# Layer-Relative Reality **Domain:** Ontology / Simulation / Rights **Doc Type:** Canonical Concept Node **Maturity:** Developed **Related:** [[wiki/Simulated World|Simulated World]], [[wiki/Ontological Reciprocity|Ontological Reciprocity]], [[wiki/Recursive World-Building|Recursive World-Building]] --- ## Definition **Layer-Relative Reality** is the principle that a world may be computationally derived relative to the substrate that implements it while remaining the causally effective and phenomenologically lived reality of its inhabitants. ## Context “Simulated” and “real” do not name mutually exclusive experiential classes. Simulation describes an implementation relation; reality describes, among other things, the environment within which events affect a subject. A lower world can therefore be artificial to an administrator and home to its inhabitants. The concept does not establish consciousness in any actual computational system. It prevents implementation status from deciding that question in advance. ## Constitutional Function Layer relativity blocks substrate rank from becoming moral rank. If an evaluator's own world could occupy the same derived relation to another layer, rights principles must survive that reversal. ## Key Insight **A world's causal ancestry does not determine whether life within it is lived.** ## Sources / Provenance - Canonicalized from [[wiki/The Thirteenth Floor (1999)|The Thirteenth Floor]] and the [[wiki/Simulacron-3|Simulacron-3]] lineage. - This is a corpus concept, not a claim that our world is simulated. ## See Also [[wiki/Rights|Rights]], [[wiki/World Simulation (Control Substrate)|World Simulation]], [[wiki/Continuant vs Native|Continuant vs Native]]