[Retric]

At that point you are not simulating physics you are simulating minds. From a practical standpoint it's viable, but introduces the possibility to notice the simulation. To counter that you could add overhead detect when when something would notice the simulation, but that's not going to be cheap computationally.

Further, simulating worlds vs keeping real people in pods to see those simulated worlds seems to favor people in pods. Especially if you alter the biology of those pod people to have real physical brains operating on some hardware and little else. Philosophically you can argue about simulations vs "FPGA" boards ruing minds, but direct minds on "FPGA" boards still introduces direct impacts from the real world vs pure simulation.

[Vraxx]

I do not believe it is accurate to say that what I am positing would only simulate a mind and not the world. It is simply saying that detail below a certain level is insignificant to the simulation of the world as a whole. The entire purpose of minimizing error isn't specifically to avoid detection, it's so that the error cannot be propagated between interactions and end up simulating something that is significantly deviant from the thing you're trying to simulate.

If I were to use the kinematic equations to simulate throwing a ball through the air, but my simulation only used 1 significant digit, rounding errors would quickly add up to produce a path for the ball that would significantly deviate from the path if we were to make the same calculation except treating the ball as made of quarks/atoms/molecules and painstakingly analyze forces on every single atom until the collection of them being the ball reached the end of the throw. It is that deviation from the result that we need to avoid for our simulation to retain enough fidelity to be said to be simulating throwing a ball, otherwise we're just simulating some other interaction that doesn't really match what we would observe.

Your post also makes the assumption that the simulator even cares if we notice that we're in a simulation. I don't think that this premise as a whole includes any assumption as to the motivation for our simulation (if we indeed were to be in one). For all we know, it could be a simulation to determine how long it takes to develop sentient life to a point that it can observe inconsistencies in its environment and deduce that it is in a simulation.

We just don't know anything about the 'real world' in this instance and I think guesses in that realm venture into the realm of being impossible to verify. It can still be fun to think about, but it can't really be based on any experimental evidence unless it were deliberately placed there by a hypothetical simulator.