"Would that be very bad? I'm—genuine question, my instincts about bringing other people into existence involve babies and one, that's not really the same thing at all and two, I'm trying to not think about what babies would be like if they're people."

"I don't know if it would be bad at all. It just seems like it might be worth having on our radar as a possibility."

"Yeah, fair enough. Uh, if that works, we might want to... aim... I don't know why this feels squicky but I wish to register that it does."

"It doesn't seem obviously squicky to me."

"I think the instinct might be about... if we can create people with actual traits then it's sort of our responsibility to make sure they'll be—not terribly unhappy or suffering or something. And some hypothetical bad actor with this ability could do a lot of harm."

"I mean, I guess we have the responsibility not to be or create bad actors."

"Yeah, I just," vague handwave, "keep generating thoughts that assume I live in a world where everyone else is people, I'm not sure I'll ever be able to train these instincts away."

"I have a little of that too."

"Anyway, are there any other considerations we'd want to think of before trying to design and create a mayor, in case it does turn out to work?"

"...I don't know, which suggests to me that we shouldn't do it soon if at all."

"Fair enough. And even if we wait too long on it there's always the governor—actually I bet the mayors of other cities don't exist either and more relevantly are not going to have elections until and unless we decide to care about that."

"I wouldn't be shocked given the information we have so far if all the mayors started existing at the same time."

"I wouldn't either but I'm also half trying to shape my own expectations, if that's at all relevant."

"Fair enough. How many towns even are there..." Simpedia?

In their country? Hundreds at least, but there isn't a page with an itemised list.

Good to know.

"So is that one of the things that might cause parts of reality to spontaneously start existing, what places there are—"

"...maybe? I think places might not be - next to each other -"

"What do you mean?"

"The frame skip thing. Even trying hard to pay attention, like at work, doesn't stop it. It keeps looking like there's stuff, but you don't actually travel all the distance."

"—oh! Yeah, that would make sense, the places are not really—yeah. Brings up the question of where they came from in the first place but honestly what doesn't."

"Yeah. I still want to try more experiments around the edge, but like you said, should wait for a Sunday. Or I guess I could get a bicycle. Or both."

"Do you have any specific experiment in mind? I have a few days off saved up, I could try some."

"I wanted to try getting up to where the frame skips, choosing a point ahead like a tree or something, and trying to continue to that point."

"I've tried something like that, though not quite to a specific tree I could see. If I try to just go for a stroll around there I get a frame skip and then return to where I was."