Rescuing Humans From Virtual Reality
Can you save people from themselves if they do not wish to be 'saved'?
Apple Vision Pro has hit the virtual streets, with our physical streets accommodating the VR headset enthusiasts, generating interesting people-watching results…
https://twitter.com/EndWokeness/status/1754284710107193685
James Corbett published a thought-provoking piece on this, raising philosophical implications, citing documented side effects of Vision Pro, and noting the predictive programming precedents set in the past; by films such as Minority Report (2002).
Corbett wrote:
"Beware: The Apple Vision Pro may rewire our brains in unexpected ways"
That's an article by Adam Rogers at BusinessInsider documenting an experiment conducted by a team of researchers led by Jeremy Bailenson at the Virtual Human Interaction Lab at Stanford. In that experiment, subjects attempted to wear an Apple Vision Pro or a Meta Quest (Zuckerberg's Facebook equivalent of the mixed-reality goggles) for weeks at a time, and the results were shocking. As it turns out, the "passthrough" process by which these devices take the real world and then present it to its wearer via the digital screen begins to have profound dissociative effects on the gadget's user after prolonged periods of use.
Because passthrough captures and then re-renders reality, it can have an unnerving, distancing effect over time. When Bailenson's colleagues actually tried to talk to people, the world turned into a giant, confusing Zoom. Video chats, as we've all experienced, are plagued by delays in responses and missed social cues. Conversations lose subtlety, but it's good enough for a meeting. But passthrough magnifies the effect — the people you talk to start to seem unreal. Up close, they look like avatars. Farther away, they become just part of the background.
Rescue: back to the real
Could there soon be a niche business opportunity, to rescue these escapist, unreality-embracing wayward souls, and show them a way back to reality, that would appeal enough for them to remove their headsets?
Would these virtual-reality loving people - what shall we call them? - ‘Virts’? - want to be saved from themselves? Perhaps not so easily, if ConVID has been any barometer to go by.
We could send digital avatar bots into the VR realms, advertising ‘the real’ with a pre-recorded human message. It might sound something like this…
Are you feeling disillusioned, out of space, out of time, unsure of your identity, and apart from your humanity?
Do you remember what life was like before?
What is real? Let us show you…
Try our Virt-rehabilitation center, deep in Thailand’s northern mountain ranges… enjoy outdoor adventurous pursuits, run your fingers through the tall grass, breathe in the aroma of wild flowers, feel the cool mountain breeze blowing in your hair, and the warmth of morning sunrise on your cheek…
Our intensive digital detox program incorporates meditative practices, re-learning basic motor skills, balance, coordination, empathy, and the art of real-life conversation…
Why wait?
Perhaps they could ease themselves back into reality, just by starting with a short ‘holiday’ in the real…
Damnit, someone will simply copy this advert, then create a text-video-virtual-AI rendered construct to keep the ‘Virts’ obliviously trapped!
Related - end scene from the film Repo Men (2010):
Will companies soon begin to advertise free Vision Pro headsets in packages for job roles - in the same way that iPhones and iPads are bundled together by the big corporates these days? Will that be the bait - to at first encourage virtual reality corporate meetings, then mandate them in order to remain gainfully employed?
Intimacy
Is the advent of virtual reality sex, inevitable? The film Demolition Man sure as hell predictively programmed a lot back in its 1993 release date:
Totalitarian Utopia (everyone loves their servitude)
Meat eating is banned
Virtual boardroom meetings
No physical contact, because germs
VR…intimacy (let us hope we won’t bear witness to a Vision Pro wearer getting virtually laid whilst seated on the train).
Gamers
Gaming is going to become more immersive, no doubt further skewing the boundaries and perceptions of reality, altering human brainwave activity, and causing serotonin dysregulation. People may well become consumed by the fast-developing [virtual] online world of gaming, finding themselves unsure of where the blurred line of on-and-offline existence ceases, and the other begins (or ends?).
One of the most unsettling, dystopian films to portray this phenomena - being unsure of reality itself - due to VR gaming, was the 1999 release of EXistenZ.
The end scene:
Contemplate your own EXistenCe - will you choose reality, human connection, contentment, human interaction, story-telling, physical embracement, laughter, love, and joy?
Or might you choose virtual ‘reality’, perpetual online ‘life’, bleakness, numbness, insatiate, unmoored, unreal, unsure, adrift, disconnected from your soul?
Inhuman?
Transhuman?
Choose wisely. The stakes are high.
Wishing you all a happy leap year!
Shostakovich - Festive Overture in A Major, Op. 96 | Nobel Prize Concert 2009
Duration: 06:26 minutes:
Nicholas Creed is a Bangkok based writer. All content is free for all readers, with nothing locked in archive that requires a paid subscription. Any support is greatly appreciated.
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In the 1980's when I read all the original Dune novels it seemed strange that the humans in Herbert's future world had banned computers. Starting in early 2020 it suddenly became obvious why he'd been worried enough to include that idea in his books: When it comes to prescience, Paul Atreides had nothing on Frank Herbert. I don't question the life-saving applications of computers in aviation and medicine, to name just two disciplines. But I also don't doubt their lethality when they're used to construct digital prisons.
Can you save people from themselves if they do not wish to be saved? No. It doesn't work with drugs or alcohol or food. It won't work with AI, either. It's the whole "lead a horse to water" idea, and in this context you're talking about people who have already leapt at the chance to slam the door on reality, as opposed to getting there through a long, slow process of self-destruction and denial.
As cool as it is to fantasize about turning my own fiction into a movie using AI, I haven't heard anything yet that makes me think AI will be anything other than a curse on humanity. As a species we've developed technical skills that are light years ahead of our ethical evolution. The moral pop quiz of 2020 proved that humanity isn't ready for prime time. Morally, too many of us are stuck in the Pliocene looking for victims to bash in the head with a club. A high-tech club with buttons and pretty lights, but still a club.
Some of us still treasure reality, though, and have the skills and willingness to live in it. As humans we have free will, and nothing we do is inevitable. Mountains, planets, tides: Those are metaphysical givens. Anything open to human choice is open to alternatives of our own making,
I would say that a bigger problem than VR is: Why do so many people want to immerse themselves in unreality?
Why have drug addictions soared in the West? Why have anxiety disorders soared? Why have so many people consigned the trusteeship of their lives to what happens on social media? Why do so many people dress themselves up to look like the victims of a horrible chemical accident, like The Joker in Batman?
As Samuel Johnson famously said: "He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man."
In sum, I would say that a deep-rooted sickness in society drives people to reality-destroying things like VR, and that VR (and the others) then have the potential to make them even sicker.