[stale2002]

Assume a non omnipotent being, with non-infinite resources is creating a universe simulation. What decisions would we expect a person like this to make, when designing this simulation? Since they do not have infinite resources, they would likely take shortcuts, and make compromises and tradeoff when designing the simulation

For example, if light did not have a speed limit, and interacted with the entire universe instantly, this would be very hard to simulate. You would save resources by giving light a speed limit.

We also expect that they might abstract out the nitty gritty details of how things work at the atomic level. If you don't really care that much about how very small particles interact with each other, you might have these numerous calculations evaluated lazily, when they are "observed" by the higher level entities.

Things get really interesting when you start thinking about what kind of bugs a god programmer might be likely to make when designing their simulation.

Are there any weird natural processes, that would be much more elegant if our equations modeling them were changed very slightly, almost as if the equation was a mistake in the first place? Another attack avenue is to combine two natural processes in unexpected ways, to try and find "edge cases".

[sudoscript]

How do you know your own thought processes aren't a part of the simulation? Logic is a great tool to analyze the simulation unless it's been baked on purpose by our overlords.

On a different note, does simulation hypothesis strike anyone else as the idea God just explained in pseudo scientific/computing terms?

[stale2002]

The difference is that God is an unfalsifiable claim.

The simulation argument is one that can be supported or argued against using evidence.

For example, if scientists find some new nature process that would be very difficult to simulate, (infinite speed of light is one such example) then that is strong evidence that we aren't in a simultion.

Of course, even if we keep observing things about the universe that would make it easier to simulate, that doesn't mean we actually are. It could just all be a coincidence. Or maybe it doesn't make any sense for a universe to be difficult to simulate.

The basic idea is to ask the question "Assume someone lives in a simulation. What would that person be likely/unlikely to observe?". and "Assume someone does NOT live in a simulation. What would they be likely/unlikely to observe?" And see how much this stuff matches up with reality.