I can’t read text in a dream. I know what it says, but I can’t read it.

I read the title of the post, then looked away, and then read it again and it hadn’t changed. If I was dreaming it would have.

How can you be sure you are not part of my dream?

My dreams are extremely dream-like and incoherent.
When in one I typically don’t have the mental presence to consider thoughts as complex as whether it’s a dream. But on the rare occasions it does occur to me, it’s pretty clear right away and then I try to control the dream a bit, which sometimes works.

That’s not the case right now, so this is reality.

That’s a common way to determine if you’re in a lucid dream. Read a line of text, look away, then read the line of text again. If you’re dreaming, it’ll usually change.

My bum, shoulders, and legs hurt in a perfectly real sense after having driven about 14 hours between yesterday and today. Dreams only hurt if you focus on it, and it’s never that detailed or deep.

Take philosophy thought exercises out of imagination and into practical situations, and many cease to look profound.

Because I have aphantasia and can’t see pictures in my dreams. Seeing this text visually means it’s real.

I can’t.

But it’s very similar to simulation theory, at some point, if the simulation is so convincing that you can’t tell the difference, it becomes functionally irrelevant to find out, as the information has no bearing on your life.

How do you know you have ever been awake?

In reality, plenty of ways, looking at clocks in the dream is a fairly common one. If they don’t make any sense, you’re either dreaming or on strong hallucinogenics

It’s very rare that I think about whether or not I’m dreaming inside a dream. The one time I did, I was so certain I was dreaming that I let some dudes shoot me with M16s.

I’ve been dreaming since I woke up here!

Try to look for clues that goes beyond your imagination

I will suppose that some malicious demon of the utmost power and cunning has employed all his energies in order to deceive me.

I shall think of your post, my keyboard, the sky, the air, the earth, all colours, shapes, sounds and all external things as merely the delusions of dreams. Dreams devised to ensnare my judgment. I shall consider myself as not having hands, or eyes, or ascii, or bandwidth, or ganja, but as falsely believing that I have all these things.

I shall stubbornly and firmly persist in this meditation; and, even if it is not in my power to know any truth, I shall at least do what is in my power: I will resolutely guard against assenting to any falsehoods, so that the deceiver, however powerful and cunning he may be, will be unable to impose on me in the slightest degree.

(… remembering that most search engines suck now and so people who don’t recognize it might have trouble finding out what that’s from: it’s Descartes.)