CPS 100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Elon Musk, Radical Change, One Direction
Lliving in a computer simulation
Technically speaking, the Tech Billionaires aren't convinced. They're airing the
possibility, but they aren't convinced. There's a difference. To be convinced means
that you're so devoted towards it being true, that you proclaim it in a religious way.
To merely air the possibility is just realizing that as our technological prowess
expands further and further, there may come a time where we are living in a
simulation without knowing it.If it was possible for us by now to simulate real life,
but as VR, would you ever consider leaving Earth? To top it off, if you also could
have your entire personality transferred to a system together with the rest of
humanity and said system never ran down on power, would you ever realize then,
that your reality wasn't real, if it looked realistic? Would the few who maintained the
system realize that their reality was real, when both looked alike?I don't think so
and neither do they. So if questioning reality is enough for being convinced, then
the article author can count me in that group as well.
There is a good possibility that we are living in a simulated world/universe, but so
what? I find it odd that people are so obsessed with breaking out while at the
same time so worried about survival. If our existence is so intolerable that we feel
the need to escape, shouldn't imminent death be welcomed rather than feared?
We don't actually have any way of knowing what we are, why or how it is we exist,
when/how we came to exist and when/how we will cease to exist. There are
countless works of literature, theater, music, philosophy that have asked the same
questions over millennia. I've read a bit of scripture from hindu, buddhist, hebrew,
chiristian and muslim books that could easily have been written in an attempt to
prevent us from creating a situation that we are unable to control. We've probably
brought about our own destruction many times in the past and will continue to do it
many times in the future. It's pointless to stress out about death and extinction
because we can't control everything around us. The only thing we have complete
control over is how we percieve and react to the world around us.
ave you ever wondered if life is not exactly what it’s cracked up to be? OK, let’s
take that thought a little further. Have you ever suffered from an identity crisis?
Yes? One in which you suspected that you’re not a real person, but instead an
extremely sophisticated computer simulation of a real person produced by an
immensely more developed civilisation than that which we take to be our own?
It’s just possible that I lost you on that last point, but stay with me, because the
reality we take for granted is coming under increasing technological and theoretical
threat.
Earlier this month in an office block in Euston, I put on a virtual reality (VR) headset
and began playing a prototype of a game developed by a company called Dream
Reality Interactive. The company was set up by David Ranyard, the former head of
Sony’s VR division.
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Ranyard has a PhD in artificial intelligence which he says has been “useless for 19
years”. But he believes there’s going to be a convergence in VR and artificial
intelligence (AI) soon, and his company aims to be there when that happens.
What’s changing is accessibility. Ten years ago VR was the preserve of wealthy
“early adopters”. Now you can pick up a reasonable VR set for £600. Ranyard
thinks the price will continue to fall, as will the size of the headset, until it becomes
more like wearing a pair of glasses.
But right now I’m wearing a large case over my eyes, and headphones. I feel
instantly removed from my environment. In front of me I can see a ball, which I can
move by looking at a cursor. The ball travels along a high narrow pathway in a
vertiginous 3D computer simulation, and I must guide it into various targets to get
to the next stages, where a series of ever more fantastic backdrops unfold.
In terms of skill, it is quite simple, but the striking aspect of the game is the physical
sensation of playing it. I feel and therefore believe that I am physically moving back
and forth, as though I am on a chair on wheels. External reality has fallen away
and I am in a strange and compelling world, anxious not to fall off the terrifying
precipices. My brain sends signals to my body that create the illusion that it’s
shooting around like a pinball, when in fact I am stationary.
So from one perspective it’s just another video game with added thrills. But there’s
also something else going on here, a radical change of narrative perspective.
Computer games are a form of story, and human beings are devoted storytellers.
As Yuval Noah Harari argues in his book Sapiens, the ability to create binding
fictions is what enabled us to become the most dominant species on the planet.
And what are stories if not representations, or simulations, of reality?
“I do talks and I have this image of Harold Lloyd [the silent movie star] who’s about
to fall off this clock,” says Ranyard. “And the point I make is that in order to care
about it, you have to care about him. So part of the film is setting you up to like
him. In VR you don’t need to do that set-up because it’s you. There are a whole
range of emotions we haven’t used because we’ve always had to do it through
empathy.”
VR is different because it’s not like a film, in which you watch other people in an
invented reality. You are instead the star of what feels like an alternative reality.
Leaving aside the moral implications of this change – and whether it heralds
greater self-absorption and social detachment – what is notable, for me, is the
aftereffect. It is something of a relief, but also disorienting, to remove the headset
and return to the real world. I experience a kind of ontological dissonance, as it
takes a few minutes before the familiar returns to its reliable concrete self.
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
They"re airing the possibility, but they aren"t convinced. To be convinced means that you"re so devoted towards it being true, that you proclaim it in a religious way. Would the few who maintained the system realize that their reality was real, when both looked alike?i don"t think so and neither do they. So if questioning reality is enough for being convinced, then the article author can count me in that group as well. I find it odd that people are so obsessed with breaking out while at the same time so worried about survival. We don"t actually have any way of knowing what we are, why or how it is we exist, when/how we came to exist and when/how we will cease to exist. There are countless works of literature, theater, music, philosophy that have asked the same questions over millennia.
