How does a simulation argument work?

[Metronome]

In this video, the profession gives what he calls a simulation argument. He goes through it pretty quickly, seemingly assuming that students are already familiar with that type of argument. All I can find when searching for this are philosophical considerations of simulation theory, the idea that the universe is a simulation. As a result, I can't really follow the argument. How does a simulation argument work?

 

[JeffM]

This lecture seems to come from a rather specialized course where a “simulation argument” may be a defined term. But really there is nothing esoteric about what is being said in the lecture. If you have a skilled and honest agent, you harm only yourself if you intentionally deceive the agent. You go to a surgeon and say you need your left knee replaced when you actually want your right hip replaced. If the surgeon pays any attention to you, the result will not be good.

There is a bunch of math-like jargon such as [imath]s_i(v_i)[/imath], but no math is being done. There may be a rigorous mathematical proof of the principle that lying to an honest agent is not an optimizing strategy, but this lecture does not begin to provide it. What it seems to be doing is to imagine a Monte Carlo experiment and appeal to your intuition on how that experiment should turn out.