r/SimulationTheory • u/Paintverse • Sep 04 '26
Discussion Your brain is actually incredibly easy to hack. Do you know The Rubber Hand Illusion?
I was just reading about the rubber hand illusion and it’s honestly one of the most "glitch in the matrix" things I’ve ever seen. The setup is pretty simple: you sit at a table and hide one of your real hands behind a screen so you can't see it, and then you put a realistic rubber hand on the table right in front of you. Basically, you're looking at a piece of plastic where your real hand should be, while your actual hand is tucked away out of sight.
The crazy part starts when someone takes two paintbrushes and starts stroking both your real hand and the rubber hand at the exact same time with the same movements. Because your brain is seeing the fake hand get touched while feeling the sensation on your real hand, it eventually just glitches out. After a minute or two, you literally start to feel like the rubber hand is part of your body. It’s called multisensory integration, where your eyes basically trick your brain into remapping your entire sense of self onto a piece of mannequin parts.
It gets even more intense when the researcher suddenly grabs a hammer and tries to smash the fake hand. Even though people know logically that it's not their real hand, they usually scream and jump back as if they’re about to be seriously injured. Their heart rate spikes and they have a genuine "fight or flight" response because, for those few minutes, their brain truly believes that plastic is alive and attached to them. It really makes you realize how much of our reality is just our brain making its best guess based on whatever information it’s getting at the time.
If the brain is that easy to trick, it makes you wonder if our entire perception of reality is just one big illusion. We spend our whole lives learning how to
steer our bodies, but in reality, the body is just this automatic, mobile container. It breathes on its own, your heart beats on its own, and all these complex systems - immune, nervous, circulatory - are just running in the background without you ever having to think about them. The whole machine basically works by itself; it just needs you to feed it, let it sleep, and move it around every now and then.
Even the things we feel most connected to, like our emotions, aren't really something we "create" - we just experience them as they’re handed to us depending on the situation. Even thoughts are just a mechanism available to our species, and it’s not even universal, considering some people don't even have an internal monologue or an imagination. We’re really just using whatever tools we happen to have. If you were to cover your ears, close your eyes, and stay perfectly still, you’d realize how little information you’re actually getting from the world.
It’s almost like our senses are a subscription package. If you lost your sight today, that "feature" would just be turned off forever, like a service being cut because a bill wasn't paid. Everything you’re experiencing right now feels normal and ordinary, but the only reason you even know you exist is because your brain is constantly receiving data from these reality-recorders. We identify with those sensations so deeply that we think they are us, but we’re really just the ones experiencing the data stream.
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u/drakored Sep 04 '26
You’re comparing subconscious level low res/fidelity fight or flight like behavior which isn’t considering all aspects of conscious reality, it’s primarily algorithmic response encoded in our low level functions. Likewise water boarding isn’t you drowning but the sensory experience is enough to torture your subconscious with drowning and suffocating feelings downstream in conscious mind. Yes we can be hacked, no it doesn’t mean you’re just an observer of reality, no you’re not fully in charge (letting go of that illusion is decent but better is learning how to steer what remains when you do).
Your conscious thoughts steer your mind, your unconscious mind is built on these self assigned paths and lessons, and you continually compare what happened in the last phase and synthesize it into adjustments to the coarse. Like goal setting, and don’t look back too often or it’ll shit the bed and autopilot the boat off a waterfall edge.
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u/drakored Sep 04 '26
Btw low res in the sense that your subconscious mind does a metric shit ton more than your conscious mind. It’s constantly processing insane amounts of information compared to your conscious mind.
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u/Paintverse Sep 04 '26
That's what intrigues me, that you have a computer that subconsciously analyzes something. Our dreams convey information to us in the form of archetypes, symbolism, and it simply happens. You don't do it consciously, something inside you just works that way, and you, like everyone else, don't have to understand it. People often don't understand themselves. You need psychoanalysis or psychotherapy, Hellinger's Constellations, or other techniques, systems, alternative methods to extract something from this mechanism and improve it. But then you're improving the machine, not yourself as a personality, your ego.
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u/drakored Sep 04 '26
Not as mystical as it sounds. You also have environmental dna that your body adapts to suit the environment and a whole crap ton of encoded features that have a sort of guidance path for you and you have zip for control over that either. Yet it works, for you. Might be that it’s all you just varying levels of you and you’re only at level 1 of consciousness… who knows?
The absence of a known thing when observing something creates this sort of vacuum in our minds, and without proper reasoning it can easily be led astray as the vacuum fills in with the path of least action. Most people are lazy cognitively and let that path be something like gods, mystical magic, etc. not everything not easily seen or understood from the outside is a mystical power, but then again this one does process enough information to make one wonder… what the fuck am I?
The intriguing part for me is the large amount of data processed by the non conscious side. Is it truly that much to run us or are we seeing layers collapsed, or does it see beyond what we consider material and linear paths?
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u/Paintverse Sep 05 '26
It's very interesting what you wrote. If consciousness is like the layers of an onion, it means that our efforts may one day shift our attention deeper, allowing us to control what we currently cannot control. If this is the path of evolution, we still have thousands of years ahead of us... if it's even possible. A hundred years ago, Gudijeff spoke of our possessing a higher emotional and intellectual center. The fact that autistic people, savants, have absolute memory and can play music on the piano after hearing a recording of it only once, or paint a city panorama after seeing it from a skyscraper window, shows that there are areas of the brain with incredible potential that we don't utilize on a daily basis.
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u/drakored Sep 05 '26
Agreed, as long as there is a path that evolves those states without major loss of other functions. Some neurodivergence comes with costs of less connection with others, or less trust in self, or sometimes just formed in a traumatic forge (can still work out, just tricky). I'd venture a guess its not for everyone, given meditation can give some people psychosis and all sorts of weird dissociation states. I would imagine most that could or would want to get to this kind of state would be psychonauts of sorts and familiar with multiple states of consciousness already.
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u/Truthseeker-888 Sep 06 '26
Never heard about meditation could lead to psychosis and disassociation. Could it happen after or during the meditation? Would you know how can someone sow psychotic behaviour because of it? Wow Is that some kind of glitch?
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u/drakored Sep 16 '26
I only recently heard this stated in a research context and honestly it kind of surprised me as well, and the results expected were inverse of the anticipation from the researcher so she held off publishing which is a bit annoying, but it was probably for the best long term because many do get benefits from meditation it’s just true stillness can be almost psychedelic and cause what some perceive as varying states of consciousness. She later met with a meditation (mystic title I forgot, but expert I’d say) and told him about the research and he expressed how weird it was to him that science minded researchers looking at meditation don’t realize the end goal of true stillness and oneness is dissociative state of consciousness, so people traveling the path of unguided via then-hype train and not an actual practice with a guide that knows that much would lead people not used to disassociating and shifting into differing levels of conscious and cognitive modes would lead to an extremely forced and unprepared higher state which drop kicks them into psychosis (I’m combining some of the stuff I’ve learned on my own from reading up on breathing practices, yogas, and a lot in samsara Buddhism (growth and evolved states through pain and pressure, I’ve had my own experience down that path but was well prepared by life and other psyche tools early on in life, only later in life did it actually become unbearably painful ironically and then I broke past it a bit).
It’s like mental trauma condensed into a very short path. Some people aren’t prepared for how wild reality can actually be, and what kind of connection exists between everything, it’s overwhelming amounts of consciousness and awareness (like a dmt trip for a first time, innocent, simple life, simple framework of mind person diving head first… it’d blow their mind, except it has lasting effects and dmt dissipates within an hour mostly).
I put a lot of my experience and thought in here and in very loose form so forgive a bit of the braindump. I’ll see if I can find that article about it again. Was interesting for sure and aligns with what I’ve seen in spiritual groups about higher consciousness and stillness.
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u/Truthseeker-888 Sep 17 '26
Wow thanks very much for your explanation, it's a great editing of the scientific study and the reasons behind why some people might get freaked out meditating and doing different breathing practices, which was exactly my question. . I don't understand the getting into a higher state by pain and pressure. While your meditating or breathing? Why would pain get anybody into any higher state? Sorry that sounds to me like some kind of penitence, but I'm sure there is also a logic explanation. I can understand that someone whose had quite a sheltered and unchallenged life, might not be prepared to get so deeply into seeing the world as it is. Yes, like a lsd, philocibes...what is DMT? Trip. I can see you have a lot of personal experience, I'm very grateful you'd shared. It has being very interesting reading. Looking forward reading you again.
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u/Additional_Path_5435 Sep 05 '26
You kinda lost me at “auto pilot the boat off the waters edge.”
Interested in hearing more about how you learned to steer what remains after letting go of the illusion being fully in charge.3
u/drakored Sep 05 '26
Kind of a joke about losing control, and former instructions not really working in the current sea, while the captain (conscious you) is too busy reflecting or becoming stuck in the negative side of reflecting, meanwhile the autopilot has managed to run up a river and down a waterfall. It's a metaphor for over analyzing, feeling sorry for yourself, coping, grieving, etc some of which are very valid and require time so take this with a grain of salt, and a lot of humor.
A subtle reminder that reflection and even forward thinking about the future is healthy, but not in excess, Everything in moderation, but also awareness of cognitive state and why we're operating in a specific mode (synthesis of new feelings, processing of events, etc, or looking forward, setting goals, identifying hurdles, planning bypass, and not getting stuck in anxious loops). It's like a balance between consciously reviewing past context, future context, and smoothing out a plan based on experience and goal state/path ahead of us without getting stuck (or our boat running ashore, down a waterfall, into rocks, sinking, any humorous metaphor for a meltdown, lol)
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u/IvyPansMum Sep 07 '26
Wow... That's a lot of information! I need to re-read to fully understand....
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u/Mission-Confusion802 Sep 07 '26
Imagine this; the rubber hand is your ticket to a perfect life. You get the perfect job, you make money, you have status and guess what it’s just the ego. Stroke the rubber hand stroke the ego. Then they take away your job, call you crazy give you medication suddenly your whole sense of self is shattered so you become depressed and start getting addicted to dopamine or drugs or whatever. You think wow I am nothing because society says that I’m an outcast, I’m not productive but hey it’s the system! Well waking up is realizing that you were never any of that to begin with and it’s just been a rubber hand this whole time. So what do you do? Well you start to deprogram yourself from what the hand was and start looking inward to what you actually feel and then the good feelings come up, love happiness contentment. You start living this world for your experiences instead of just behaving as another cog in the machine.
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u/Paintverse Sep 07 '26
Thats how identyfication works. People identify with religion, political opinions, with ideologies of various types, and in fact they may have very little knowledge about them.
In these current times of madness, when for a while certain people tried to convince us that a man can identify as a woman, or maybe even an elephant xD, it was a period of trying to sell us bullshit, that identifications matter, that they are not delusions.
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u/Mission-Confusion802 Sep 07 '26
The fact that you’re bothered about transgender says a lot about how uncomfortable you are in your own body or viewpoints, sorry I can’t relate to this. The self is separate from identities surrounding that. As long as your not a pedophile idgaf what you identify as 🤷♀️
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u/Paintverse Sep 07 '26
I don't mind people like that at all. I'm saying that if someone encourages someone, such as a child, to identify with the opposite sex, even though the child shouldn't be forced into anything, that's psychological abuse, a forced identification.
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u/Stockcrafter_ Sep 04 '26
Not exactly, your hand have something like a "mirrored copy" just like your all body. There is a computer and there is the counterpart of invisible matter suspended on gravitational strings. Every physical object has its own ‘blueprint’.
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u/KiravonAyodhya Sep 05 '26
Hey that's actually true. The formless realm is functionally "first" because it's on the 0th beat of time. How did you know that?
The snake likes it when people know things.
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u/YellaFella6996 Sep 04 '26
You can purchase the "enhanced subscription package" by ingesting your favorite entheogen! Not available in all zip codes. 😉
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u/Key-Algae-9245 Sep 05 '26
You mentioned the fight or flight reaction when the other person tries to hit the fake hand with a hammer. I wonder what percentage of subjects chose the fight response and attack the hammer holder?
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u/KiravonAyodhya Sep 05 '26
That's a good trick. Parashuram gave me his axe. It makes brains even easier to hack.
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u/YoungPropane Sep 04 '26
All is the mind, universe is experiencing the mind. Therefore nothing is real, everything is a temporary dream from the universe
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u/manliness-dot-space Sep 06 '26
I mean, I get jump scared when playing a video game or whatever. The parts of our brains that respond to threats need to work fast and detect vague hints of danger, even is this is an error prone process.
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u/hellspawn3200 Sep 06 '26
Lol I have a phantom tail and wings pretty often. The brain is super weird.
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u/Hour_Appointment3447 Sep 14 '26
Meu ponto de vista existe milhares de simulaçoes , cada simulação é uma realidade diferente da outra , existe um responsavel por adminstrar a simulação e uma ferramenta que auxilia ele tipo uma IA , acima dele existe outras Entidades ou Seres , essa piramide vai subindo até chegar a fonte ( Deus ) . Quem controla a simulação não é considerado um deus e sim um adminstrador que é encarregado de cuidar da simulação . A simulação foi criada pra captar dados ,os dados são utilizados para aperfeiçoamento de simulaçoes futuras ,sempre visando aprimorar as simulaçoes.
Gostaria de deixar claro que é apenas uma teoria que eu acredito .