It is aesthetic, and probably a metaphor but not sure for what. I could probably come up with something if you gave me a minute. Maybe about the futility of life, or its overlooked common beauty, it's usually something about one of those. We had a downstairs bathroom window that was overlooked.
Cheat is too strong, Kirk regularly takes the high ground when playing dirty is the easier option and even expected by those around him but he also certainly has luck on his side.
The ability to 'override automatic responses and maintain complex goals' is why we get up at six in the morning to go to a meeting we already know the outcome of and frankly I am not sure its something that is working for us.
Having those who write the OS so incestuously involved in hawking hardware is probably a bad idea and unsustainable when they have so demonstrably switched their emphasis to forcing new kit.
Playing as a character is probably the point of the simulation, significant cheat codes quickly become boring so they likely would be living as an ordinary person and so difficult to distinguish. Their knowledge and skill set might even be limited to simulation appropriate levels. The scale of the simulation is important too, if it is not limited to just the Earth but simulates the entire galaxy or universe then it is likely we are too mundane of a locality to be visited and are actually just living our lives as background scenery. Or perhaps most of our history and evolution was ticked away theoretically and we are only actually simulated when we are visited. It is hard to believe dinosaurs lived 365 days a year, all that time on their hands, all those long summer afternoons to idle through.
When I was young I took a camera on every school trip and photographed all the scenery but now looking back the only thing that is interesting about those photographs is when I accidentally included someone from my class. All those places are still there but the people are gone.
I think you need to do a little more reading.