Yep. It’s just an analogy. Our world is not a computer. But the computer is something that’s known, and therefore it can be roughly laid over something that is unknown; like a rudimentary map describing a vast and unknown land. This analogy’s saving grace is that it is widely accessible.

The nub of it is in how to ‘picture’ the idea that our ‘known’ world might be derived from a more fundamental (and yet paradoxically, less substantial ((to us)) ‘reality’; That the relationship between our world and an overarching ‘reality’ might be something akin to the relationship between a shadow and an object!

As you say, Plato used the analogy of the shadows in the cave before the advent of the computer. How much more accessible is it to imagine you might be living in ‘world of warcraft’, than shackled in a cave forced to view shadows on the wall. Both are easily grasped intellectually, but I find the computer analogy can start to evoke a feeling of it also; It can reach more than the intellect.

Yes, there might be two levels of rulesets. Tom Campbell talks about ’cause and effect’ as being the ‘lower level ruleset defining the mechanics of puddle interaction’.

He says it defines the ‘allowable’ ways that energy can be shared between players in that reality.

The ‘big changes’ you mention would belong to the ‘higher level ruleset’, which defines profitability criteria, purpose and goals (in that particular reality)

These two rulesets need to reflect and support each other for the reality to ‘work profitably’

Mmm yes, efficiency! That is certainly a consideration when computing, but is it also when dreaming?

The method may well be probabilistic, but most events, including the falling of a tree in the forest, serve thousands, even millions of intentions. It is paradoxical: no economy of time, but a density and seeming economy of events.

The falling of a tree in the forest only serves thousands or even millions of intentions if the player really delves into it. Like in a dream, if we move our attention there, more is shown. If we focus even more, then even more is shown. But it is fractal. It has a consistent symbolic language. The dream is always striving to communicate and make contact.

(Are the bugs and bacteria devouring the tree also players or are they just parts of the program?). (I’m definitely overdoing the computer analogy now!) (Or perhaps, are they dreamers or just parts of the dream?)

My natural temperament draws me more to a dream analogy than a computer one. It seems to reflects more of the natural fluidity i experience. But they're both symbolic languages. Symbols clothed as drama and narrative.

As you say, there is a ‘density and seeming economy of events’.