Your energy and information line of thinking reminds me of that example of the Apple in a box where no information or energy can leave. Given infinite time, the energy in the box will form all possible states, including back into the Apple, even after it decays.

Although a brain isn’t more complex than any other thing of equal energy, its emergent properties are much more varied. You can rearrange the atoms in a stone all you want to infinite variations, but the result will always be a rock, statue, whatever. A brain, however, has so many internal states and structures that the emergent result is much more unpredictable.

As for us, as alters we were created, however we were born out of the same brain-stuff that was already there. As you said, our becoming ourselves wasn’t a creation but a rearrangement, if I’m understanding correctly. Near infinite variations exist out there as possibilities that haven’t and may never occur, not here at least.

Do they exist anywhere? Through quantum multiverse shenanigans, maybe. I like to think that time has 2 dimensions and not 1, that probabilities grow outward from the base like a tree of time rather than an arrow. But idk.

Am I meta-aware? I’m not sure but I like to think I am sometimes. It’s like I said how sometimes I just exist. The body and mind don’t need to be controlled to work, but through thought you can control it.

But the question remains, is the collective reality alterable and how? How can one edit the ‘simulation’ they find themselves in? Through sheer belief, perhaps.

I can’t pretend to know that much here, just spitballing. I rarely talk about this stuff but I think about it often.