I've thought about this at length. The most compelling reason I've thought of to create a simulation of the universe is obvious - to learn about it. To see pos

I've thought about this at length. The most compelling reason I've thought of to create a simulation of the universe is obvious - to learn about it. To see possible futures and discover things organically. Then I thought, "this is super complicated." Why would you do this, as you probably had to have the answers to the universe to begin with. Then I started thinking like a programmer. If you can somehow find or guess the initial conditions to the universe, that would be enough to have it play out in some useful variation. We still have a lot of work to do to get to the point where you could make reasonable guesses, but finding out everything on our own would probably take an insane amount of time and we'd be extinct by then.