We establish four axioms concerning the physical basis and derive two structural consequences that form the foundation of the framework. From the axioms alone — without additional metaphysical assumptions — we prove that a time is not a fundamental external property but an internal ordinal relation emergent from the observer’s finite information structure. Most critically, we derive that a computer running a simulation and the simulation itself are not causally related but are two different arrangements of the same information: neither is more fundamental than the other. This representational equivalence, which we call substrate independence, is the foundational principle on which the subsequent papers in this series are built.
The representational equivalence has an immediate consequence for physics. If a computer running a simulation of a physical system and the physical system itself are two arrangements of the same information, then any property of the physical system must be reflected in the execution trace of its simulation.
The claims may be falsifiable in the future, with the advances in technology.
[next]