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If everything is being perfectly simulated, most things would still be unethical.
If everything is perfectly simulated, the rules that allow consciousness to emerge are also there, and thus consciousness would emerge, regardless of whether it’s a simulation or reality. If we only simulate a consciousness without laws of reality, that consciousness would still be designed to mimic a consciousness from a reality with laws (ours), and since it would be a perfect simulation (and it would have to be so in order to run meaningful tests), that consciousness might as well be as real as us. Thus, unethical.
Computer, determine how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie pop and if any owls try to interfere with the experiment kill them on sight.
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Run simulations on what the best system of governance would be. You’d want to test across different cultures/countries/technological eras to get an idea of what the most resilient would be, maybe you’d get different results depending on what you were testing. Even the definition of “best system” would need alot of clarification.
An AI would decide that an AI-driven dictatorship would be most effective at implementing whatever goals you gave it.
That leaves too much room for subjective interpretation - like ultimately the answer as to what system of governance will last the longest in a steady state will ofc be to kill all humans (bc that lasts for infinite time, and you can’t beat that kind of longevity!), while if you add the constraint that at least some must remain alive, it would be to enslave all humans (bc otherwise they’ll find some way to mess everything up), and if there is something added in there about being “happy” (more or less) then it becomes The Matrix (trick them into thinking they are happy, bc they cannot handle any real responsibility).
Admittedly, watching the USA election cycle (or substitute that with most other nations lately; or most corporate decisions work just as well for this) has made me biased against human decision making:-P. Like objectively speaking, Trump proved himself to be the “better” candidate than Hillary Clinton a few years ago (empirically I mean, you know, by actually winning), then he lost to Biden, but now there’s a real chance that Trump may win again, if Biden continues to forget which group he is addressing and thus makes it easy to spin the thought that he is so old as to be irrelevant himself and a vote for him is in reality one for Kamala Harris (remember, facts such as Trump’s own age would only be relevant for liberals, but conservatives do not base their decisions based on such trifling matters, it’s all about “gut feelings” and instincts there, so Biden is “old” while Trump is “not” - capiche?). Or in corporate politics, Reddit likewise “won” the protests.
Such experiments are going on constantly, and always have been for billions of years, and we are what came out of that:-D. Experiments with such socioeconomics have only gone on for a few thousand, but it will be interesting to see what survives.
If the simulation is actually perfect, then it isn’t a simulation anymore and whatever would have been unethical in a non-simulated context would still be unethical.
It would be interesting to test how quickly you could completely dismantle a society’s order and infrastructure into total national collapse using a variety of pressures and tactics and rate each country with a score on how resilient they are
Edit: and might as well figure out the cure for cancer while we’re at it
The fastest way has probably been economical destabilization, as it’s the easiest way to use the feelings of people. Then one could gain status in a country and exploit legal systems to gain dictator status. Would work with some systems, and some are more resistant to arbitrary exploitation now. You could also combine the peoples mistrust with external pressure such as threats of war so that they try to overthrow their own government and fail to create a working system again.
