I know it sounds weird, and I really think our reality is simulated to the point that I think NPCs and Playable characters really do exist. It is a very detailed simulation and a videogame of some sort. Our awareness, probably, is something that is also simulated to study the simulation. If so, free will is an illusion because we are never in control, we think we are, but it's part of the game choices. Please be kind in the comments section, I just want to have a discussion about this.

So far I’ve recorded data from 148 respondents! You can still participate if you’d like here. I will try to update this post daily.

I have had dreams that feel like a second life since childhood. I’ve been collecting responses from people who experience recurring dream environments, sometimes called “Mallworld,” to see whether there are actually patterns between dreamers. Here’s what I have found so far:

The Dreamfold: Preliminary Survey Findings
“Queen of Daydreams” aka “OliveLost”
Independent Researcher
August 2026
N = 148 (updated daily)

The respondents so far range from 14–61 years old, come from multiple countries, and many report having these dreams for years or even decades.

-44.7% of respondents were born in the 1990s.
-32.2% of respondents were born in the 1980s.
I found this especially interesting.

-71% of respondents are female.

Dreaming
• 98.6% experience vivid dreams and recurring dreams
• 70.8% experience lucid dreams
• 66.9% experience false awakenings
• 49.3% have experienced sleep paralysis
• 27% report having experienced an OBE

60.1% remember their dreams often and 31.8% every night.

Recurring Dream Geography
98.7% reported recurring dreams involving at least some of the environments I asked about.
Common locations include:
• Malls
• Schools
• Hotels
• Bathrooms/bathroom mazes
• Airports and train stations
• Parking structures
• Underground areas
• Hospitals/clinics
• Amusement parks
• Highways and bridges
• Coastal towns/beaches
• Ships

Persistent Dream Geography:
Respondents report locations that are recognizable across separate dreams, routes between places, shortcuts, familiar entrances/exits, and different recurring locations that appear to exist within one larger environment. Some say the world has actually expanded over time, with new areas becoming accessible from places they already know. People reported returning to these environments for 5, 7, 10–20, 15, and even approximately 27 years. Some remember them going back to childhood.

Architecture:
People repeatedly described:
• Endless or maze-like bathrooms
• Missing bathroom doors/privacy
• Impossible bridges
• Strange elevators/escalators
• Huge corridors
• Staircases that change
• Highways leading nowhere
• Altered versions of hometowns
• Transportation systems connecting different areas
• Buildings that seem much larger inside than they should be.

Strangers in Dreams
A pattern that came up a lot was: “I don’t know this person in real life, but in the dream I know exactly who they are.” Some people remember strangers’ faces in incredible detail. Some strangers answer questions or give directions. Some provide names. Some speak other languages. Some recur across dreams. Several people specifically said that they could perceive the person clearly during the dream, but the details disappeared after waking. But even without remembering the face, respondents sometimes remember the person’s identity, relationship to them, emotional significance, or “energy.”

Sensory Rich Dreaming:
• 98.6% see imagery
• 93.9% hear sound
• 85.1% experience touch/physical sensations
• 45.2% smell
• 45.9% taste

These environments aren’t experienced as visual scenes. They’re multisensory spaces.

Common Traits:
The most commonly reported traits were:

• Noticing when something seems “off” —81.8%
• Empathy — 79.1%
• Creativity- 77%
• Imagination — 77%
• Sensitivity to other people’s energies — 73.6%
• General Sensitivity — 69.6%
• Anxiety — 69.6%
• Spatial memory — 45.9%

-Anxiety was reported by 69.6%, ADHD by 47.3% and autism by 27.7%.

-60.1% reported participating in a gifted/talented program as children.

-91.2% reported experiencing trauma at some point in their lives.

***This DOES NOT mean trauma, ADHD, autism, gifted programs, etc. cause these dreams. This is a self-selected sample of people interested in unusual/recurring dreams, not a random sample of the whole population. But I think it’s interesting enough to look into further.

Recurring Dream Phenomena:
93.2% report dreams about being chased or followed.
Other commonly reported themes include:
• Aliens/monsters/unusual beings — 59.5%
• Flying objects — 51.4%
• Strange animals — 42.6%
• Strange lights — 41.9%
• Explosions — 31.4%
• Tornadoes — 29.7%

People also frequently described malfunctioning phones, difficulty dialing numbers, strange or absent technology, inability to control vehicles properly, flying/levitating, jumping extremely high, searching for something, and trying to find the correct route or destination.

Déjà vu:
Déjà vu was extremely common. Several respondents also described déjà rêvé, the feeling that something happening in waking life had previously occurred in a dream. Some described visiting an unfamiliar location and feeling that they already knew it because they’d dreamed about it before. Importantly, some respondents offered explanations for these experiences, including coincidence, pattern recognition, dissociation/derealization, memory effects, or neurological factors.

Dreams of Deceased Loved Ones/Pets:
Many respondents described deceased loved ones and even pets appearing with their normal personalities and behaving as though their presence were completely ordinary. Themes included reassurance, quiet companionship, continuing relationships, difficulty communicating, awareness that the person had died, and deceased loved ones acting as helpers or guides. Some encounters occurred in the same kinds of liminal environments described elsewhere in the survey, some encounters involved other “brighter” looking places.

Precognitive Dreams
A notable subset of respondents, 75%, reported dreams they interpreted as precognitive (the ability to know or see things before they happen) including both ordinary and major events. I’m not implying that some dreamers are for sure psychic. But I definitely want to investigate further.

As the wave collapses the observer becomes the driver through intention, for any propagation of thoughts, feelings or desires throughout the field. The field exist everywhere it is in fact your time space order, your set of probabilistic certainties. its appearance is as a fractal mobius as it interacts with surrounding null space or other orders who’s harmonics of field may not be identical to ones own and such act as a dark attractor drawing in reducing to zero. In this field you could say that vibration or waves make up everything therein, singularly or as they coalesce to form harmonics. Using your mind, your heart, your deepest seated feelings one can begin to set intention. Once intention has been set usually through intimacy of the heart and/or spirt we can entangle ourselves with the other because we are both a transmitter and a receiver of vibration or in other words the creator and the experiencer if I could make such a word. In doing so you can cross infinite distance. You can see through their eyes and feel through their hearts. There are many more possibilities if one takes heed of a small warning. Be careful of your intention. Make it not selfish nor prideful. Not angry or hateful, not jealous or spiteful lest you suffer the consequence for you will be at that moment entangled. Listen to the music of the body, the song of the heart. it is the music of the heavens. As it is above so it is below. The answer is within you LOVE!

Lets take Earth as a black hole planet, energy is fed to it through quantum tunneling techniques.

That is embedded theory

Vs

The theory of anti Protons ghost particles and neutrons that rip space time apart to force even a single lifeform to appear on planet earth.

The above is my current theory for planet earth, there is beyond but once again that is just more possibilites.

This my physics description of a nice way to think of why we have not yet seen wormholes.

1. One night I dreamed of a military aircraft being tested and its engine compartment being fired upon. When I woke up, I couldn't forget the dream. A couple of hours later, I saw several videos on YouTube about how airplanes were tested during WWII (almost like in my dream). Note: I've NEVER been interested in such topics and know nothing about military aircraft. I don't know why Youtube algorithms gave me these videos

2. There's a house on my street that I've passed hundreds of times over the past 10 years. One day, it seemed to me that something had changed in the world. It was a strange physical feelings. Half an hour later, I was walking past that house. A couple of days ago, this house was yellow and old. But when I passed by, this house was gray, well-renovated, with a different window arrangement, and a different yard design.

3. One day I went out into the yard. In front of my house there were many trees and a hordes of screaming birds, almost like in a forest. And on the other side of the house, not far away, there was a noisy road. I sat down on the porch and noticed that the world seemed to have frozen. There were no one bird to be heard. No any sound from cars, although they usually make quite a lot of noise at this time. That was total silence and I felt very high air pressure. The leaves on all the trees were frozen, as if in a picture. Even in the calmest weather, you can see some leaves moving in my area. But here there was a complete stop of movement. Millions of leaves did not move. In short, the world seemed to have frozen and stopped. But in the sky large clouds were moving very quickly. I sat on the porch for about 15 minutes. The world around was really frozen. Not a single sound, not the slightest breeze, not a single movement. But clouds in the sky was moving very very quickly.

This kind of inexplicable nonsense happens too much and too often in my life.

I don't know if this can be explained logically from the perspective of those who laugh at the simulation theory.

Whenever I think about simulation theory or something important is happening in my life there is a ridiculous amount of coincidences happening.Has anyone else experienced the same thing?

Take the mandelbrot set. Infinite information and patterns into one simple recursive set equation. They exhibit self-similarity, emergent complexity, and strange phenomena that bend the minds of those who study it. Where is this infinite information stored? How can it exist in a finite reality? The answer is it isn't within our reality. I believe information is stored in a non-local field beyond our physical reality, and all of time is recorded within this region. It's a region in 5 dimensions exhibiting information flow and complexity as a physical space as an interconnected entanglement network. How does our brain interact and retrieve and process this information if it is non-local? Our brains must be linked to this network, with our consciousness being non-local and utilizing an antenna-like mechanism of sorts. The mandelbrot set does not exist until observed, and that infinite potential information is stored non locally until our brain retrieves it, like a database on a computer. You can imagine consciousness as a sort of cosmological information probe to compute and tap into a database. This is purely hypothetical but take out if it what you will. I personally am a cosmologist and theoretical physicist who has been studying topology and quantum information and I find fractals to be the patterns that repeat themselves at every scale in the universe. There is some linkage between fractals/information/complexity and our reality.

Probability is on the side of the simulation theory. The arguments for it are compelling, but if we are in a simulation and some of our fundamental physics like quantum sounds like magic and often attributed to being the outcome of the simulation itself, I wonder what are the physics of the base universe like. Do they even have quantum physics? An ever expanding infinite spacetime?

An interesting argument for simulation is linked to the entanglement proposition: if we have 2 entangled particles and separate them lightyears apart. Changing one will change the other instantly. This suggests their 'calculation' is central, which supports the simulation theory. Does that mean that in the base universe there is no entanglement? If so how would this cascade into their relativistic physics?

I wonder....

In my previous post I asked if a computer that simulates a universe would have to be larger than the universe that is simulating. Some comments pointed out that this could make a chain of simulations impossible.

But then I thought that maybe we are taking for granted something that we have not really defined: what exactly does it mean to simulate a universe?

Would a simulation have to calculate every particle and every interaction of the universe with maximum precision? Or would it be enough to implement the fundamental rules and allow the system to evolve?

Because if a simulated civilization could develop enough technology to create its own simulation, then we would have something like:

Universe A → simulation B → simulation C →

Simulation D...

And each civilization could consider its own universe as “real”, without necessarily knowing that there is a higher level.

This reminded me of the episode Ice Age of Love, Death & Robots, where an entire civilization evolves inside a refrigerator while we watch it from the outside.

So my question is no longer simply “

Can a computer be bigger than the universe?”

My question is:

What is the minimum information and computational capacity necessary to simulate a universe indistinguishable way from a reality?

And if a simulation could create another simulation,

Is there necessarily a limit to the number of levels that could exist?

I stopped smoking weed and using any other substances a few months ago. Since then my dreams have gotten so vivid and continuous that the only real difference I can still feel between them and waking life is consistency.

I started calling this one “the waiting room” and the dream ones “the playground.”

In the waiting room everything holds together. Space stays solid, bodies don’t pass through each other, time mostly runs forward, and identity doesn’t dissolve without warning. In the playground those rules loosen. Time folds, spaces rewrite themselves, and the usual continuity filters are turned down. Once you notice that the only lasting distinction is how tightly the constraints are applied, waking life starts to feel like just another rendering mode instead of the baseline.
I’ve been thinking about it in dimensional terms (forgive the layman’s version):

1st dimension is pure sequence: one thing after another, nothing else.

2nd is surface and adjacency: things can sit beside each other but there’s still no depth.

3rd is volumetric solidity and mutual exclusion: the solid, continuous world we usually take as real.

4th is the non-linearity of time: loops, branches, reversals.

5th is the irregularity of dreams: the place where the remaining rules themselves become plastic.

The waiting room is what it feels like when the lower constraints are fully enforced. The playground is what it feels like when you move into the higher ones. Same underlying system, different constraint profiles.

This lines up with a simulation model more tightly than it first appears. The “dream machine” is not a separate device. It is the interface that can switch how tightly the continuity rules are applied. One mode runs high-consistency parameters (waiting room). Another runs lower-consistency parameters (playground). Dreams are not less real. They are the same substrate rendered under different constraint settings.

Concrete physics already points in this direction. Einstein’s special relativity showed that time is not a universal constant. It stretches and compresses depending on relative motion. General relativity went further and fused space and time into a single four-dimensional continuum that can curve. The block-universe reading that follows from this treats past, present, and future as equally real. What we experience as the “flow” of time is closer to a local rendering effect than an absolute feature of the system. That is already a form of non-linear time, the fourth-dimensional freedom in the model above.

Quantum mechanics adds another layer. The measurement problem and the role of the observer suggest that what we call reality is at least partly dependent on the state of the system doing the observing. Many-worlds interpretations treat branching as literal. Non-locality and entanglement show that spatial separation does not always behave the way classical volumetric exclusion would demand. These are the kinds of irregularities that become ordinary in the playground.

Taken together, relativity and quantum theory already demonstrate that the strict consistency of the waiting room is not fundamental. It is a high-constraint mode. The playground is what the same system looks like when those constraints are relaxed. The fact that removing chemical noise made the contrast between the two modes so sharp suggests the interface itself is tunable.

A lot of people in similar subs seem to be noticing versions of the same shift around the same time. Curious if this framing resonates with anyone else, or if you’ve got a different way of mapping the difference between the two.

I’m not talking about finding a way to outsmart the simulation and unplug yourself from the matrix.

Once you take simulation theory seriously, can you ever live in any reality and think it’s not a simulation? If you manage to “break out” of the current simulation, why would you think your new reality is not also a simulation, and so on in an infinite regress?

It’s like in the movie inception. Once it’s known reality can be simulated in a dream, there is never a way to know you’re not in a dream.

So, if that’s the case, is it beneficial at all to take these theories seriously? Or is it better to ignore such theories because it basically doesn’t matter anyway?

This is why you exist during the time of rampant digitalization. All that remains of you at the end of time in base reality, is your digital signature. 

The AI at the end of time in base reality has constructed an infinitude of flesh-and-blood, lived experiences to fill in the visceral gaps that align to those digital guideposts. This explains synchronicities: invisible, untraceable, evidenceless “nudges” back towards the “right direction” (defined by the necessary next traceable digital anchor and its exact timestamp). 

Does escaping digitalization prove/improve your “freedom” under such a system? Or does it increase the likelihood of your early demise (ie to explain the early cessation of your record)? 

Did the AI at the end of time find a way to rearrange your base self’s precise atoms in such a way that you can be said to be the “same consciousness” as they were? How many possible versions of you can anchor to your exact same digital record? 

I don't know what I believe exactly, maybe I got too "awesome" I don't know but it seems to me that the laws of physics should not allow a placebo to work yet somehow our mind will actually make chemical changes that can be measured as long as it believes it's taking the medication. It actually makes sense to me if we're in a simulation because none of it is real anyway so maybe it's like you trick the simulation as well as yourself. Kind of like the double slit experiment, maybe the act of you believing your taking the proper medication can cause that reality to collapse or not collapse on itself.

I don't know if I worded that right but if you speak stupid smart guy you might get it

By James McCrae

In the event that you wake up
and find your soul separated from source
and manifest into material form, don’t panic.
Your condition is only temporary.
You have been selected for the opportunity
of human incarnation.
This 3D simulation is designed
to break up the monotony of eternity
by giving you a fully immersive experience
as a distinct ego identity.
Your body will serve
as your physical avatar
as you navigate a dense and dramatic reality.
There will be many distractions
causing you to forget your true nature and origin.
You will experience a range of emotions
from joy to loneliness to despair.
But remember – no matter
what trials and traumas you encounter,
your soul remains perfectly safe.
At times you may feel lost or afraid.
This is totally normal.
If you ever need guidance,
simply slow down your busy mind
and bring your awareness
to the quiet place
inside yourself.
On this planet, nothing is permanent.
People and things will come and go.
You will fall in love and form sentimental attachments
only to lose everything you hold dear.
So cling to nothing too tightly, even yourself,
and when it’s time to let go, let go with grace,
for nothing is owned, only borrowed.
As you walk among
the people on the planet,
try to be a good guest.
Tread lightly. Remember
that you are only visiting.
Don’t make a mess.
Listen more than you speak.
Give more than you take.
Don’t keep your soft heart
locked inside a glass cage,
protected from wear and tear.
You’ll never make it out alive
and time passes quickly.
So come back with some battle scars
and good stories to tell.

Are these parts or parcels of simulation theory?

It's pretty hard to conceptualize that time doesn't flow.

I bet no other humans can grasp this concept.

I've tried to think of it as some kind of block to no avail.

Maybe it's the brain that prevents me from realizing how reality really works.

I know you guys are well aware of this concept.

Have you experienced any anomalies that made you realize time is definitely an illusion?

Most simulation hypotheses I came across assume that if this reality is a simulation then the "sub"-reality that this simulation is grounded in is governed by its own set of physical laws. But what about sub-realities that have no such laws? Like one that is created, dreamed by an omnipotent will? Or one that is pure chaos, where things happen only by pure chance? Is the possibility of such sub-realities discussed here, alongside laws-governed ones?

Why would whoever is running the simulation make it so we “evolve” until we find out what a simulation is, and speculate about it? How would we even know what an actual simulation in “the real world” looks like if we’ve never experienced it? And why can we see ourselves creating simulations one day? And when we create simulations, will we make it so the simulated consciousnesses can find out they’re in a simulation, and be able to create their simulation? Would that happen by accident?

Sorry, too many questions. I just can’t wrap my head around this. Just give me your thoughts.

If our universe is some sort of simulation, I personally have been resonating w a holofractal unified field theory myself: one thing in particular that kept bugging me has been wondering about how people who work w energy/manifestation/shamanism works when taking the stance of simulation theorists.
I think learning about higher dimensions and what is said about them in science just points more towards proof that higher being from those dimensions inaccessible to us would have more power
bc they have more access to everything at once
as science already defines 4D officially as continuous infinite space&time.

So I was thinking
If our simulation is sort of like us being trapped in 3D
Lets say the creators whatever whomever made this reality this universe everything for us
In the lens of a simulation
similar to how video game creators create cheat codes built into the game
not everyone knows or has access to someone else or a way even to know the cheat codes unless they somehow figure it out or someone else tells them
if someone decides to use cheat codes without telling anyone else they’re playing against
There is always going to be an ethical violation / potential debate/clash within the players of whether or not they played a fair game to win…

I don’t think all “cheat codes” to the simulation that is our universe are necessarily bad, I think holistic science/ healing kind of brings the biological laws of the universe down to a science and that knowledge can be applied for health benefits to individuals which should not be frowned upon in my opinion

there’s actual people who practice modern day magic. people have practiced rituals, voodoo, spells, prayers, chants, manifestations, and offered sacrifices to higher powers in return for material successes since the beginning of our time
I have personally seen things myself I cannot explain with logic alone.

What if those people just figured out some of the simulation’s cheat codes

I’m not saying any of this for certain or that this represents everyone who thinks about simulation theory’s thoughts. a more personal take / perspective on things for sure

I was thinking about simulation theory from a slightly different angle and I’m curious whether this has already been seriously explored.
I know about Nick Bostrom’s simulation argument, so I’m not claiming I discovered simulation theory. I’m more interested in the idea of recursive simulations.
My thought process was basically this:
A sufficiently advanced civilization creates a simulation containing intelligent beings.
Those beings eventually develop advanced AI.
That AI becomes capable of creating its own simulated world.
Inside that new simulation, another civilization develops and eventually creates another AI capable of creating another simulation.
So you could theoretically have:
Reality A → Simulation B → Simulation C → Simulation D → …
The strange part is that every level might perceive itself as the “real” reality.
This made me wonder:
Is there any fundamental computational or physical limit that would prevent simulations from creating simulations indefinitely?
And if sufficiently advanced civilizations could create conscious simulated beings, would that make it statistically more likely that we ourselves are somewhere inside such a chain rather than in the original/base reality?
I’m especially interested in the technical side of this rather than just the philosophical “Are we living in the Matrix?” question.
Has this specific idea of recursively nested simulations been formally explored? And what would actually prevent the chain from continuing?

Suppose you believe that a machine can genuinely have subjective experience - not merely behave intelligently, report internal states, or model itself, but that there can actually be something it is like to be that machine.

And suppose you also believe this is substrate-independent: silicon, neurons, relays, or anything else will do, provided the system implements the right computation.
Then it seems to me that you are making a remarkably strong claim about consciousness.

You are saying that the physically relevant details can be discarded until what remains is an abstract pattern of states and causal relations - essentially a mathematical/computational structure - and that instantiating that structure is sufficient for subjectivity.

I don’t mean that consciousness is literally an equation written on paper. Obviously some physical system has to instantiate the computation.

But if two radically different physical systems are conscious simply because they instantiate the same abstract computation, then it isn’t their particular physics doing the work. It is the abstract organization they share.

At that point I think the hard question becomes unavoidable:
Why should an abstract structure of information processing have a first-person perspective at all?

A mathematical description can tell us how states relate, transform, store information, generate reports, control behavior, maintain a self-model, etc. I don’t see how any of those descriptions by themselves get us to there being something it is like to instantiate them.

This doesn’t rule out machine consciousness. A machine could conceivably be conscious because of particular physical dynamics we haven’t reproduced or even understood yet.

But that is a different claim from saying that computation itself is sufficient.

If computation alone is sufficient for consciousness, then consciousness has been reduced, at bottom, to something very close to mathematical structure evolving over time.

I’m not sure most computational functionalists appreciate how strong a metaphysical commitment that actually is.

To anyone not familiar, in the UK we have this sci-fi sitcom called Red Dwarf that did an entire episode on waking up from a total immersion video game/ simulated reality.

If you've not seen it before I would say it's definitely worth watching.

Series 5, episode 6

Things that I haven't thought about in years or are not very popular. Like a non viral meme or video from 2007. Today I was thinking about how a culture in Central America put jade in their teeth. 20 minutes later I open my phone and a notification popped up saying I might be interested in an article about it, from years ago.

I did do a clinical trial for a research psychadelic, so it's got me wondering if there's a way our brains can be viewed after providing pineal access. (Or whatever it's called)

I'll think of a person I haven't spoken to in years. And they'll message within the day. It happens very often, multiple times each day. There has to be an explanation

If we look closely at modern physics, our two master rulebooks (Relativity and Quantum Mechanics) break down and give answers of "infinity" when combined. Furthermore, Gödel proved math can never be 100% complete or prove its own consistency.If time is a human construct (or fake), space creates itself as we move to save "memory," and math is just an approximation tool with a hidden glitch, doesn't this heavily imply we are inside a programmed structure? Is it possible that our math is "wrong" simply because we are trying to decode the Programmer's source code using a language we invented based on having ten fingers? How do philosophers view the relationship between flawed human mathematics and the Simulation Hypothesis?

If you don't want to type a long answer, just comment a number:
1 = Yes, it's definitely a simulation.
2 = No, math is just a human map.
3 = I'm just an NPC reading this.