I really hate text articles that end up being a podcast. Feels like a bait and switch.

Great ideas. Too bad our politicians don't listen to us.

Took forever to find out, but, "Daisy" on backroomcasting.

Well I suppose it depends on your views of consciousness. Some would argue that our consciousness is nothing more than an emergent phenomenon grounded on the electrical impulses of our neurons. Personally, I'm convinced that the phenomenon need not be physical. It should be possible, with enough computing power, to model the same interactions. But I admit that if you reject this possibility, then the simulation hypothesis loses credence.

Yes, this is the idea. Although, as another noted, you can argue back and forth on whether Bostrom's argument holds.

The argument makes less sense outside of it's context. Moore was responding to the skeptical position that we're all in a simulation. Moore argues that this skeptical argument undermines itself: all of the language, terms and concepts which form the simulation argument are based on the sensory experience that the argument would effectively dismiss. Furthermore, any argument that we're in a simulation is epistemologically on a par with the argument that we're not. Therefore we should have less confidence in the skeptical argument than the common sense conclusion that we have hands.

Sorry, I suppose people haven't heard of the "Simulation hypothesis" in philosophy.

Nick Bostrom argued that, statistically, it is more likely that we live in a simulation than not. Assume that an advanced civilization could build a machine with enormous computing power, sufficient to simulate a human mind and a universe "around" it. It follows that the number of such simulated minds/universes could be near infinite. So the probability of our actually being in a simulated universe dwarfs the probability that our reality is not a simulation.

Specifically, "casting couch".

I'm agnostic. If you find the statistical probability argument for the existence of aliens salient, then by the same token you should believe that our reality is a simulation. In which case, the existence of aliens once again becomes questionable; the statistical probabilities of an infinite simulated universe are outside the realm of our current knowledge.

edit: See comment below on Nick Bostrom's Simulation Hypothesis.

Yet if you watch anime, the American character is typically blonde haired and blue eyed