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Notes -
And if you were actually inside the simulation and aware of it, would your response be different? Or would you jump out of the way, even though you know the truck isn't actually real?
It doesn't matter if we are in the hypothetical simulation or reality, or if we are already in a simulation right now imagining another simulation - no matter what, we have to act as if reality is real, because it's all we get.
And we do have pretty direct access to what we perceive as reality most of the time. Right up until we don't. Some synapses fire wrong and our version of reality branches from everyone else's, but for us reality hasn't changed. Any discrepancies we notice are easily explained away, and a lot of the time those explanations aren't excuses, they are genuinely believed, because to the psychotic they are real. And when the delusion is broken, do the psychotic feel relief at having reality corrected? Generally no, they are sad because their reality has been broken. People with schizophrenia who recover and return to their normal lives don't forget though, they just don't think about it. Because that's the only option available - act as if it's real anyway or fill a shopping trolley with garbage, put on five or six coats and start screaming at pigeons.
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