I just realized I wanted to address this additional point: > If you had enough resources for the first and not the second, but the first was good enough, why n

I just realized I wanted to address this additional point: > If you had enough resources for the first and not the second, but the first was good enough, why not do the first? Why would you build something that is so immensely large, if you can only simulate a portion of it at a time? This hypothesis suggests that you would have to make the universe at least this large, or that lazy simulation is simpler. Again thinking in terms of occam's razor and path of least resistance. It seems silly to make the unprovable theory even more complex and even harder to prove. With that said I like Razengan's take on it; that is, c would be the speed at which the simulation computes new results (it also assumes the simulation isn't paused during computation). Remember, even in simulation theory, there's nothing that suggests we humans are the intended product or object of observation; just like an ant farm that happens to be somewhere in some house in GTA5 isn't specifically the point of GTA5. So I wouldn't conflate "lazy loading" with "there are humans in this tiny corner of space, so we only need to simulate this tiny corner of space, and that makes a big difference in terms of computing power".