One of my own favourite musing is that reality is stored as just 2 dimensions.
Rather than thinking about 2D in terms of a 2D sheet. I like to think of points having something like 'virtual' vectors - that is unrealised vectors, that allow infinite degrees of freedom, and thus unlimited storage.
When two points interact (to understand/interpret each other), in turn, each uses one of it's dimensions, to understand the other...
... so that one 2D point 'looking at' another 2D point... appears like one 1D point and one 2D point with now 'realised' vectors... that is an extrusion of the points 'virtual' vectors into 'realised' vectors spacetime... which would look like 1D + 3D... as a way of understanding. And thus interactions result in spacetime, as vectors get extruded. You get a sort of twisting/turning action as both 2D points interact.
How we experience everyday 1D+3D reality, is an accurate representation, but also an alternative perception of 2D+2D.
That translation of 2D+2D into 1D+3D means information actually connects up in a very different way to how we perceive it, yet the outcome of the translation is also correct. At present, we just don't have quite the right explanations about why things are joined up in the way they are.
It's just a fun speculation... but I really am drawn to the idea of two things interacting to produce reality, rather than just a single thing. Sort of fits with much of the stuff I understand.
(I still don't even know whether a point with virtual vectors could be thought of as 2 dimensional... as a layman it's very difficult to get solid information about these sorts of ideas.)
To continue my line of thought, the concept of dimension would arise
from consciousness. There'd be no such thing as 1D, 2D, 3D except as concepts originated by Decartes that enable us to describe what we experience as space. We would be mistaking the
descriptor of our experience for the
experience itself. All of science is about descriptors, i.e. ways of conceptualising reality, and depends itself on the underlying descriptor of language, which is built around the concept of different and separate
things that interact in ways that physicists set about studying, with varying degrees of success.
Our descriptors take on a life of their own. Before we know it, we're using them as causative agents in their own right, and
modelling reality based on them. We construct
laws, such as those of thermodynamics, and force reality into our way of describing it. If our model of reality should ever fail in providing adequate explanations, then we often make the serious mistake of preferring the model, which is the origin of dogmatism in science -- indeed, dogmatism in general.
We've always thought, at any given time, that we're on the right track to understanding. Instead of using guarded language that keeps our descriptors fluid and able to change, we tend to latch onto present understandings, thus introducing inertia into the system. To overcome that inertia may require more effort than it need; in extremis, we'll even allow ourselves to have mutually incompatible theories (i.e. descriptive systems), such as relativity and quantum mechanics.
In a sense, materialism is perfectly valid
within certain bounds. We can go a good way towards describing reality and coming up with ways of manipulating our environment if we treat reality
as if it's composed of matter. The language of materialism lends itself quite well to the way we experience reality, and science is a pretty successful method that has the added advantage that it is testable,
so long as we stick with true empiricism.
But we don't, do we? Increasingly, we've been formulating abstract theories and giving those precedence over observable facts; even ignoring those facts when they contradict theory. Most of the standard cosmological model can't be said to be materialistic precisely because it's not based on empiricism. People didn't detect dark matter or energy or black holes, etc., so much as
inferred them from prior models, some of which, true enough, might have a certain degree of empirical grounding: albeit not enough to justify cosmologists' Kafkaesque peregrinations into fantasy land.
To hear many cosmologists speak, you'd think that the standard model is rock solid. Millions of people confidently parrot their language, not realising that prevailing cosmological consensus is itself the work of a bunch of sacerdotal parrots who've convinced themselves of a certain metaphysical view: certainly not a hard-nosed, empirically based one. We're surrounded by such conjecture: about CAGW; the link between AIDS and HIV; neo-Darwinism; the efficacy of many drugs and the veracity of medical opinion in general; and on and on.
It's becoming obvious even at the ordinary societal level (think fake news, for example) that we're basing our view of reality on officially sanctioned myth. Postmodern thought has become our reality, but increasingly it's being seen for what it is: speculative metaphysics. Something is in the air, and it might represent a more empirical approach to the description of reality -- ironically, a greater faith in materialism
in its due place, as a convenient descriptor of empirical facts -- whilst at the same time recognising that that which it imperfectly describes, viz. reality, is something distinct from, and more fundamental than, it.