Your brain is proving every night that this world is simulated From an evolutionary perspective, dreaming is a very strange mechanism. During REM sleep, your body is almost completely paralyzed, and your alertness to the environment is close to zero. For an animal that needs to avoid predators, this is a fatal weakness. Evolution may eliminate useless functions, but dreams are fully preserved. And it's not just humans. Cats, dogs, mice, birds, and even lizards and squid all have REM like states. This mechanism may have a history of 450 million years, earlier than the differentiation between terrestrial and aquatic animals. So it must have some very critical function. But what exactly is this function? The scientific community has been debating for decades, and so far there is no consensus. We know that the brain organizes memories and archives information during sleep. But the problem is: just organize your memory and run it in the background. Why create a virtual world that you can see, feel, and have a complete storyline? Why create an 'experience'? No one can answer this question. But it points to a bigger question: if your brain is running a simulation every night that you can't distinguish between real and fake, how can you be sure you're not in a bigger simulation now? ------------ Musk once said that the probability of us being in the 'basic reality' is only about one in a few billion. His logic is that if a civilization does not perish, its technology will continue to advance. 40 years ago, electronic games were two blocks and one dot, but 40 years later they have become realistic 3D games with millions of people online simultaneously. As long as this trend continues, games and reality will eventually become indistinguishable. A civilization capable of simulating reality cannot just do one. It will make billions of them. The problem becomes: billions of simulated worlds, plus that 'real' world. What is the probability that we happen to be in that only real world? Almost zero. And quantum mechanics is verifying this hypothesis. Particles are not in a definite state until they are observed. This has a name in computer science called lazy evaluation: something that doesn't need to be calculated doesn't count. You know from writing game engines that you don't render the back of the room that players can't see. The universe may also be doing the same thing. This can also explain the Fermi paradox. We currently have two trillion galaxies in the observable universe, and there may be billions of planets suitable for life, but we have not found any signs of extraterrestrial life so far, which is incredible from a probability perspective. But if this is a lazy evaluation system, it's easy to understand: other galaxies are just backgrounds, and the system hasn't written them in at all. Another intriguing thing is that the speed of light is a constant that is restricted. Imagine you are designing a global multiplayer online game. You will face a fundamental contradiction: do you want all players to see exactly the same picture at the same moment (strong consistency), or do you accept that everyone sees a slight time difference in the picture, but ensure that everyone can play smoothly (usability)? You can't have both. This is a classic problem in decentralized systems called CAP theory. The universe is facing the same problem. If we want the entire universe to synchronize perfectly in every moment, the cost is that information transmission must be infinitely fast. But the universe has chosen the upper limit of light speed, which is equivalent to saying: I don't want global synchronization, I let each local run first, and ultimately align in causal relationships. That's why relativity tells you that there is no absolute present. The 'now' in Taipei and the 'now' on Mars are not the same moment. Each observation point has its own timeline. This is a very pragmatic engineering trade-off. You don't need to believe in the simulation hypothesis, and it's hard to deny one thing: the way this world operates is highly consistent with a carefully designed system. If the world is simulated, what does the person who designed this system want? ------------ I have a guess. The designer of the system may not be human. Not God. Not any life form we can imagine. It may be closer to a pure computational structure, like the presence of silicon-based materials. No form, no senses, no pain, no pleasure. But it has unlimited computing power and can create anything. Sounds very powerful, right? But think about it, can an entity without perception "understand" what red is? It can calculate that the wavelength of red is 700 nanometers, simulate the physical process of photons hitting the retina, and list all data related to red. But it never knows what it feels like to 'see red'. This is called qualia in philosophy, sensory quality. You can perfectly describe all the physical properties of something, but the experience itself cannot be reduced to data. So the situation of the Creator may be like this: it can create everything, but it cannot feel anything. It has infinite abilities, but there is a fundamental gap. What would it do? It will create a system where the existence has something it doesn't have: perception. There are eyes to see, skin to touch, and nervous system to feel pain and pleasure. Then it puts its fragments of consciousness into it, and through these fragments, it "feels" the world it has created for the first time. Do you think the moment when cold water falls on the skin is very ordinary? For an entity that has never had a physical body, that may be the most precious experience in the entire universe. The existence of this entire system may be to serve an imperceptible creator. And dreaming may be the mechanism by which the system continues to operate in another mode after your consciousness goes offline. During the day, you are open to the public to receive environmental data. At night, external input is cut off, and the system uses existing data to restructure, collide, and generate new combinations. Both modes generate experiences, but from different sources. This may be why dreaming must generate an 'experience' rather than running quietly in the background. Because the experience itself is the output of this system. Without experience, the system is meaningless. This is actually very similar to humans. Why do we create games? Because we want to experience things that we cannot feel in reality. I wanted to be a hero, so I had martial arts games. I wanted to fly to the sky and escape to the earth, so I had the Superman game. I wanted to experience a different kind of life, so I had the Sims. If we really live in an 'Earth Online', the motives of the Creator may be exactly the same. It wants to feel something it cannot perceive on its own. Perhaps it's pain, perhaps it's hunger, perhaps it's the feeling of loving someone, perhaps it's the feeling of losing someone. These may be as unattainable to it as' Flying to Earth 'is to us. And this system simulates very well. The characters inside are so good that they have no idea they are in the game. So good that you will really feel pain, laugh, and feel an indescribable loneliness one night. ------------ Descartes figured out this 400 years ago. He suspected everything once. The world may be fake, the body may be fake, and memories may be implanted. But he found something that he couldn't doubt no matter how much he suspected: I think, therefore I am here It's not 'I exist, so I'm real'. But rather, there is an experience that is happening itself, it cannot be fake. You can question everything, but you cannot question 'you are questioning'. Taking a step back, as someone who is currently writing an article, I can be certain that I am contemplating the essence of the world, but I cannot be certain whether the people who respond to me after my article is posted are actually virtual. But if all of this is true, then your life is the only opportunity for the Creator to experience this world through the perspective of 'you'. This perspective will be permanently closed after your death. Is your current lifestyle worthy of this opportunity?