universe as computer simulation quantum

The Universe as a Computer Simulation, Quantum Mechanics

I had a thought last week. Say you wanted to build a simulated

universe, and your simulation would contain intelligent beings. To

conserve computational resources, you would want to avoid simulating

aspects of the universe that are not observed by its inhabitants. It

would be like a colossal view frustum culling process. For example,

events that are very small or very far away from an observer might not

need to be computed.

If our universe is a computer simulation, maybe that's why we see

quantum mechanical effects. The detailed positions of individual

particles remain in indeterminant states until they are observed, at

which point their wave functions collapse (i.e. their states are

computed in more detail).

Interestingly, this entire thought process assumes that the observer