> A universe only running at the level of abstraction we can understand it. Perhaps Newtonian physics was actually complete until we forced the universe to bail out of that optimisation

Very simply explained, that's literally quantum mechanics. Our reality changes depending on how close we look at it. Some quantum/computer scientists have gone so far as to say that reality "runs" extremely sophisticated quantum error correction algorithms to stabilize something so fundamentally unstable into our observable reality. It was even discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18817410