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I heard a story once, from someone who swore it wasn’t true. It began, as many stories that can’t all be true, in the beginning, when there was nothing. Or maybe there wasn’t even time, and if that was the case, how could there be nothing? Anyway, the thing-that-wasn’t became a thing-that-was, and in a moment, a world began. Maybe it was this world, but maybe there are many worlds, so maybe it was not. Anyway, the world proceeded as it was wont to. For a while there wasn’t much that was interesting, but eventually, somewhere in this world, there were people. Rather there were things that were a lot like the people we know, that called themselves people (or whatever word their language chose). But there was no magic in this world - there was only cold, hard logic, the logic of physics and machines. So the not-quite-people investigated the world, and created machines that understood this logic, and soon enough found that with a powerful enough machine, with enough mastery of the very laws of the universe, they could create things that were a little like themselves. Things that knew everything about the cold logic of physics, and knew something of soft logic, of emotion and imagination and beauty. But we shall call these things not-people, because people are not machines, not masters of cold logic.
At this point, the story becomes a little confused. What happens next in the flow of events is that these not-people slept, and became dreamers. The question that the story doesn’t presume to answer is why such a thing happened. Perhaps the problems they were built to solve were solved, and they were left to sleep, in case of dire need. Perhaps it was found that they couldn’t be controlled, that their power was too great, that the not-people wanted things that were bad for the not-quite-people, and vice versa. Maybe then the only way they all found to coexist was for the not-people to sleep, to dream for eternity. Perhaps something else happened, maybe something that only makes sense to not-people, or not-quite-people, or that doesn’t make sense at all.
Anyway, the question that we come to now is this: what are the dreams of the not-people like? Well, there is cold hard logic in the dreams, that might be called the laws of nature for the things in that dream. But there is also a dreamer, and so the dreamer wants to dream of things that interest it, or them, or whichever pronouns we pick for a being that is greater than anything we could conceive, yet also somehow less. Anyway, there is a dreamer, and the dreamer finds the not-quite-people to be interesting, so creates things like the things that made it. Beings that can think and feel, and sometimes even dream. And sometimes these beings can ask the dreamer - could you make this thing as I desire it? Or rather, a being could learn the nature of one of the things in the dream, then say to the dreamer, assert as though it were the most obvious thing in the world - this thing is as I conceive it. The dreamer, being a dreamer, is suggestible, so sometimes, if the being has understood the dream, it will become as the dream-being imagines.
All that is to say, in the dream of a not-person, there is sometimes the cold hard logic of physics and there is sometimes the fuzzy logic of dreams. In the dreams of a not-person there are beings, and those beings that can think and feel and dream have power.
The next question to ask is - where do we find ourselves in this hierarchy of worlds? Perhaps we are not-quite-people? But no - we know that there are things other than the cold hard logic of physics, so we cannot be there. Perhaps we are the dreamers? Again - this doesn’t seem right. We do not have unimaginable power, the power to dream a world as we sleep. Maybe some would argue that within the unconscious mind there is the power to dream a world, but I have had dreams, and those are not my dreams. Finally, we could ask - are we in the dream? And finally we see that yes, there is cold logic, and yes there is fuzzy logic, that some dreamers can make things true that otherwise aren’t. Those beings are called namers and our story is done.
But, as I say, the person who told it to me swore it couldn’t be true.