Are simulations just as real? Or are they only culturally real? A simulation of the weather only makes sense when you have humans around to interpret the output from displays. Inside the machine, it's just a lot of 1s and 0s. It's not even really that. It's a lot of electrons moving about. A bunch of electrons aren't a simplification of the weather. It's only because human culture has computing devices that simulations make any sort of sense.

Physical systems aren't about anything, and don't represent anything on their own. It's the entire problem of intentionality.

> Inside the machine, it's just a lot of 1s and 0s.

And inside reality, we're just a lot of vibrating strings. I don't see any meaningful difference what the fundamental constituents of reality are.

"Real" is simply a relation between perceived and perceiver.

> Physical systems aren't about anything, and don't represent anything on their own. It's the entire problem of intentionality.

By your own argument, 1s and 0s aren't "about anything" either, they're just as devoid of intentionality anything "truly real".

> It's a lot of electrons moving about

The actual weather is also a lot of electrons moving about.

Sure, in part, but we don't consider weather systems to be running simulations.

Although Jaron Lanier wrote a paper on treating a meteor shower as a simulated computer running simulated minds to make a point about consciousness.

Nothing, but the possibility does increase the chance of those laws changing.