Who said that it had to be ? Paintings / Photographs / Movies / Video Games aren't real either, and still we appreciate them nonetheless.
Some of the issues that you raise up can still probably dealt with.
It's a shame that TFA stops at the molecular level, because lower than that things are different. To start with, details aren't infinite. You literally cannot tell elementary particles apart, because they do NOT have detail, and this has wide-ranging implications. One of the laws of physics that is deemed to be the most inviolable is the law of paraconservation of information : our ability to transform energy into useful work depends on the information we have about the system in question ! Related to this, the number of involved particles is typically so huge that you can assume fluctuations to be negligible.
So for instance what one could do, is to only simulate the reality deep enough depending on the momentary attention the user is paying to a specific part of it, and rely on statistics otherwise. And only store the history of those parts, and only for as long as they are expected to persist.
You could also provide intricate and this time literally infinite amount of detail using fractals - if exact reproduction isn't the goal.
«Transferring your soul» is a way harder question, since you would have to first figure out what you even mean by «soul».
Some of the issues that you raise up can still probably dealt with.
It's a shame that TFA stops at the molecular level, because lower than that things are different. To start with, details aren't infinite. You literally cannot tell elementary particles apart, because they do NOT have detail, and this has wide-ranging implications. One of the laws of physics that is deemed to be the most inviolable is the law of paraconservation of information : our ability to transform energy into useful work depends on the information we have about the system in question ! Related to this, the number of involved particles is typically so huge that you can assume fluctuations to be negligible.
So for instance what one could do, is to only simulate the reality deep enough depending on the momentary attention the user is paying to a specific part of it, and rely on statistics otherwise. And only store the history of those parts, and only for as long as they are expected to persist.
You could also provide intricate and this time literally infinite amount of detail using fractals - if exact reproduction isn't the goal.
«Transferring your soul» is a way harder question, since you would have to first figure out what you even mean by «soul».