You're right. My hypothesis is not really distinguishable from the single tier. I'm pretty sure the division I made was a vestigial from the insanely complicated hacked-up version of reality I constructed to believe in back when I devised a version of simulationism that was meant to allow me to accept the findings of modern science without abandoning my religious beliefs (back before I'd ever heard of rationalism or Baye's theorem when I was still asking the question "Does the evidence permit me to believe, and, if not, how can I re-construe it so that it does?" because that once made sense to me.)

When I posted my question, the distinction between 'laws of physics' and 'everything else' was obvious to me. But obvious or not, the distinction is meaningless. Thanks for pointing that out.