It seems plausible that people who run simulated universes will often be more interested in universes that contain life than in universes that don’t. Indeed, simulators may often simulate universes in order to simulate life, as when they simulate episodes in the history of their own species. In this case, simulators will quickly abandon settings that don’t lead to life and will focus on those settings that lead to interesting forms of life. In this way, the preferences of a simulator can explain why our universe is among the (presumably) relatively few that are fine-tuned to produce life.
