> There is always hope of figuring it out given enough time. Well, there could be a message embedded into some basic universal structure, left there in case an

> There is always hope of figuring it out given enough time. Well, there could be a message embedded into some basic universal structure, left there in case any intelligent life forms might come across it. But other than that, I don't see how any arbitrary phenomenon happening in the universe could possibly tip the scale of plausibility in either direction. Discoveries of computation-like processes have indeed been (ab-)used for that purpose in the past, but people forget that there is no reason to believe this couldn't happen in a natural universe. > I see no reason to assume we couldn't "escape" the simulation and enter the next-level-up There would be absolutely no difference in "escaping" an artificial universe or a real universe. In both cases, the exact same problems apply. Artificiality in this context doesn't really mean anything.