I've pretty sure that podcasts and EV's are all part of the same grand process. What's that thing the WEF had in their ad, "You'll own nothing and you'll be happy"
"In this first one, you have reached the end years of your life. You have a great deal of difficulty getting around, caring for yourself, and have a lot of physical problems. However, you are living in a retirement home that has the latest technology that is being tried out there, and this technology allows you to be young again. You can do anything you want, go anywhere you want, eat anything you want, and there are no negative consequences on your body. It won’t prolong your life, but it certainly can make the last of it really enjoyable."
I think such a scenario type is the only way I'd want to be part of something like this. Reminds me of a Black Mirror show episode called "San Junipero" that's about elderly ill people inhabiting a virtual world to help improve their life quality in their last years (and *spoiler* beyond). I remember finding it quite interesting at the time.
Otherwise though, have to admit the whole idea of this becoming any kind of new normal is something I find quite disturbing. I find it only too believable that it would become a new drug to people susceptible to addictions and that a number of businesses providing services like this wouldn't hesitate to use this to their advantage to make a profit. I also don't see it as a good thing that people will be born into a time when they are unable to know what life was like without such virtual choices being around - although of course it's unavoidable.
"I am sure many of you are thinking, I would never spend $450,000 for something that I can’t even physically live in. Who would do that? A lot of people."
Occurs to me some might get hooked because of some businesses first letting people try the living in the house experience for free (or at least at a low cost) for a certain time period at first - who otherwise might not have done so.
Yea I’ll have to agree we already live in a world where society is shaped the way whoever sees fit. Feel free to tell me to get fitted for a tin foil hat but the media fed through the phones TVs and computers of everyone is manipulated I see patterns in the narrative pushed in the big picture constantly it’s just most people have forgotten how easy it is to manipulate media they take whatever they see on social media as truth on the grand scale without objectively thinking about why would someone want me to see this I don’t see it in the world. It’s a hopeless situation those who see it are outnumbered by those content to be a herd of cows led along.
" I do not want my world shaped for me by people that think that they know better than I do about what I want, and what should be important. "
There are reasons to believe that we were all born into such a world, already.
Free will is indeed a sleight of hand, and our wills have all along been culturally modelled and socially conditioned... not with the individual best interests in mind, though.
The metaverse is effectively - and for the time being - just a glorified videogame; the fact that it's possible and even acceptable to use a glorified videogame to enact the widespread manipulative commercial tactics you describe here is a testament to my first sentence. For a long while now, we have all been primed for what is ahead. As the WEF guy says "you will own nothing, and you will be happy".
Good grief. I appreciate this article because I am not very techy and much of the stuff written about all this is not comprehensible to me. What a terrifying prospect. I have conciously largely resisted drugs as an escape from intolerable reality, but can totally understand the sucking appeal of VR. It's like the Star Trek Nexus, which when you enter manufactures your whole spiritual and physical need, and which you then never have the will to leave. I hope I could resist, and yet as an old PAPER map nerd, and wild geo traveller, who spends so much time on Google Maps, and who spends too much time on cultural docos and drone footage of amazing places, I'm lost. I know I will be very vulnerable. Hopefully I will take the same view as I did with drugs (informed by my personal vilnerability), and just say 'no'. But oh, what I would miss!
I am a bit confused by the dining the Mediterranean and the running things. You cannot taste (as yet), you cannot acquire fitness sitting under your VR pretending to be on the eliptical, so how is that going to really count for you?
Who knows what the future will bring. It is beyond my imagination, but likely to be a DISASTER.
Consider smartphones. Almost everyone carries around a device that records their locations, their behaviors, and probably their conversations. Why? Because they are not only extremely convenient, but they’ve become nearly indispensable for anyone living in society.
A few months ago I interviewed with a company that was creating virtual reality office software for the Oculus Rift. Imagine that employers begin implementing virtual office spaces for their remote employees. Now you risk your job if you don’t join the metaverse.
And like our phones, the metaverse will become integrated with our other technology to the point that we can hardly function without it.
If you use a smartphone now (as I do) don’t fool yourself. You will use the metaverse. We will grumble about it. We will be exploited by it. But we will use it anyway.
But the metaverse is really only the tip of the iceberg of what is coming.
Nine months ago Elon Musk gave a demonstration of a monkey playing a video game with only signals from its mind. You can watch this here: https://youtu.be/2rXrGH52aoM
Musk eventually plans to put these into human brains. If everything goes as planned, we would not only be able to interface brain-to-ai but also with others directly through the brain.
Imagine getting ads directly in your brain. Imagine a data-grubbing company taking your data directly from your brain.
Having a company work out for you while you enjoy dinner with friends may be one of the more benign uses of this technology, but this description was also the most ominous part of your post. What you are describing here is mind control technology. I don’t even need to lay out all of the ways this could go wrong.
And guess what? Remember how I mentioned telepathy? Elon’s device is able to transmit as well as receive. If such a thing as mind control is possible, it will eventually be able to do it.
There’s another possible outcome of our brains directly transmitting data between computers and each other that should be brought up.
Now Consider ants. An ant has 250,000 neurons in its brain. There are 100,000 to 500,000 ants in an average ant colony. That means a colony has 25-125 billion neurons. This is comparable to the human brain. Indeed, ant colonies not only use tools, but last year an experiment demonstrated that they are capable of novel and flexible tool usage, something seen only in the most intelligent animals such as chimps and corvids.
Information flows much more slowly from ant to ant than it does between the neurons in their brains, yet they are still capable of this. How? I believe they send simple signals that trigger more complex processes in the brains of each ant. In computing, some complex processes can be broken into “threads.” Each thread is processed independently by a different processor (which in a supercomputer means a different computer) yet in the end this collective is able to produce the results that they individually could not.
Humans also have mechanisms similar to this. Language is one. But There’s another that is more pertinent. Humans, or at least most humans, have a mechanism that, unlike language, can be executed from outside in order to trigger very specific processes.
In fact, my interest in this process is what led me to take interest in psychopathy.
In Shin Seki Yori (which is a brilliant anime) humans have been genetically modified with bonobo dna to increase their empathy to the point where if they were to take a human life, their brains will kill them as well.
So, empathy is the process triggered when a human receives a specific signal, whether that human is willing or not. Having an identical mechanism built into our amygdalae allows for seamless communication. It's like entering a command into a command line. You can enter it onto any computer and run the same process (of course it's not quite that uniform).
If we look at the march of science, we might be led to believe that humanity also possesses a collective consciousness.
If we look at all of the problems with our society, it seems doubtful that we collectively form anything of intelligence.
But if we think of each human like a neuron, and we think of the structure of the ways that they share information like brain structure, science and, say politics, are using two very different collective processes.
Getting to the point, what happens when all of our brains are directly communicating with each other?
In split-brain patients, none of them felt much different, but they experienced different degrees of split consciousness, once the main bundle of nerves between their two halves was served.
At what point would your brain become aware of merging into a single consciousness? And How much connectivity is required? Would you even be aware at all, or as it happens gradually, would it feel like you’ve always existed as part of this?
We don’t fully understand how consciousness works. This could be the end of our individuality, or the end our collective’s stupidity when it is no longer has to rely on slow signals.
There’s a very good anime called Serial Experiments Lain that explores this idea.
At the very least, you might experience emotions you’ve never felt before when they stream into your prefrontal cortex from an ai or someone else’s amygdala. Or criminal psychopaths may be forced to experience such things after committing a crime.
Loads of scifi scenarios about virtual reality, lots of ways people have speculated it might play out in "reality"!
Some of the cyberpunk RPGs like Shadowrun have let players be characters with access to VR, and "augmented reality" is there too in a sort of overlay over reality. Then VR critters sort of start evolving, AIs that go rogue...
Vonda McIntyre also wrote some great books about futures with AR/VR. "Starfarers" and its sequels are my favorite...
I've pretty sure that podcasts and EV's are all part of the same grand process. What's that thing the WEF had in their ad, "You'll own nothing and you'll be happy"
Very interesting and thought provoking post.
"In this first one, you have reached the end years of your life. You have a great deal of difficulty getting around, caring for yourself, and have a lot of physical problems. However, you are living in a retirement home that has the latest technology that is being tried out there, and this technology allows you to be young again. You can do anything you want, go anywhere you want, eat anything you want, and there are no negative consequences on your body. It won’t prolong your life, but it certainly can make the last of it really enjoyable."
I think such a scenario type is the only way I'd want to be part of something like this. Reminds me of a Black Mirror show episode called "San Junipero" that's about elderly ill people inhabiting a virtual world to help improve their life quality in their last years (and *spoiler* beyond). I remember finding it quite interesting at the time.
Otherwise though, have to admit the whole idea of this becoming any kind of new normal is something I find quite disturbing. I find it only too believable that it would become a new drug to people susceptible to addictions and that a number of businesses providing services like this wouldn't hesitate to use this to their advantage to make a profit. I also don't see it as a good thing that people will be born into a time when they are unable to know what life was like without such virtual choices being around - although of course it's unavoidable.
"I am sure many of you are thinking, I would never spend $450,000 for something that I can’t even physically live in. Who would do that? A lot of people."
Occurs to me some might get hooked because of some businesses first letting people try the living in the house experience for free (or at least at a low cost) for a certain time period at first - who otherwise might not have done so.
Yea I’ll have to agree we already live in a world where society is shaped the way whoever sees fit. Feel free to tell me to get fitted for a tin foil hat but the media fed through the phones TVs and computers of everyone is manipulated I see patterns in the narrative pushed in the big picture constantly it’s just most people have forgotten how easy it is to manipulate media they take whatever they see on social media as truth on the grand scale without objectively thinking about why would someone want me to see this I don’t see it in the world. It’s a hopeless situation those who see it are outnumbered by those content to be a herd of cows led along.
" I do not want my world shaped for me by people that think that they know better than I do about what I want, and what should be important. "
There are reasons to believe that we were all born into such a world, already.
Free will is indeed a sleight of hand, and our wills have all along been culturally modelled and socially conditioned... not with the individual best interests in mind, though.
The metaverse is effectively - and for the time being - just a glorified videogame; the fact that it's possible and even acceptable to use a glorified videogame to enact the widespread manipulative commercial tactics you describe here is a testament to my first sentence. For a long while now, we have all been primed for what is ahead. As the WEF guy says "you will own nothing, and you will be happy".
Good grief. I appreciate this article because I am not very techy and much of the stuff written about all this is not comprehensible to me. What a terrifying prospect. I have conciously largely resisted drugs as an escape from intolerable reality, but can totally understand the sucking appeal of VR. It's like the Star Trek Nexus, which when you enter manufactures your whole spiritual and physical need, and which you then never have the will to leave. I hope I could resist, and yet as an old PAPER map nerd, and wild geo traveller, who spends so much time on Google Maps, and who spends too much time on cultural docos and drone footage of amazing places, I'm lost. I know I will be very vulnerable. Hopefully I will take the same view as I did with drugs (informed by my personal vilnerability), and just say 'no'. But oh, what I would miss!
I am a bit confused by the dining the Mediterranean and the running things. You cannot taste (as yet), you cannot acquire fitness sitting under your VR pretending to be on the eliptical, so how is that going to really count for you?
Who knows what the future will bring. It is beyond my imagination, but likely to be a DISASTER.
Consider smartphones. Almost everyone carries around a device that records their locations, their behaviors, and probably their conversations. Why? Because they are not only extremely convenient, but they’ve become nearly indispensable for anyone living in society.
A few months ago I interviewed with a company that was creating virtual reality office software for the Oculus Rift. Imagine that employers begin implementing virtual office spaces for their remote employees. Now you risk your job if you don’t join the metaverse.
And like our phones, the metaverse will become integrated with our other technology to the point that we can hardly function without it.
If you use a smartphone now (as I do) don’t fool yourself. You will use the metaverse. We will grumble about it. We will be exploited by it. But we will use it anyway.
But the metaverse is really only the tip of the iceberg of what is coming.
Nine months ago Elon Musk gave a demonstration of a monkey playing a video game with only signals from its mind. You can watch this here: https://youtu.be/2rXrGH52aoM
Musk eventually plans to put these into human brains. If everything goes as planned, we would not only be able to interface brain-to-ai but also with others directly through the brain.
Imagine getting ads directly in your brain. Imagine a data-grubbing company taking your data directly from your brain.
Having a company work out for you while you enjoy dinner with friends may be one of the more benign uses of this technology, but this description was also the most ominous part of your post. What you are describing here is mind control technology. I don’t even need to lay out all of the ways this could go wrong.
And guess what? Remember how I mentioned telepathy? Elon’s device is able to transmit as well as receive. If such a thing as mind control is possible, it will eventually be able to do it.
There’s another possible outcome of our brains directly transmitting data between computers and each other that should be brought up.
Now Consider ants. An ant has 250,000 neurons in its brain. There are 100,000 to 500,000 ants in an average ant colony. That means a colony has 25-125 billion neurons. This is comparable to the human brain. Indeed, ant colonies not only use tools, but last year an experiment demonstrated that they are capable of novel and flexible tool usage, something seen only in the most intelligent animals such as chimps and corvids.
Information flows much more slowly from ant to ant than it does between the neurons in their brains, yet they are still capable of this. How? I believe they send simple signals that trigger more complex processes in the brains of each ant. In computing, some complex processes can be broken into “threads.” Each thread is processed independently by a different processor (which in a supercomputer means a different computer) yet in the end this collective is able to produce the results that they individually could not.
Humans also have mechanisms similar to this. Language is one. But There’s another that is more pertinent. Humans, or at least most humans, have a mechanism that, unlike language, can be executed from outside in order to trigger very specific processes.
In fact, my interest in this process is what led me to take interest in psychopathy.
In Shin Seki Yori (which is a brilliant anime) humans have been genetically modified with bonobo dna to increase their empathy to the point where if they were to take a human life, their brains will kill them as well.
So, empathy is the process triggered when a human receives a specific signal, whether that human is willing or not. Having an identical mechanism built into our amygdalae allows for seamless communication. It's like entering a command into a command line. You can enter it onto any computer and run the same process (of course it's not quite that uniform).
If we look at the march of science, we might be led to believe that humanity also possesses a collective consciousness.
If we look at all of the problems with our society, it seems doubtful that we collectively form anything of intelligence.
But if we think of each human like a neuron, and we think of the structure of the ways that they share information like brain structure, science and, say politics, are using two very different collective processes.
Getting to the point, what happens when all of our brains are directly communicating with each other?
In split-brain patients, none of them felt much different, but they experienced different degrees of split consciousness, once the main bundle of nerves between their two halves was served.
At what point would your brain become aware of merging into a single consciousness? And How much connectivity is required? Would you even be aware at all, or as it happens gradually, would it feel like you’ve always existed as part of this?
We don’t fully understand how consciousness works. This could be the end of our individuality, or the end our collective’s stupidity when it is no longer has to rely on slow signals.
There’s a very good anime called Serial Experiments Lain that explores this idea.
At the very least, you might experience emotions you’ve never felt before when they stream into your prefrontal cortex from an ai or someone else’s amygdala. Or criminal psychopaths may be forced to experience such things after committing a crime.
Chilling indeed.
Loads of scifi scenarios about virtual reality, lots of ways people have speculated it might play out in "reality"!
Some of the cyberpunk RPGs like Shadowrun have let players be characters with access to VR, and "augmented reality" is there too in a sort of overlay over reality. Then VR critters sort of start evolving, AIs that go rogue...
Vonda McIntyre also wrote some great books about futures with AR/VR. "Starfarers" and its sequels are my favorite...