Nicholas Fearn, The Latest Answers to the Oldest Questions: A 
Philosophical Adventure with the World's Greatest Thinkers
Grove Press, January 16, 2007.  pp. 78-79

Assuming that, one day, we will be able to create artificial minds and 
artificial worlds - and assuming that we will be inclined to create 
numerous simulations of human history - the vast majority of conscious 
beings who will ever have lived will never have set foot in the 
physical world.  It is very likely that any given person - oneself 
included - is among them.

Bostrom believes that since we are ignorant of the purpose of our 
simulated world, there is no point in trying to please its programmer. 
However, others have suggested ways in which we might try to do this. 
The American economist Robin Hanson advises: 'If you might be living 
in a simulation then all else equal you should care less about others, 
live more for today, make your world more likely to become rich, 
expect to and try more to participate in pivotal events, be more 
entertaining and praiseworthy.'  In case our descendants' tastes 
should vary from ours: 

one should emphasize widely shared features of entertaining stories.  
Be funny, outrageous, violent, sexy, strange, pathetic, heroic ... in 
a word 'dramatic'.  Being a martyr might even e a good thing for you, 
if that makes your story so compelling that other descendants will 
also want to [simulate] you.  ... If our descendants sometimes play 
parts n their simulations, if they are more likely to play more famous 
people, and if they tend to end simulations when they are not enjoying 
themselves, then you should take care to keep famous people happy, or 
at least interested.  And if they are more likely to keep in their 
simulation the people they find more interesting, then you should try 
to stay personally interesting to the famous people around you.

Plato first suggested the idea of a virtual world in the fourth century B.C.  
The green philosopher compared the physical realm to a cave in which 
people were chained, their backs to the entrance.  ....