If Reality is a Simulation, then…

Added: 2026-05-27

[00:00:11]Hurry, Finn. At the seashell center lies the cornucopia's smallest door.

[00:00:30]The ego is the system that runs your sense of self. It is made out of thought patterns, emotions, and behavior loops, and the stories that try to hold it all together. Left unchecked, it creates endless existential searching, chronic disconnection, and the persistent sense that something is wrong. The goal of my videos is clarity, to see your identity and its contradictions for what they are, named precisely, to finally understand what it is that we're all running away from.

[00:00:55]If reality is a simulation, then there are a lot of existential implications.

[00:00:59]Why would reality be a simulation? Like, what does it mean when we say this?

[00:01:04]Because there's so many ways to conceptualize this. But, to ground this in just facts, of course reality is a simulation.

[00:01:10]>> [laughter] >> Because your brain renders a reality model through its own perception.

[00:01:17]This means that whoever you are is already a simulation, and it has to be.

[00:01:23]Your own perception isn't in contact with absolute external reality. You can actually not make out where is the difference between internal and external.

[00:01:34]It all is one system that just experiences itself.

[00:01:38]And the way it experiences itself is dependent on its own social programming, and its biological condition, and its environment, and its genetic genetics, and yeah, just your personality, who you are, what you want, what you wish to be.

[00:01:55]All of this is by nature is simulation because you if you had a different way your brain was configured, then you would like a different type of ice cream. And if you were born in a different time and you had a different environment, well, then you would perceive all of existence differently.

[00:02:14]You would think the earth earth is flat when we didn't have the technology for it. Your entire perception is completely predicated on this internet world that we're living right now, which is a co by the crazy place to live in. Your own sense data from your own bodily experience must be a simulation. So, you might make the metaphor that your own experience, like your life, your entire life, is nothing but a dream. And that you really wake up when you die. And you you're waking up from the dream that was your life into some new reality. This is often how it is being thought of for somebody who believes in yeah, some sort of reincarnation or open individualist system. Although I might say it very factually, there a lot of existentially troubling ideas that then open up because if everything that we call reality is precisely that, then what is reality as a whole?

[00:03:15]If all experience that we know of from living organism organisms is basically this self-created internal reality model and all we ever interact with is this internal reality model, then who are you?

[00:03:33]Who is this reality modeling thing if not the entirety of the system?

[00:03:42]So, I'm talking to you through a microphone and cameras and I'm talking to you across the globe and somehow it all works.

[00:03:50]I am in fact now an extension of this creative process, of all the technology that surrounds me. And only through this extension, you truly know me.

[00:04:02]And honestly, I'm a simulation right now in front of your screen because I'm just pixels and sound waves that have been recorded from the past. And you might feel like I'm present with you right now, but I'm not. I'm talking from the past through a technology portal, but you my your mind doesn't care about this. It knows it intellectually, but it still kind of feels like somebody is talking to you because, yeah, you're hearing a voice. And I mean, I am real, okay? I swear.

[00:04:29]So, the implication here is that I'm always an extension from my environment as you are an extension from your environment.

[00:04:39]So, if that's the case, then the simulation doesn't really stop with you.

[00:04:43]It is extended towards everything you perceive.

[00:04:48]In fact, it is even happening in places where you don't perceive anything.

[00:04:54]The entire planet right now is running countless and countless numbers of these internal world simulations.

[00:05:03]From many different types of human experiences to many different types of animal experiences or insect experiences or got plant experiences. Who knows what is out there? And if you've taken psychedelics, you know that there's much more esoteric stuff out there, too.

[00:05:22]So, is the entire universe precisely the thing that is simulating everything? And if that's the case, then isn't all everything just fake?

[00:05:34]Isn't free will fake? Is your sense of meaning fake? Is your love life fake?

[00:05:41]Is there anything that can be found underneath all of this processing that the mind does that grounds you in some sense of truth and reality and makes it not like everything is just this weird dream state with no clear center or control. The thing that makes you believe that reality is real is always related to your own pain. But seeing your own mind as a mechanism that constructs a meaning out of everything makes it so that even the suffering and the pain can stop to feel real because you can see even this is also just part of the simulation in order to keep your life. It's the way the brain organizes itself around discomfort.

[00:06:31]But if you have ever talked to somebody in a psychotic state you know that they experience a ton of what they would call meaning and purpose. When you listen to testimonies of people who went through a psychotic episode and start to hear voices or have visions the sense is that these visions are more real than real and the meaning that the voices infuse you with is more true than true.

[00:07:07]So even though it doesn't make sense for you to believe that your hand is being full of rot and about to fall off or that you are now forced to stay in the room because if you leave the room the world is going to implode. Like as ridiculous this seems from like a sober state from inside the internal world simulation it feels absolutely real and it matters as if it was real.

[00:07:35]The same if you have had a psychedelic experience and you start to see a lot of content in the experience, meaning you see a red elephant, for example, and then the red elephant is threatening your life, and then you need to run out of the room because the elephant is chasing you. But, none of it is real.

[00:07:52]You're just on drugs. It doesn't matter that it isn't real, right? For you, it is.

[00:07:59]But, then there's still a distinction that matters, right? Because from everybody externally, it seems like a delusion.

[00:08:07]You're not in the same reality frame as other people when you are delusional.

[00:08:14]And even within the delusion, there's a sort of reality modeling that is happening that still is real because it exists and influences your action.

[00:08:22]So, now I'm drawing a neat distinction between the, let's say, internal world simulation and the macro world simulation. The macro world simulation would then be what other people can verify as a community, and then as a community you come together and say, "This is real and this is false and this is wrong and this is this is a chair and this is not a chair." And then through the collective, you create a sort of collective simulation where everybody agrees, and as long as everybody agrees, it's all true. And if you look deep into how society's structured, how culture's structured, how people talk to each other, it's also completely fake and all predicated on wanting to reduce discomfort and reducing friction between people.

[00:09:10]So, if all of this is the case, then where can I find truth? Where I can can I find something that grounds me? Because right now what you're saying is that if reality is a simulation and there are like even different degrees of the simulation, then there's really no point in anything. And this is really scary. It is precisely this sense that all meaning is self-constructed and that there's no ground to hold oneself onto that is felt when you go into these simulation theories because in a way you abstract physical existence into yeah, some abstract computer simulation which in some reasonable way to look at it, it is precisely what is happening. It just doesn't need to be computers. It doesn't matter if we are in five layers below the matrix and this is what happens five layers below the matrix or if this is God who created a test and you need to figure out the nature of the test or if all your physical sensations are just beamed to you from like a brain in a vat or whatever.

[00:10:23]All of this is fun to think about or fun to theorize about, but at the end of the day it's more likely that you're getting deluded in creating your own sense of reality as a simulation that makes it so that this is real.

[00:10:38]And this is very dangerous once you notice the constructed nature of existence and reality because the implications of stuff not being quite real makes the mind create ego narratives fueled with meaning that then is what you see when you see all of these spiritual nut jobs. It is very natural to happen though because what you can uncover through deconstructing yeah, the sense of solid reality is so extraordinary and so trippy that the way to infuse meaning into into it, like in some sort of story type way gives you again the sense of truth and tethering to something that you can hold onto which for most people gives the sense of safety.

[00:11:25]But if you follow the Buddhists and keep deconstructing the nature of the self then there's no ground to hold on to and you start to spiral deeper and deeper into the sense that nothing is real and everything is an illusion.

[00:11:41]And from one perspective, this is very deep insight into the nature of reality.

[00:11:46]From the other, you're getting very ungrounded and detached and a kind of losing the plot of what it actually means to be real.

[00:11:57]And it's like a pendulum swing. So, you pendulum swing from wow, reality is mystical and everything is incredible and I cannot believe that anything exists and how real it is to detachment and emptiness and wow, everything is a construction and nothing is quite real and everything that I perceive only happens in my head and all my friends and relationships are just fragments of my imagination and nothing is permanent and they can also be all and beauty in that.

[00:12:26]And it can it can also be extremely yeah, overwhelming. And this this is this is for both of these states and it kind of pendulum swings from one place to another until you find equilibrium.

[00:12:37]And you can see that if in fact everything is a simulation then there is no simulation.

[00:12:45]There's no difference between simulation and non-simulation if everything is a simulation because we are actually destroying destroying the definition of the word.

[00:12:55]So, if reality is just a dream then everything is a dream.

[00:13:00]Now, from some higher states of experience like let's say you have a psychedelic experience or let's take another example. Let's say you meditate very deeply for a long period of time and then you have a sort of awakening experience and then you see how constructed and conditioned everything is and from there you have this overwhelming sense that yeah, everything is pure empty and nothing is real.

[00:13:29]You can either use this insight and deconstruct your social conditionings and your personal narratives of your own life and as an end result you will sense that reality is more real than before or can or you can take the sense of emptiness and yeah everything is a simulation reality and detach further from your own personal life and your own emotion and your own experiences and then from there you basically kind of locking yourself out from deeper contact with with actual reality.

[00:14:11]Be- because it is very easy to stay comfortable in the sense of detachment.

[00:14:15]It is very easy to feel comfortable in the sense that reality is a simulation.

[00:14:19]It's no accident that yeah this idea is quite popular because it kind of in a paradoxical way it rounds the craziness that's happening everywhere because everything is so crazy that assuming it's all a simulation always makes more almost makes more sense than believing that any of this real and and it's because it's kind of true right?

[00:14:40]It's just that if existence can make up this experience it can make up any other experience as well.

[00:14:48]And therefore it's all real.

[00:14:50]The the the distinction only matters if you want to detach from the realness but sorry you need to account for the actual simulation just because everything is simulated doesn't make it unreal and that's what's so trippy about it.

[00:15:06]It's the fact that something is being simulated that makes it real in the first place. If you're simulating a video game world you can only interact with this game because it is a simulated world. If it wasn't simulated then it truly wouldn't be real. Then there would be nothing to talk about.

[00:15:26]The same way we relate to dreams when they're all over, our it was just a dream. It didn't actually have lasting consequences for my life, but within the context of your dream it all was real.

[00:15:35]Now, it would make a lot of sense that looking beyond your finite mortal self, looking into the vast cosmos of all possibilities, that yeah, your death your death would be kind of like awakening up to whatever lies beyond your individualized self. Now, there's also a very scary implication about solipsism.

[00:15:58]Because if it is a simulation, then how did you get to this place? Like, where did it all start? Who created you? What has created it? And again, very easy to create narratives around it and find some, yeah, ultimate answer that that feels more satisfying to the ego.

[00:16:15]But if you keep dissolving into the sense of your unreality, then what often happens is a sense of solipsism, where you feel like you're the only experience in all of the universe.

[00:16:27]And this can feel very scary and isolating because you're you're basically creating a world model where everything is not just a simulation, but you're literally the only inhabitant in that simulation.

[00:16:43]And it only this only makes sense if you create a sense of separation from your own experience and the ego.

[00:16:51]If you create a sense of separation from your experience and your ego, then you're basically like your ego inhabiting your own experience, and since it's the only thing you can be aware of, you you're going to feel trapped in it. Because you are separating yourself from what you actually are. But if you be become one with it or recognize yourself as one with it, then yeah, you literally are what is happening, and therefore you are the simulation, and therefore you don't make the distinction between being in a simulation or not because you are the thing. Like, There's There's no distinction anymore. And then it becomes quite obvious that it was all real to begin with.

[00:17:26]Now, this pendulum swing that I talked about previously is important because it is the natural progress of it. A lot of people find their way into spirituality either by recognizing universal oneness and they see themselves as everybody, which you can also, yeah, find more information of in my my video about open individualism. Or there's the sense of emptiness, which is the Buddhist path, which leads you more towards empty individualism, which is the sense of dissolving in your own experience.

[00:17:53]Or sensing that there is no self. That there's just truly just experience and there's no relationship with a personhood. So, to fully be integrated, you usually have to move towards both of these extremes.

[00:18:07]And only then you can truly understand what it means to be real. Because if not, you always get stuck in one perspective or by the other. And you still make a separation. The duality between Yeah. What's real and what's not real.

[00:18:21]What is the metaphysical truth and what is the metaphysical falsehood. You're going to keep playing games with yourself.

[00:18:27]That, yeah, separate stuff into one but not the other. And as long as you do that, you create an internal split. So, you end up in this very weird paradox that basically can almost not be named.

[00:18:38]That's can barely be spoken.

[00:18:41]Because to any ordinary human being, it's just yeah, insane.

[00:18:48]But, yeah, in fact, you do exist in yourself. But once owns, then the cornucopia is full of connection.

[00:19:06]WOW.

[00:19:08]>> [laughter] >> THAT MUST HAVE BEEN SOME CAVE.

[00:19:12]No comment.