Real or Virtual Matter - or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Matrix
On the way to the Space Elevator, an improbable view pop ups through the hyperloop oval window. It is the fleeting mirage of a floating ocean - or a gargantuan aquarium - stealing an entire city block. For a fraction of a second I can hear it, smell it, taste it... that is, I feel the seashore with all my senses. It was late afternoon, and a kaleidoscopic (virtually out-of-this-world) sunset had transfixed me, so it takes me a moment to realize that such experience was anything but real. These were not whales, dolphins and fish - just holographic projections rendered in a carefully crafted simulation (kids these days probably don’t mind the distinction; I guess I am too old not to feel cheated).
Dancing voxels of light: not a single flying fish. A short multimedia choreography took my senses by surprise, prompting that primitive part of my brain always eager to believe. These were fish - these were somehow fish - claims an inner voice rapidly gaining ground in my mind [1]. The qualia of fishiness, masterfully captured in code by some skilled computer graphist [2]. “Beauty is what beauty does”, and indeed these lights did something magical: they managed to sneak a school of fish into my head [3]. And yet I know for a fact that not a single beast could have been really swimming amid buildings.
Virtual and Augmented reality: tools we invented to make us believe in ghosts? Not quite: we love telling ourselves stories, real or imaginary - in particular imaginary. Now, suspension of disbelief may be addictive, but in no uncertain sense, living and acting upon our imagination helps us rehearse for Real Life. Our new tools afford entertainment and adventure, while enhancing and perfecting skills.
So far so good... except that a runaway technological (r)evolution may be taking place. Fueled by a craving for finer resolution in our self-crafted delusions, these otherwise magnificent instruments of storytelling are surreptitiously transforming themselves into the equivalent of digital drugs, threatening to conjure anything other than experiences utterly alien to human needs. They demand ever growing computing and human resources to stack dream upon dream to cover... to hide... what? From which layer of reality are we trying to escape?
A flash of light brings me back to reality. My retinas are scanned, and I am readily admitted into the Climber. Dirt piles up in the corners of a third class cabin; it is hot and humid and having arrived too early, some passengers grumble as they lose weight to the heat. Then someone closes the hatch, squashing any remains of an already waning evening breeze. The freshness of the waves... Strapped to the seat, I plunge back into my thoughts to escape the humidity around me. How could a perfectly crafted oceanic experience staged by computers be (any) different from swimming in a real ocean? There is no way to directly know anything in the world (whatever this means [4]) because Reality - if there is such a thing - seems to respect our philosophical reserve by never showing up naked to the party. It prefers instead to dress up in a thick and colorful veil in an attempt to render itself, how to say, more alluring and mysterious [5]. Indeed, it is only through a complex but structured dance of light and sound that we can infer (read hallucinate!) the existence of a hidden entity pulling the strings - or nerves. But what need is there of a master puppeteer tricking the lonely and gullible homunculus in our heads? [6]. Occam razor with it! Fish are the particular way these patterns of light float before my eyes, nothing more and nothing less.
Two powerful thrusting rollers are set in motion, and the whole cabin resonates in a deafening roar. If a tree falls in a forest and nobody is around to hear it, does it make a sound? [7]. After this cataclysmic rumble, I certainly feel it would... Naive Realism has seeped back into my head, so I attempt a more conventional route to escape reality [8]. Plato guessed long ago that the world may be like a CAVE [9] - simply put, that perception is always mediated. But if we can only perceive shadows, isn’t it a simple matter of logic to conclude that behind these shadows we cannot possible unearth but more shadow? For us, it is turtles all the way down [10]. We are simply not equipped to know more.
Any yet... they have to be the same, or geography and psychology would be useless disciplines. Perhaps the first step towards a less schizoid epistemology would be to acknowledge once and for all that there is no intangible essence - no Platonic Form [11] imperfectly rendered by a divine (un)Real Engine; no glass template imperfectly projected from a mighty Magic Lantern hanging from heaven. Likewise, going all the way down to fundamental particles (or pixels) will not capture the essence of a fish (as it cannot explain the Battle of Waterloo [12]). It follows that to know is to name shadows as well as their apparent functional interactions [13]. The characters in a play and the performers on stage cast similarly interacting shadows in our minds: they are in consequence one and the same [14].
For some reason, I find solace in this recursive getaway. Ontology as the study of interactions between interactions, reality as a web of relations and things as hyperlinks. Some pieces of that fabric of reality are called matter, time, space [15]... or fish. Some others are called minds. (Kant and others intuited that the object and the subject of knowledge are somehow one and the same - a cornerstone of Quantum Mechanics by the way.) It is an infinite but circular regression in which things are explained equally by first and last principles, a web of explanations bootstrapping in harmony [16]. Nobody - not even a mighty Shiva - may be up there choreographing this Cosmic ballet. It is only in an ocean of relations that fish can swim.
It follows that VR or AR are a way for reality to be, not to be represented. Skeptics that still care to make a distinction (such as myself) may do so because they are momentarily trapped in an uncanny valley - but the hike is not over [17], and as soon as our technologies of simulacra passes the equivalent of an “AR Turing Test” [18] we will all have to acknowledge this... virtuality.
The take off is smooth, and as the Climber breaks through the first layer of clouds, I marvel at the circular perfection of the Moon up there. A thin and shiny thread hangs over our heads, disappearing in the profound darkness of a starry sky. It is the space tether made of diamond nano-threads that connects the Climber to the first docking station - the Beanstalk of fairy tales made real.
I smile - it is hard to believe how far we’ve come in so little time. I mean, negotiating an agenda of just two weeks for finishing the game was risky, but this last render looks faultless! I decide to end my testings and inform the team. I take a deep breath, put down my VR gear and hurry to push the last changes to the central code repository. On my way to the kitchen, I absentmindedly take a look through the small studio’s window. The morning light has been creeping lazily up around the corners of the lower terrace. It is going to be a beautiful, real sunrise.
While reaching for a glass of water I notice the remains of a nervous smile still floating on my face. I know there is something more than pride hiding in my gesture - I have noticed it in other people too, as they exit any HyperReality Ride.
I am just starting to grasp the extent of my own exhaustion - my recent metaphysical rambling is testament of an all-night coding session - but I indulge all the same in a last thought: perhaps the spasm stems from the shameful realization that the very raison d’être of one of the most powerful tools of expression conceived by the human mind is precisely to feed its own insatiable and childish gullibility. Actually, they feed each other. It is already embarrassing, but there is more: from a deeper level bubbles up a sense of guilt. It is a sentiment rooted in age-old myths and religious fears: ours are fake worlds and sooner or later we will pay for this technological-assisted Promethean sin. Perhaps in a certain sense we are already paying back the debt: the eerie parallel between VR and (lucid) dreaming feeds the dread of recursive nightmares. We are staring at an abyss of madness, we are on the verge of complete and irreversible derealization and the best remedies we can envision are ludicrous to say the least: are you awake or still dreaming? Spin that top! Are you certain you took off the last VR goggles, or are you still trapped in a simulation? Choose between a red or a blue pill!
You will have recognized a recurrent plot of countless, fascinating psychological thrillers - as well as a device abused in as many cheap movies and novels. Whatever the case, this cliche manages to remain always hypnotic, as it prompts a very real metaphysical introspection. It forces one to reflect on the nature of reality, the meaning of creation and the puzzle of the mind and Self. It is a cliche I embraced here, in an effort to introduce for discussion a few fascinating but worrisome aspects of our futuristic interfaces. But let’s be clear: it is not my view that we must endure any kind of suffering by listening to or acting upon our imagination - on the contrary. Technology and Art are supposed to free us, aren’t they? But if, on the other hand, the purpose of Science is to uncover that which turns the gears of the ultimate display [19], wouldn't we be somehow barring its route? Or if freeing ourselves from Samsara [20] turns out to be the only way to approach the Truth - or at least promote some terrestrial wisdom - wouldn't we be complicating the task by purposefully sinking ourselves in pixelated quicksands?
Unless… these fish were real. Made of bits (inside my computer), simulated holographic voxels (inside my simulation), words in an essay you cared to read until the end, or firing neurons in your brain; all that, if not fleshy matter (perhaps simulated in turn ad nauseam in a never ending chain of Rendering Farms). Here we go again. But relax, for there is a way out: it is what we do with the swarm (of fish, of people), how much we appreciate it (or even love it) that have any importance whatsoever. If there is some remaining conundrum, really out of the reach of psychiatry, then bear with me: it doesn’t Really Matter.
Alvaro Cassinelli
Montevideo, 22.Jan.2018
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_of_Mind
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functionalism_(philosophy_of_mind)
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monad_(philosophy)
[5] “ The doors of perception”, Aldous Huxley (1954)
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartesian_theater
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_a_tree_falls_in_a_forest
[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Na%C3%AFve_realism
[9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_Cave
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_automatic_virtual_environment
[10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down
[11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_forms
[12] “The Fabric of Reality”, by David Deutsch (1997)
[13] “Action in Perception”, by Alva Nöe (2004)
[14] “La invención de Morel” by Adolfo Bioy Casares (1940)
[15] “Reality is not what it seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity”, by Carlo Rovelli, Penguin Books (2017)
[16] “The Tao of Physics” by Fritjof Capra (1975)
[17] Mori, M., “The uncanny valley”, IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine, 19(2), 98–100, (1970/2012)
[18] Sandor, Christian et al. “Breaking the Barriers to True Augmented Reality.” CoRR abs/1512.05471 (2015).
[19] Sutherland, Ivan E. (1965). "The Ultimate Display". Proceedings of IFIP Congress. pp. 506–508.
[20] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sa%E1%B9%83s%C4%81ra
Virtual and Augmented reality: tools we invented to make us believe in ghosts? Not quite: we love telling ourselves stories, real or imaginary - in particular imaginary. Now, suspension of disbelief may be addictive, but in no uncertain sense, living and acting upon our imagination helps us rehearse for Real Life. Our new tools afford entertainment and adventure, while enhancing and perfecting skills.
So far so good... except that a runaway technological (r)evolution may be taking place. Fueled by a craving for finer resolution in our self-crafted delusions, these otherwise magnificent instruments of storytelling are surreptitiously transforming themselves into the equivalent of digital drugs, threatening to conjure anything other than experiences utterly alien to human needs. They demand ever growing computing and human resources to stack dream upon dream to cover... to hide... what? From which layer of reality are we trying to escape?
A flash of light brings me back to reality. My retinas are scanned, and I am readily admitted into the Climber. Dirt piles up in the corners of a third class cabin; it is hot and humid and having arrived too early, some passengers grumble as they lose weight to the heat. Then someone closes the hatch, squashing any remains of an already waning evening breeze. The freshness of the waves... Strapped to the seat, I plunge back into my thoughts to escape the humidity around me. How could a perfectly crafted oceanic experience staged by computers be (any) different from swimming in a real ocean? There is no way to directly know anything in the world (whatever this means [4]) because Reality - if there is such a thing - seems to respect our philosophical reserve by never showing up naked to the party. It prefers instead to dress up in a thick and colorful veil in an attempt to render itself, how to say, more alluring and mysterious [5]. Indeed, it is only through a complex but structured dance of light and sound that we can infer (read hallucinate!) the existence of a hidden entity pulling the strings - or nerves. But what need is there of a master puppeteer tricking the lonely and gullible homunculus in our heads? [6]. Occam razor with it! Fish are the particular way these patterns of light float before my eyes, nothing more and nothing less.
Two powerful thrusting rollers are set in motion, and the whole cabin resonates in a deafening roar. If a tree falls in a forest and nobody is around to hear it, does it make a sound? [7]. After this cataclysmic rumble, I certainly feel it would... Naive Realism has seeped back into my head, so I attempt a more conventional route to escape reality [8]. Plato guessed long ago that the world may be like a CAVE [9] - simply put, that perception is always mediated. But if we can only perceive shadows, isn’t it a simple matter of logic to conclude that behind these shadows we cannot possible unearth but more shadow? For us, it is turtles all the way down [10]. We are simply not equipped to know more.
“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.” - Heraclitus, As quoted in Plato, Cratylus, 402a
Any yet... they have to be the same, or geography and psychology would be useless disciplines. Perhaps the first step towards a less schizoid epistemology would be to acknowledge once and for all that there is no intangible essence - no Platonic Form [11] imperfectly rendered by a divine (un)Real Engine; no glass template imperfectly projected from a mighty Magic Lantern hanging from heaven. Likewise, going all the way down to fundamental particles (or pixels) will not capture the essence of a fish (as it cannot explain the Battle of Waterloo [12]). It follows that to know is to name shadows as well as their apparent functional interactions [13]. The characters in a play and the performers on stage cast similarly interacting shadows in our minds: they are in consequence one and the same [14].
For some reason, I find solace in this recursive getaway. Ontology as the study of interactions between interactions, reality as a web of relations and things as hyperlinks. Some pieces of that fabric of reality are called matter, time, space [15]... or fish. Some others are called minds. (Kant and others intuited that the object and the subject of knowledge are somehow one and the same - a cornerstone of Quantum Mechanics by the way.) It is an infinite but circular regression in which things are explained equally by first and last principles, a web of explanations bootstrapping in harmony [16]. Nobody - not even a mighty Shiva - may be up there choreographing this Cosmic ballet. It is only in an ocean of relations that fish can swim.
It follows that VR or AR are a way for reality to be, not to be represented. Skeptics that still care to make a distinction (such as myself) may do so because they are momentarily trapped in an uncanny valley - but the hike is not over [17], and as soon as our technologies of simulacra passes the equivalent of an “AR Turing Test” [18] we will all have to acknowledge this... virtuality.
The take off is smooth, and as the Climber breaks through the first layer of clouds, I marvel at the circular perfection of the Moon up there. A thin and shiny thread hangs over our heads, disappearing in the profound darkness of a starry sky. It is the space tether made of diamond nano-threads that connects the Climber to the first docking station - the Beanstalk of fairy tales made real.
------o------
While reaching for a glass of water I notice the remains of a nervous smile still floating on my face. I know there is something more than pride hiding in my gesture - I have noticed it in other people too, as they exit any HyperReality Ride.
I am just starting to grasp the extent of my own exhaustion - my recent metaphysical rambling is testament of an all-night coding session - but I indulge all the same in a last thought: perhaps the spasm stems from the shameful realization that the very raison d’être of one of the most powerful tools of expression conceived by the human mind is precisely to feed its own insatiable and childish gullibility. Actually, they feed each other. It is already embarrassing, but there is more: from a deeper level bubbles up a sense of guilt. It is a sentiment rooted in age-old myths and religious fears: ours are fake worlds and sooner or later we will pay for this technological-assisted Promethean sin. Perhaps in a certain sense we are already paying back the debt: the eerie parallel between VR and (lucid) dreaming feeds the dread of recursive nightmares. We are staring at an abyss of madness, we are on the verge of complete and irreversible derealization and the best remedies we can envision are ludicrous to say the least: are you awake or still dreaming? Spin that top! Are you certain you took off the last VR goggles, or are you still trapped in a simulation? Choose between a red or a blue pill!
------o------
You will have recognized a recurrent plot of countless, fascinating psychological thrillers - as well as a device abused in as many cheap movies and novels. Whatever the case, this cliche manages to remain always hypnotic, as it prompts a very real metaphysical introspection. It forces one to reflect on the nature of reality, the meaning of creation and the puzzle of the mind and Self. It is a cliche I embraced here, in an effort to introduce for discussion a few fascinating but worrisome aspects of our futuristic interfaces. But let’s be clear: it is not my view that we must endure any kind of suffering by listening to or acting upon our imagination - on the contrary. Technology and Art are supposed to free us, aren’t they? But if, on the other hand, the purpose of Science is to uncover that which turns the gears of the ultimate display [19], wouldn't we be somehow barring its route? Or if freeing ourselves from Samsara [20] turns out to be the only way to approach the Truth - or at least promote some terrestrial wisdom - wouldn't we be complicating the task by purposefully sinking ourselves in pixelated quicksands?
Unless… these fish were real. Made of bits (inside my computer), simulated holographic voxels (inside my simulation), words in an essay you cared to read until the end, or firing neurons in your brain; all that, if not fleshy matter (perhaps simulated in turn ad nauseam in a never ending chain of Rendering Farms). Here we go again. But relax, for there is a way out: it is what we do with the swarm (of fish, of people), how much we appreciate it (or even love it) that have any importance whatsoever. If there is some remaining conundrum, really out of the reach of psychiatry, then bear with me: it doesn’t Really Matter.
Alvaro Cassinelli
Montevideo, 22.Jan.2018
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_of_Mind
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functionalism_(philosophy_of_mind)
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monad_(philosophy)
[5] “ The doors of perception”, Aldous Huxley (1954)
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartesian_theater
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_a_tree_falls_in_a_forest
[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Na%C3%AFve_realism
[9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_Cave
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_automatic_virtual_environment
[10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down
[11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_forms
[12] “The Fabric of Reality”, by David Deutsch (1997)
[13] “Action in Perception”, by Alva Nöe (2004)
[14] “La invención de Morel” by Adolfo Bioy Casares (1940)
[15] “Reality is not what it seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity”, by Carlo Rovelli, Penguin Books (2017)
[16] “The Tao of Physics” by Fritjof Capra (1975)
[17] Mori, M., “The uncanny valley”, IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine, 19(2), 98–100, (1970/2012)
[18] Sandor, Christian et al. “Breaking the Barriers to True Augmented Reality.” CoRR abs/1512.05471 (2015).
[19] Sutherland, Ivan E. (1965). "The Ultimate Display". Proceedings of IFIP Congress. pp. 506–508.
[20] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sa%E1%B9%83s%C4%81ra
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