> Alternately, we might discover that our "normal rules" don't rule everywhere, but that they will always rule us, because the rule-set is spreading at-or-above

> Alternately, we might discover that our "normal rules" don't rule everywhere, but that they will always rule us, because the rule-set is spreading at-or-above the speed of light while simultaneously preventing us from being able to exceed it You don't even need to assume it is spreading. You just need to assume that it is locally true in our spacetime neighbourhood. Make that neighbourhood big enough – e.g. a googolplex parsecs by a googolplex years – and it is implausible we'd ever be able to escape it, even if its boundaries were completely static.