Comment Lack of imagination (Score 5, Insightful) 248
Rather than a lack of algorithmic definition. Math has a funny way of describing more than just our reality, perhaps they aren't working within the correct restrictions to the mathematical parameters that went into their logical proof. Until they can state exactly what is undefinable by physics, and we are unable to define it... I'll just keep ansuming this is less a proof of simulation being impossible, and more that, we lack the current understanding of how the simulation might work.
You dont need one equation to run a simulation, you can work with many. And the simulation only has to apply what your 'players' are observing at a given time for the given things they are observing. If the simulation known how complex it needs to simulate something, and it only needs to do it for 'players' in the simulation to higher complexities, the room for optimization seems pretty large to make the physical requirements much less than impossibly high.
in any case, the whole non algorithmic stuff sounds like a matter of ignorance rather than an impossibliity to define rules for something. Maybe an ignorance we are incapable of overcoming because the simulation won't create something that can, to stop the recursive problem (or we've reached the recursive level where simulating in a simulation is incapable of being good enough to offer that level of understanding due to it's accumulated approximations of true reality)