Is the simulation argument a variant of Descartes daemon or the brain-in-a-vat argument?
No, the simulation argument is fundamentally different from these traditional philosophical arguments (as explained in my reply to Brian Weatherson). The purpose of the simulation argument is different: not to set up a skeptical problem as a challenge to epistemological theories and common sense, but rather to argue that we have interesting empirical reasons to believe that a certain disjunctive claim about the world is true (that is, (1)v(2)v(3)). The simulation argument relies crucially on non-obvious empirical premises about future technological abilities. And the conclusion of the simulation argument is not simply that we cannot be certain that we are not living in a simulation. If we knew that fSIM (the faction of all human-like beings who are simulated) was very small but non-zero, we might not be able to be completely certain that we are not in a simulation, but this would not be a very interesting contention. (If we think that somewhere in our infinite universe there are a few
