Quick note that this is just a hypothetical exercise i like doing. This world is as real as it will get for the duration of my life.

Interesting point that a society so advanced may not have much to gain from ancestor simulations. I havent heard that one before so thats an interesting for me to get into some night. I would think that if they may at some point fully have explored all their is in the present they may look to the past and alternative universes out of boredom.

Nonetheless I believe there is a very good reason to run the if you flip the maliciousness from you story upside down into a loving gift of life.

Why is it so unnecessary complex?

Because only the best will do for life, no one wants to live in a low powered simulation. If a simulated world is not as complex and deep as a real universe can we expect the experience and lives of its inhabitants be? We are studying those unnecessary complex phenomena right now, they may cause the next technological breakthrough.

If they where not there and while searching we find one of the tubes carrying ones and zeros we might have freaked out before maturing.

What could they still learn?

I would usually assume they may simply try to learn the conditions that lead to the big bang by simulating all kins of possibilities till you have one which is a close enough copy of reality.

But in this hypothetical we assume they are passed needing to learn anything. So they don’t instead it may simply be to teach “life” and “connections” are things that “exist” and can be “experienced”. The simulation is a loving nest designed by our techno superior parents who wish to nurse new complex life in the safety of their hardware.

It may also be that we have a purpose in the real world and that we are AI in training. The best way to solve the alignment problem is to give each AI a full experience of life with goods and bads.

Why would they do this over biological offspring?

Because (pure opinion) time is the real final frontier. Eventual cosmic heath death appears inevitable. Living near forever without aging may be possible but creating more time in the universe may not. Simulations allow life to experience much more time then outside of them. So not only are we reasonably safe in the simulation we also have all the time we need.

Of course i have conveniently ignored all the suffering in our world in this loving gift but in this context that depends on perspective. Was the human world designed as part of the simulation or was it organically generated as we evolve? Are we a single conscious in a human world? A human hive mind consciousness on a planet or are we all part of a bigger consciousness encompassing our universe. Maybe those outside our world may know, but I definitely do not.