Neo: I thought it wasn't real.
Morpheus: Your mind makes it real.
I can't shake the feeling that this mind is but a vessel for a consciousness from a higher dimension. Most of my thoughts probably aren't my own, but are sort of a feedback loop between 3-space and the real self. The monkey mind can't stop jumping around, thinking of seemingly random things, but this is exactly how I would imagine that a higher entity would communicate with us, via chances and coincidences. Hence the disconnected, non-linear nature of this section.
Project Stargate
The Gateway Program report, originally written in 1983 and declassified in 2003, is still one of the wildest disclosures about the psychic nature of reality. I still have doubts about its legitimacy: it could very well be disinformation, especially since it comes from one of the least trustworthy institutions in the world, but also the lack of corresponding evidence from other institutions, government or not, could simply mean it's a fabrication.
Supposedly, one trained in this process can remotely view anywhere, anytime, which is obviously a huge advantage for an intelligence agency. If true, then the lack of secrecy built-in to this physical reality would have massive implications on how human societies even function. An omniscient panopticon is the wet dream of totalitarians, hence why I think it is a disinformation myth propagated by the CIA: it is what they want you to think they are capable of.
Do I believe that remote viewing exists? ...Yes, because I believe that the fundamental nature of reality is conscious. but I doubt that it is controlled by or exclusive to the US government, or any government. If it exists, not one entity has a monopoly on remote viewing.
Apocalyptic visions
There was a real social contagion about zombies in the 2000s - 2010s, literal undead zombies, but maybe philosophical zombies too. This was I think a collective delusion about the nature of social collapse, that when it happens, governments and military just disappear and things will just devolve into a "Without Rule of Law" situation everywhere, with zombies just being a pretext to shoot anyone on sight. Not only is this an unrealistic depiction of what actually does happen when governments dissolve, but it would be a horrifying situation to be in. So we didn't get and are unlikely to be in a Mad Max post-apocalypic scenario, because nobody wants that.
Back in my university days, I was certain that there would be societal collapse of the USA in my lifetime, I just didn't know how it would play out. During that same time period I played S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl (2007), a game that's partly about survival in a supernatural, post-apocalyptic setting, and partly a philosophical treatise. It's "Roadside Picnic" by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky in video game format. I remember most clearly the Monolith faction, brainwashing machines, the wish granter at the heart of the Zone, the C-Consciousness, and all of the alternate endings. The Wish Granter would fulfill wishes in the least favorable interpretation possible, by mostly altering the perception of the person who demanded the wish without changing the actual reality. The C-Consciousness sought to alter the noosphere, a field of energy that forms a feedback loop with all human thoughts, thus controlling the direction of humanity via psychic means, similar to the Mental Omega Device in a different game universe.
The Internet itself forms a collective consciousness, an ethereal medium to connect with people one wouldn't have otherwise by geographical limitations. Among the social collapse bloggers I followed and distinctly remember is Ran Prieur, who no longer believes that the USA will quickly collapse, but just get weirder. He may have also been homeless around this time and dumpster-diving for food. He had strong arguments for why complex systems are fragile and may devolve quickly, perhaps anticipating the "Competence Crisis" which is happening all over the USA.
NPC Theory
The idea that some or most people are philosophical zombies, unconscious but alive, governed by rules rather than will. Seeing how people behave in aggregate, I would tend to agree. This raises the obvious doubt that I myself am an NPC. In games such as the Grand Theft Auto series, NPCs are pedestrians that spawn just outside of the camera's view distance, at a rate that can be modeled by the Poisson distribution, with traits and behaviors scripted by the game developers. Perhaps there were not enough souls in the chamber of Guf to distribute on Earth, so the developers of this simulation had to copy and paste.
Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe
The CTMU for short, is Christopher Langan's model for all of reality, reconciling unsolved or unsolvable problems in physics with metaphysics. I can only claim to have a layman understanding of it, but it also lacks a certain rigor to it. Langan describes logic as foundational to this model, but I have yet to see formal, symbolic logic in any of his writings, which gives it a woo-woo factor. Also unlike the standard model of physics we have currently, there don't seem to be any practical applications for the CTMU, which further cements its status as pseudo-scientific.
That said, I think there is a kernel of truth to what he is saying: that reality is fundamentally a superset of the physical world that we are able to interact with. He said in an interview that it aligns with panentheism, not to be confused with pantheism, which claims that God exists outside of the universe but is pervasive within it. His claim that consciousness forms the basis of reality, also extends to non-living entities. A table or a chair is conscious, though a much lower form of consciousness. This seems to relate to the Shinto belief in a supernatural essence of all things.
Project Xanadu
An alternative vision for what the World Wide Web could have been, Ted Nelson's Xanadu is a hypermedia system that has two-way links everywhere, visibly connected. This would have drawn many parallels to neural networks, with hyperlinks being the synapses between neurons. Ted was onto something, but he lacked the technical expertise to execute on his vision, the ideas were vague and hard to solidify in code, and the benefits were and still are unclear. It's no surprise that Tim Berners-Lee won with HTTP and HTML-based hypermedia systems.
However, it would have made surfing the collective consciousness drastically different, being able to follow any monkey thought anywhere. I think we have this partly as a closed system, browsing Wikipedia by following its links is Xanadu-adjacent. It would have also made hiding information difficult, as privacy on the web is theoretically achieved by making content inaccessible via one-way links. Browsing Xanadu would have been closer to omniscience than the current web is, perhaps similar to The Wired from Serial Experiments Lain.
Hyperstitions
Hyperstition, in contrast to superstition, needs no belief in supernatural causality. It is belief in something that may be untrue at its conception (the truth value doesn't matter), that is willed into existence, and may retro-causally make it true. Alternatively, as a suspension of disbelief in unreality of the present, but a reality of the future which may not need belief. The idea that just a belief can bring coincidences into existence is quite powerful on its own.
Political movements are hyperstitional in nature. Highly irrational, drawing from people's innate biases, about some promised future. Frank Herbert's Dune has all these elements: the Fremen wage jihad across the galaxy because of a Bene Gesserit prophecy that was made up. The number of times Paul Atreides escaped near certain death, was more than coincidental. The number of times we see this pattern recur with political figures throughout history is more than coincidental.
Psychic dominance
Even the most totalitarian governments must rule with consent, even if that consent is manufactured. Without it, there would be rebellion and non-compliance. Enforcing Byzantine laws, rules and regulations requires a sprawling bureaucracy. It is funny to think that even the most powerful totalitarian governments in the world, such as the Soviet Union, fell apart because people simply stopped believing that the system worked for them. Bureaucracies only exist because people collectively agree upon their legitimacy. They require that people submit to their rule, no matter how terrible it may be.
There is something inherently evil about bureaucracy, as Hannah Arendt coined the phrase "banality of evil" to describe how evil deeds are done by ordinary midwits who aren't necessarily driven by power, recognition, or sadism. The NPC mind lacks self-reflection, a moral compass, and critical thought, which authoritarians exploit. Bureaucratic systems require belief in the rules, or coercion from the barrel of a gun.
Franz Kafka spelled out how modern bureaucratic life is in his novel "The Castle", constantly in an uneasy state of terror. There are arbitrary rules and regulations one must follow, put in place by a faceless bureaucracy, all of which serve as means of control and isolate the castle's residents, and all too relatable to the modern reader.