Quote Originally Posted by Oracle_Hunter View Post
Of course not, warfare is far more difficult to simulate than an entire Universe with novel physical laws. This is why there are tons of universal emulators these days and zero battlefield simulators.
Well so help me it would follow logic that a complete simulation of the universe would have to be more complex then the universe which poses a certain problem. So I would imagine that these simulated universes are more limited in scope.

Also from I'd imagine certain point of view simulating say a galaxy can be less challenging then predicting a single person. Afterall certain masses of certain marterials plus Einstein and Newton and you have a model galaxy based on known information. The problem with people is that unlike a hydrogen atom people have a distressing ability to be different from one example to the next.

Unless the Culture has omni-species psychohistory (which is not implied by their other tech) they lack the data and methodology to simply simulate everything. Especailly considering that they any enemy of threat will almost surely have some tech parity and quite possibly run models of their own. Play I know you know enough and it pays to have somebody else around to consider that someone added the Iocaine poison to both wine glasses just by random slyness.

And for of course given that their is no prejudice against AI a complete simulation would be by nature creation of another person entitled the the same rights as anyone else. The Culture's Minds may well have capability but refrain out of ethical reasons.