I wonder to what degree Robin’s argument here is influenced by anthropic reasoning related to the “doomsday argument”, as well as the related “simulation argument”. The doomsday argument does present an interesting puzzle if you assume at least some fraction of civilizations in the multiverse manage to survive long enough to have technological singularities and spread throughout space, as these civilizations should be vastly more populous than those that fail, and thus it seems likely that the vast majority of sentient beings in the multiverse would living in such a mature galactic civilization, yet we don’t seem to be. If you buy this sort of anthropic reasoning (and I do think it’s plausible), one possible answer is that a large proportion of sentient beings in such mature civilizations will be part of “ancestor civilizations” simulating the pre-singularity days, so these beings think they’re living in a much earlier and less populous era than they “really” are, and thus experiences like ours would actually not be so unusual. But in order for this argument to make sense you have to find some explanation as to why such advanced civilizations would want to spend such a disproportionate amount of time simulating early eras of their own history–and Robin’s scenario above is one possible “story” as to why they might find our era particularly fascinating. If you don’t buy into the sort of anthropic reasoning though, there’s no longer any pressing reason to try to come up with an argument for why advanced galactic civilizations would be so interested in this era of history (and even if you do buy into it, one can think of other possible “stories” to rationalize this idea).

No qualifications at all.

What is different about the 20th century? Why is there a crisis of identity and moral relativism despite all the goodness and achievements? This is the Dream Time by Robin Hanson is written from the point of view of our distant future descendants looki…