Thanks, Jay, for a well-written article about an interesting topic.

You are definitively on to something, but my take on it is that Gödel got it right with his Incompleteness Theorems and that the only overall position we can take in and consider truthful is the negative position.

I hope you see where I am going. To appoint an overall conclusion about Life or about the Universe is simply not available. Declaring that we live in a simulation is a declaration we can make but it cannot be a truthful reality at the overall level.

At the overall level we can say a few things in the negative, such as 'There is no ultimate truth' which is interesting because this is presented as an ultimate truth. Another famous one is 'Never say never' or how about 'The only certainty is uncertainty'. We can come to an overall conclusion only under rather specific conditions.

Ultimate conclusions about the whole are hard to come by, and in our regular reality we must have a context before a word can even be truthful. Blue, as an example, means something different in the paint store than on the couch with the shrink. The context nudges us to understand the word properly. The context is a requirement, otherwise there is no truth to the word or concept.

I hope you see what I am trying to communicate: structure is the essence and at the highest level that spot is empty or of a special negative nature. We can fill the spot in any which way we like, but we cannot fill it in with something that cannot exist at that level.

Take God, for instance. We can place God at that highest level and yet when we make God Almighty then we did something that is not available. We can use the term God to either fit everything there is (All) or we can use the term God to fit the mightiest location among all (Mighty). But we cannot do both at the same time. It's a structural brain fart.

Still, we can use the term God because it ends up being just a word. Not until we go into the details of God (and not many people go there), only then do we have a discussion about what is or can be real.

I do believe there is a reality next to our reality, and I would not be surprised if there is some interplay, but the term simulation cannot be used because it is placed in that top spot that cannot be a positive. We have to move one level below the top level before we can state something real and meaningful.

When I look at the atomic reality, then two parts are linear (neutrons and protons) and one part is non-linear (electrons).

It is with the electrons that I believe we are in touch with more than our linear reality, and I even suspect there is quite a bit of unseen energy that provides the electrons (which are the neutralizing entities for the positively charged protons). I believe the unseen energy is rather large. But I am not willing to accept that that other unseen reality is wholesome. I believe it, too, is an Incompleteness.

Matter could not have come about had there not been a fundamental break of some kind in whatever existed prior. The omelet we live in came from an egg and that egg got broken and the omelet is not the same as the entire egg -- the shell is not here; plus it got broken.

So, you are definitively on to something. My suggestion is to discuss this from the specific levels and to avoid the overall level. Simulation is not a word that can be placed on our reality, though there is obviously more to life than what meets the eye.