Ask HN: Are we in a top down simulation?

Let’s assume for a second that the world is simulated. There are, theoretically, 2 ways to do that. The first is the bottom up approach where we design the subatomic structures and make them interact in certain way and let it all evolve as it will. The second, much more difficult to code but much less resource intensive, is the top down approach where we design the rules of reality at a specific snapshot, and the machine running the simulation simply works backwards and forewords in time.

Say you wanted to simulate human development. You would setup a world simulation as a snapshot of some 100 million years on earth with the conditions you need, and the simulation would simply compute out in all four dimensions, x, y, z, time, but with less precision with grater distance from the origin. And since we are basically fitting data to the problem at this point, there will be some rounding errors at the edges. Since the precise physics is simulated only when it can be observed in the simulation, not everything that happens in the world actually complies with precise subatomic physics. Sometimes it’s just an approximation of the subatomic physics, or, more accurately, the subatomic physics are an approximation of what would be observed if the world was not simulated.

So the inconsistencies between atomic and subatomic worlds could be just a byproduct of a top down simulation. And, if you follow the simulation theory statistical argument, than statistically speaking the less resource intensive top down type of simulations would be far more common. So it’s more likely than not that we are in a top down simulation and quantum physics is just an approximation of our reality, hence the inconsistencies.

Thoughts?