If you're living inside the simulation, there's a lot of flex in how the computations running the simulation get carried out that you would never notice. It's e

If you're living inside the simulation, there's a lot of flex in how the computations running the simulation get carried out that you would never notice. It's effectively saying there's a separation between the implementation of the simulation and the experience of living inside the simulation. In the book, this is illustrated by computing some time-steps out of order. (This, it turns out, isn't a very realistic example, but is illustrative of the idea.) Someone inside the simulation doesn't realize they've been computed 'out of order.' It also doesn't matter how fast you run the simulation: the simulator clock and the simulated clock can be completely decoupled. You can run it on a single machine verrrrrrry slowly, or in a gigantic data center, and anyone inside the simulation would never know the difference. So what is the simulation then? It's the collection of states, regardless of how and in what order they are computed. The Dust Theory is taking this to a kind of logical extreme: Sometimes these states just naturally arise in random configurations of particles, because the universe is vast. It doesn't matter what /order/ they arise in (as we already saw), just that all of the states randomly arise at one time or another. "What if simulation by galactic bogosort?" It's also similar to the Library of Babel, but for computation instead of books. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Library_of_Babel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Library_of_Babel) And it has the same problem as the Library of Babel; typos are unavoidable when there's no intention. (hell, typos are unavoidable even when there IS intention...) So then we need to assert that the 'real' simulation is the one that just happens to have all of the 'right' random states, not to be confused with all of the untold billions of other almost-right states. (and then you can ask, if you've followed things THIS far, is it even necessary for the 'right' states to arise, given that they must eventually due to the law of large numbers, alongside all of these slightly-wrong versions? Or is it enough for the simulation to be mathematically possible, so that we can assert that the right states exist?)