Q: I have paralyzing existential dread about technology. Are we living in a simulation?

A: The simulation theory doesn’t scare you, the truth does. You don’t know what you are and you suspect you’re nothing. That’s where the dread comes from. That’s the flame you’re actually standing too close to. Not technology, but identity erosion.

The real question behind your question is: “If reality can’t be trusted, then what am I?”

Whether it’s a simulation or not doesn’t change anything. If it’s a dream, you’re still dreaming in it. If it’s real, you’re still clueless in it. The mechanics of the prison don’t matter, the fact that you’re in one does.

The fear isn’t about computers or AI or digital futures, your terror comes from the suspicion that you aren’t real and never were. That’s the real crisis: not that reality might be coded, but that you might be.

Your surface question, “Are we living in a simulation?,” sounds like curiosity about technology or metaphysics. But listen closely, that’s not what’s happening; this isn’t about computers, AI, or the Matrix. This is the mind looking for a way to make its terror about something else, something “out there” that could theoretically be understood, controlled, or disproved. Technology is just the boogeyman your mind chose to hang it on this week.

It’s important (and potentially helpful,) to understand that existential dread isn’t caused by technology. Technology simply pulled back a corner of the curtain, and now you’re trying to blame the curtain instead of looking at the void behind it.

The false self loves simulation questions because they still preserve someone having the experience: If we’re simulated, then who’s simulating us? If we’re in a simulation, how do I escape it? If we’re in a simulation, what does that make me?

In other words: “Please tell me this dread has a technical explanation so I don’t have to face what it’s actually pointing to.”

Your question sounds like the dread is about the nature of reality. But dread doesn’t arise from the nature of reality, it arises from the instability of the one who believes they inhabit it. The real fracture isn’t in the universe; it’s in the illusion of you.

The question isn’t “Is the world unreal?” The question is: “Is the one who fears the world unreal?” That’s the part the mind doesn’t want to touch.

This type of question is common in Phase Two: Disruption, because the fear is existential, not philosophical. Something in your internal architecture is buckling. Your old scaffolding of meaning, certainty, and identity can no longer support the weight of your awareness. Technology is just the trigger your system latched onto; the collapse was already underway.

In general, Phase Two is marked by existential unrest, collapse of certainty, fear of annihilation, the mind scrambling for an explanation that allows the old self to survive. Your question is typical, “If reality feels unstable, give me a story that stabilizes me.”

You’re not afraid of technology, you’re not afraid of simulation. You’re afraid that the one asking the question is beginning to dissolve and you’re trying to outsource that fear to a sci-fi narrative.

This is the part where you can either turn back toward comfort, or keep going. When the idea of a simulation terrifies you, who is the one trying so desperately to stay real?

The forward-moving question here is “What is the ‘I’ that feels dread when reality loses its certainty?”

If you sit with that without flinching, without distracting yourself with tech fears or cosmic hypotheses, the next door will open.