Our universe is most likely a computer simulation

[cthulu2016]

59. While it is true that people look to available metaphors...

...that does not, in itself, mean that any given metaphor must be defective. (Particularly if it is not too literal. I doubt many Deists really thought the universe was full of giant metal springs and gears, and the metaphor of a diety that set a universe with natural laws in motion and then left, with the universe running within those laws without ongoing divine influence, was a pretty sophisticated thought.)

But yes, there is much cause for humility when considering the way we make metaphors of creation from available technology that we create, from gods molding man from clay to a deity creating a clockwork universe.

When someone today says, "computer simulation," in this context, it doesn't mean a bunch of silicon circuits.

It just means information processing.

If someone pictured the Greek gods on Olympus running our world on Windows 12 that would be a very weak conceptual leap.

I agree that we should be leery of overly literal computer metaphors, but any conscious species will eventually happen on the useful idea that everything is made of information, and is unlikely to do so without the example of mechanical processing, but that does not mean that the very broad information metaphor is dubious.

Or it might be all wrong. Just saying that the fact that our minds are limited (true) doesn't mean we can never happen along something deeply true.

I doubt our universe exists in a computer as we think of the term, but whether this is the only universe or not, it is running in a framework that computes, in the general sense.