“Nonetheless, I ran a simulation forward. The Third Reich was run by committee. There was a front man, someone of whom I had never heard, who was more charismatic than Hitler, but decision-makers behind the scenes, including some of Hitler’s generals, were just as ruthless. There were concentration camps, though oddly in different locations, and the result was seemingly as bad.
But that was only one version of events. The Simulator (through randomization of certain parameters) could run infinitely many different futures from any given point in time. I ran a few more, and they were all dystopian in different ways. There was one version, however, that particularly struck me.
In it, Hitler rose to power as he did in the real world, and things unfolded more or less the way we’ve read about them in history. At first, I thought there must be an error — after all, every simulation began the hour after I smothered him in his crib…"