I was thinking about this some more on my walk. Relativity explains how space and time are aspects of the same thing, change in one means change in the other. This as I understand it is based on underlying available energy needed to keep the simulation going. Each region of reality can be objectively defined as x number of Planck cubes. Little 1x1x1 Planck volumes at the bottom of our existence (putting aside for the moment the question or whether or not there is anything further down). Well maybe even the volume and area are simulation and we need to go to Planck length itself. But how do we figure out how many Planck lengths there are in a given region of existence?
I looked up how many Planck lengths there are in a cube meter. The answer is supposedly:
24,410,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.
That’s …a lot.
Let’s assume each one of those is one unit of energy for the continuous calculations of change. What I mean is, mathematically down at that baseline level of existence there is really nothing but “numbers”, raw quantity interacting according to basic logic. This is quantized/digitized, so energy from one spot changes instantly according to energy in another spot. This means the whole setup, no matter how large it is, can actually function “at once” as a single coherent thing. The universe itself. There is an underlying common unit-value of time, it is “0” or instant-speed. That is because the distance between one Planck length and another, whether we talk about space or time distances, is mathematically collapsed to 0.
Yet energy exists here. Or at least, raw numbers, values in calculation. Think about a computer with the number of transistors equal to the huge number above. That computer would have access to so much potential computing power. Each one of those Planck lengths as a bit, 1 or 0 since it is quantized at that level. Therefore as energy is moving “instantly” at that level across that massive number of bits, calculations are occurring or can be said to emerge. I see this as the source of the simulation, i.e. reality as we experience it.
Bringing this back to time and space: the more energy (the greater the number of Planck lengths in a given region) devoted to calculating real time changes in motion in space means less energy/Planck lengths that can be devoted to calculating real time changes in motion in time. What we experience as space or time are both “illusions” (from the perspective of the Planck lengths themselves, had they perspectives at all) which is not to say they do not exist and are not also very real (for us, and not only for us, since it is true that even a simulation still objectively exists as it does). So Einstein is explained here, the link between space and time dilation in relativity. What about mass? As velocity increases so does mass, according to Einstein. But what is “mass”?
Mass seems to be the pull one part of reality has on the other parts around it. The “influence” of it. Clearly that is linked to gravity because we literally observe that pull and “influence”, it is exactly what we experience and measure as gravity itself. But what if gravity is just another way of saying mass, what if mass is just a part of the simulation that calculates necessary influence/pressure of one thing upon another? We tend to think of mass as equal to the amount of ‘stuff’ packed into a given volume, and I don’t think that is wrong but it might be only part of the answer. That ‘stuff’ being packed in (molecules, atoms etc) are really just mathematical wave-functions or probability waveforms according to quantum mechanics. So their “physicality” is an illusion. Which means our intuition of mass as being equal to the amount of stuff packed physically into a given volume is also incorrect, at least on this more fundamental level.
So mass is probably part of the calculations-going-on in the Planck universal computer-level of existence having to do with which manifested aspects of a given region of existence will have what kind of influence or necessary “force” against other things and why. If one mass bumps into another they resist, generating a force as Newton described, but we know that deeper down this is just orbiting clouds of electrons in each object resisting each other due to mutually repelling negative EM fields. All of that is just mathematical calculation as far as I see it. So mass becomes just another component needing to be continuously calculated-as-change in real time by the baseline ‘Planck computer of existence’ (for any given region of existence we want to talk about). Mass, space, and time are all being calculated like this, and there is a finite number of compute power available equal to the number of Planck lengths in a given region.
Why does mass therefore increase at higher speeds? Maybe: As speed increases, calculation requirement in terms of that object (region of existence) which is increasing in speed becomes more and more complex and energy intensive as the object’s speed gets faster and faster. Why? Because there is more to calculate, the object is encountering more and more reality around itself in the same unit time. All of this needs to be handled in real time by the computer. As the intensity of calculations increases and more energy is drawn away from “time” calculation to manage vector changes in space, the “influence” of that region of space is also increasing. Why? Because of the sheer power of all that computing going on to manage the constant vector changes and the fact this region of existence, when it encounters something else ahead of itself as it is moving, is going to exert a more profound effect upon that other region by virtue of its increasing speed. This is expressed as the given region itself becoming more massive, more able to change or move or impact other regions around it.
Time slowing down is also easy to understand in this context because “time” as in the totality of the pace of time across the entire region is more like a background phenomenon or secondary emergent effect, more like a leftover necessity to the system itself. Time in this way is like the context of change which is summed as the average of all total changes going on within that region at once, flattened out or curved toward a baseline common value so as to keep that particular region more or less held together and not tearing itself apart.
No idea if any of that answers your original question though 