At the lowest levels, with quantum weirdness (to our way of thinking), yes, we can only create metaphors to try and don't really understand it. Same at the extreme other end where relativistic effects can't be ignored.

But we don't live at those levels. That low-level unpredictability usually is statistically predictable at the macro level where we live. "Coloric" doesn't exist, but it is a perfectly usable concept. There is no need to actually measure the position and velocity of every molecule of gas an a balloon to understand its temperature.

So, to us, the world is 99% magic at the extremes, but <1% where we actually live; we can understand this regime fairly well.

i have moved to this camp as well, and i don't mean in the "we don't understand it so we call it magic", i mean it seems more and more like actual magic.

people are talking about timing attacks on state updates in the universe, hopefully we can exploit it

> people are talking about timing attacks on state updates in the universe, hopefully we can exploit it

If the universe did happen to be a simulation (as opposed to just naturally holographic), I imagine exploiting it might be the only way to conclusively prove so. As an actual simulation, there would be a risk of someone and/or something observing it. If intelligence in our universe tends to eventually discover exploits and if the observers aren't fond of simulation errors, we might have ourselves an unexpected answer to the Fermi paradox.