Next step: imagine for a second, that the universe as we see it is just a giant game of life simulation.
Assuming plausible, now imagine it is actually using a Hashlife-like implementation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashlife). E.g. the implementation does not actually compute all time steps in sequence. Instead, it leaps strides here and there and whoever "runs" it can rewind time to any point (yes, this idea was explored in Permutation City).
Now imagine implementation has a bug, that allows the simulated universe to perform arbitrary code execution. How real is this simulated universe (or more really like observed) with a chance to break out vs a simulated universe that runs on a bug free simulation software?
Depending on complexity of the pattern Hashlife may be unable to speed up the computation and even may turn out to be slower than the simple implementation.
The most annoying thing about Permutation City is that it intentionally disregards complexity. Generally in simulation it will be possible to speed up many types of computation, but there will be many computations that will be impossible to speed up, even some of simplest cellular automata are like that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_irreducibility
Assuming plausible, now imagine it is actually using a Hashlife-like implementation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashlife). E.g. the implementation does not actually compute all time steps in sequence. Instead, it leaps strides here and there and whoever "runs" it can rewind time to any point (yes, this idea was explored in Permutation City).
Now question 1: in this setup, what does communicating with observer even mean? https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/math/a16593584/tupp...
Now imagine implementation has a bug, that allows the simulated universe to perform arbitrary code execution. How real is this simulated universe (or more really like observed) with a chance to break out vs a simulated universe that runs on a bug free simulation software?