"Will she. No, that one doesn't distribute, I don't think."

"You probably shouldn't have a talk with her about her firstborn being not on offer, though I guess you can check exactly how badly she'd take it."

"I don't think so. Looking ahead at a thing is very much like remembering it happening and I suspect that's not an experience I want to remember having had."

"Is that why more precogs don't use it to hypothetically be horrible to people, I was surprised that hypothetical atrocities weren't common."

"Well, also it would not likely be widely known if precogs were doing that."

"I suppose not. I - think it is the kind of thing I'd be able to tell about people after a while, but I don't know many precogs personally."

"And I do not use it to commit atrocities. Occasionally I use it to be satisfyingly rude."

"Wasn't worried, promise. Anyone I know who you've been satisfyingly rude to?"

Elves are less prone than humans to prompting the sort of remark that Isabella really wants to say and shouldn't but there have been a few; she bounces the occasions and the too-tempting flippant unwise remarks.

"Awww. 

Are there plausibly lots of precogs doing horrible things and if so would we care?"

"Could be. I do still think that the simulations are not conscious..."

"Have people tried, like, asking simulations if they're conscious - does reading their minds work normally, for telepaths -"

"Yes, reading their minds works normally for precog telepaths since that's one of the forms of sensory input precog telepaths anticipate experiencing. Of course if you ask them if they're conscious they'll say they are because that's what would happen if you asked outside of simulation, it wouldn't be a very good simulation if it didn't get that result..."

"Yeah, I'm just trying to think what would possibly distinguish -"

"One reason it's widely held to be the case is that other psions can't interact with the simulated minds and it's in the category of things we'd be able to do."

"Ah. That makes sense - other psions can interact with people in virtualities - but again it wouldn't be a good simulation if other psions could interact with it in ways they wouldn't do in the future -"

"Well, but this is already similar to a known simulation limit - no backchaining, no precogging the results of precognition - psions interfering with each other is a thing."

"Usually in the form 'you can't do it', right - "

"Yes, but you could phrase it either way - can't set up a sandbox of simulated minds nobody else can interact with, can't interact with the simulation -"

Nod. "In that context the never wondering if they're simulated feels - sort of revealing - but I can't think why that'd be, presumably sometimes people would in fact wonder if they're being precogged -"

"Sometimes people do, and that gets predicted - what never happens is them noticing they're being precogged, it's sort of a subtle distinction -"

"And precommitting to take more than an hour to tell you anything useful wouldn't be noticing, in the relevant sense -"

"Yeah, exactly."

"What if we have someone talk to Melkor and claim to be a precog with a range of a year, what's her answer on the orc oath timing in that case -"

"Good question - might she know who I am, recognize my voice -?"