Reality as a Matryoshka Doll

Imagine for a second that there is a game programmer. For the purposes of this thought experiment, we're going to assume that this programmer is of uncanny talent, prodigious intellect, and unusual bloody-mindedness.

This programmer is sitting at a computer. Again, for the purposes of this experiment, we're going to posit that this computer is one of unusual potence as regards processing power.

Now this programmer is, at this particular moment, endeavoring to create a game engine that can animate something--say, a robotic arm--with as much accuracy as possible. He starts out by going at it the usual way, having the application instruct a texture-mapped polygonal model that has been bound to an invisible skeleton that defines its range of movement to follow specific predefined animations laid out by the model's designer.

Around about three in the morning, after his fifth cup of coffee (two sugars, no cream) and a quick pick-me-up sandwich (BLT, naturally) it begins to occur to his sleep-deprived brain that there must be a more efficient way of going about all this. That the whole laborious process of designing the three-dimensional object, texture-mapping it, designing the skeleton, binding it to the skeleton, recording its necessary animations, and uploading it to the game engine could be made completely obsolete if only the game engine would presuppose the existence of such a mechanical arm and its functions in the first place.

So he gets a sixth cup of coffee (gin, no cream) downs it, and gets to work.

Two days later he has created an engine that animates objects from the subatomic level on up, and manages to compile it and set it in motion before passing out in a puddle of his own drool.

And as he does this, a virtual void is suddenly and violently populated with a set amount of raw matter, which promptly begins the task of coalescing into virtual planets, virtual stars, virtual galaxies, on and on until on a smallish volcanic planet virtual life springs up, which then proceeds to quickly and violently evolve, altering the world on which it lives, and eventually producing (of its own accord), a virtual robotic arm in a virtual lab of perhaps not the precise design required, but close enough to do the job.

Then somewhere on that smallish (now blue) world, it turns out that not only has this experiment produced a virtual robot arm, but that there is, as it turns out, a whole host of virtual programmers. And one of them happens to be of uncanny talent, prodigious intellect, and unusual bloody-mindedness...

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We may need you to play twing-twang.