Please note this question isn't about "simulation" as such. It is cast in this way to illustrate a particular sub-to-super ontology relationship:
Given that all we see or seem, are the product of arcane computations on an unimaginably sophisticated machine. We may be tempted to wonder if we could learn something of the outside, after all we too make computers and run simulations...
Problem though is that our most basic physical laws are not "real". Our thoughts may not notice if the simulation stops and starts. All of the information at our disposal is at once as solid as our physical reality and as fleeting as a forgotten dream. How can anything from here tell us anything about what is really real?
Maybe our computers can tell us how the Grand simulator works? We can imagine that it must have a clock cycle. Or if we could generate enough activity we might notice the processor struggling a bit? Alas that with our limited view we could hardly hope to imagine what every possible kind of computer could be.
Yet if there is a simulation, there must be simulators. And they, they must have put, like us, their knowledge into the machines and software. They would have certain aims and expectations when designing a simulation. We should be able to connect with that sentience, that "aspect of design" in our world.
"Question: Has there been any attempts to make ontological distinction based, on objects of our Reality that would be necessarily "inherited" from an upper ontology? Or objects that we could in principle not place in a simulation?
Are there things that would necessarily propagate right down a simulation hierarchy, essentially binding all levels into a particular kind of reality?
**To be fair I was looking into the question from @tidymonkey81 when this question came up.
