We live in a distributed simulation. Social reality is the best reality we have, until we find something better, even if it is an adjusted social reality.
A) No information travels faster than the speed of light. Even if this limit later turns out to be false, we can agree B) We have a sense of "now", are able to act in the present moment
By implication of A) and B) we can't potentially witness the present moment, process it and act upon it in real time.
To be able to survive in the world, our body needs to simulate a reality slightly ahead of time.
For children, this simulation is still pretty new, raw, undefined, malleable, interesting etc. They get surprised at lot. A child may throw things off the table. With no bad intent, just to see what happens and adjust their simulation. It doesn't judge, that the thing falling off might break or have value, but they'll notice that parents are more mad about certain things being thrown off than some other things. It doesn't know, how it's going to fall off. It doesn't even know, if it falls of all the time (sometimes parents catch/prevent it!) Why is that?
For adults, the simulation is mostly set, common sense. Few surprises. Adults may notice a child throwing something of the table before the child actually does it and prevent it from happening. Adults may catch something falling off the table mid-air. This works because they have witnessed things falling down for quite some time already, are content with gravity and acceleration, caught plenty of stuff in their life (e.g. in physical education), thus are intuitively able to catch things mid-air.
In a purely reactionary fashion, this would not be possible: seeing the object falling, deciding that this is 'bad', moving the hand where we see it falls.
To relearn child-like creativity and a sense of wonder, adults need to unlearn their simulation, question more and be surprised more.
Further examples:
This is not meant in the way of "do we live in a computer (machine) simulation?"
Communication (through language o.s., even across time using texts, paintings etc.) with other humans (or even other lifeforms such as pets) synchronizes this simulation.
--> Plato only told you the positive imperative
but the minority with greater insight always has a choice: *
Going back into the cave... Excellent scientists, artists help you free yourself. Tyrannical rulers, leeches lie to you to keep you chained.
Thus excellent scientists complement benevolent leaders or failing tyrants leading people to truth.
On the opposite, wicked tyrants employ deceiving charlatans or incompetent scientists to keep you in chains, distracted with lies.
Everybody is born a naive slave in chains and must free themselves to insight, with the help of others. On this path, you must not succumb to failures or lies.
In other words, the words of "love" and "hate":
We are born naive slaves through love. Naturally, we seek love, but at the same time, children are naive and hate. Hate is us failing or lying, dividing and ultimately killing us. To become wise gods, we must overcome false hate and find true love.
Thus, any continuation of life is love, dying and the end of life are caused by hate.
This may sound like some trivial tautology, but now that we realized it, we can back to WORK! Make love to beat the planets, beat the stars. When we overcome hate, our light will be the brightest of them all!