (someone forgot to shuffle the cards, someone is playing a joke on them, etc.)