Nick Bostrom has famously defended the credibility of the simulation hypothesis – the hypothesis that we live in a computer simulation. Barry Dainton has recently employed the simulation hypothesis to defend the ‘simulation solution’ to the problem of natural evil. The simulation solution claims that apparently natural evils are in fact the result of wrong actions on the part of the people who create our simulation. In this way, it treats apparently natural evils as actually being moral evils, allowing them to be explained via the free will theodicy. Other theodicies which assimilate apparently natural evils to moral ones include Fall theodicies, which attribute apparently natural evils to the biblical Fall, and diabolical theodicies, which attribute them to the activity of demons. Unfortunately, Dainton fails to give compelling reasons for preferring the simulation solution to Fall or diabolical theodicies. He gives one argument against diabolical theodicies, but it has no force against their best version, and he does not discuss Fall theodicies at all. In this article, I attempt to rectify this. I discuss several problems faced by Fall and diabolical theodicies which the simulation solution avoids. These provide some reason to prefer the simulation solution to these alternatives.

中文翻译：

---

模拟解决自然邪恶问题的真正优势

尼克·博斯特罗姆 (Nick Bostrom) 著名地捍卫了模拟假设的可信度——我们生活在计算机模拟中的假设。Barry Dainton 最近采用模拟假设来捍卫自然邪恶问题的“模拟解决方案”。模拟解决方案声称，看似自然的邪恶实际上是创建我们模拟的人的错误行为的结果。通过这种方式，它将表面上的自然邪恶视为实际上是道德邪恶，从而允许通过自由意志神义论来解释它们。其他将表面上的自然邪恶同化为道德邪恶的神学包括秋季理论，这显然将自然​​的邪恶归咎于圣经的堕落，以及邪恶的神学，这将它们归因于恶魔的活动。不幸的是，Dainton 没有给出令人信服的理由，让他们更喜欢模拟解决方案而不是 Fall 或恶魔般的神学。他给出了一个反对恶魔神学的论点，但这并没有反对他们最好的版本，而且他根本没有讨论堕落神学。在本文中，我试图纠正这一点。我讨论了模拟解决方案避免的 Fall 和恶魔般的神学面临的几个问题。这些提供了一些理由来选择模拟解决方案而不是这些替代方案。