I was talking with some guys on the local repeater, and we got into "what is reality" sort of discussions. I mentioned that some people hypothesize that we and our reality is simply some unknown intelligence's version of the "Sims", i.e. we are just a simulation "running" on some system we can't investigate. But yet we also have computers (simulated?) that run simulations ...
I'm not a computer scientist per se, but of course I know that a physical computer can run a simulation of the weather, an engine, and many other things in software. So what I want to know is,
A. Can a physical computer simulate itself or another entire computer architecture, in software (forget about why, just is it possible). I think the answer is ... yes?
B. If it's possible, then can a physical computer postulated above, running a simulation of a computer, and on that simulation of a computer, simulate yet another computer?
So in the physical computer, it's running a simulation of a computer, which is running a simulation of a computer.
No, I haven't been smoking any funny stuff, I am really stuck on whether that is possible or not. I don't know.