Matrix to metaverse: Can we live a meaningful life in virtual reality? – with David J Chalmers

Matrix to metaverse: Can we live a meaningful life in virtual reality? – with David J Chalmers

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[Music] so i'm really a great pleasure to uh to be here and thanks to all of you for uh for coming today it's exciting for me to be talking about these uh these issues uh with you the title of my talk is reality plus from the matrix to the metaverse and i'll explain that title as we uh as we go along i'll be talking about themes from the book that uh that tom mentioned uh reality plus just uh just published today there's a the uh the american cover has a butterfly the uh the uk cover has some clouds if you look closely at both of them you'll see a couple of a few digital glitches to uh indicate uh indicate virtuality i'll be discussing some of the uh the themes from uh from this book today but in a uh in a standalone way i mean the anchors for my uh for my talk are two very well-known virtual worlds from science fiction the matrix and the metaverse you all know the matrix i assume uh the first movie came out in 99 there were two sequels in 2003 and we have just now about a month ago had the fourth matrix matrix movie the matrix resurrections for my purposes i like the matrix idea especially because it's a wonderful illustration of the idea of an entire simulated universe illustrates what's sometimes known as the simulation hypothesis the hypothesis that we might be living in a simulation right now so for me the matrix represents the whole the idea of an entire simulated universe and that our universe might be a simulation as it turns out to be in the matrix neo takes the uh takes the red pill wakes up and realizes that you know his whole life had been in a simulation the matrix so that's kind of an extreme example of a of a virtual world the other anchor point is the metaverse now the metaverse comes from a novel by neil stevenson in 1992 snow crash here's my uh my paperback copy where it was you know a rather large virtual world that people entered temporarily and used for all forms of work and play employment relationships and these days of course the term metaverse has been widely propagated by people in the tech industry most notably uh mark zuckerberg in his recent rebranding of facebook as a company called meta because of their ambitions to uh to become you know the uh progenitors of a kind of metaverse and here a metaverse represents again a kind of virtual world or a system of virtual worlds that people will actually use for everyday endeavors um you know maybe for work maybe for communication for play and so on it's a little bit different from the uh the stevenson idea and not least because the idea is the metaverse is analogous to the entire internet it's like an immersive internet made up of many virtual worlds but yeah so so where the matrix represents the extreme case of the universe as a simulation the metaverse to me represents real virtual reality coming the coming virtual reality technology of the coming decades that we may actually use and what i'm going to do is to try and start with the case of the meta of the matrix and use that to shed light on the more realistic case of the metaverse but my topic my central topic is virtual worlds and virtual reality so i'm a philosopher and we like to define our terms where we can so what's a virtual world as i understand that a virtual world is an interactive computer-generated world this covers an awful lot here's my first virtual world it was a text-based virtual world that i came across in 1976 when i was 10 years old it's a colossal cave adventure and you interact with the uh the world of colossal cave adventure by putting in commands like go north go south pick up the water and so on but it was a compute it's a computer generated world and it's interactive so this counts as a very simple virtual world for me here are some others the video games that came in the years to come here's space invaders a very simple virtual world that you interact with here's our world of warcraft more recently a more complex heavily graphics driven three-dimensional virtual world his second life probably still the most prominent example of a virtual world used for uh for social purposes rather than gaming purposes as in the case of world of warcraft but still uh second life world of warcraft is still played largely on two-dimensional screens not through you know an immersive virtual reality headset virtual reality by contrast i take to be an immersive virtual world that is an immersive interactive computer generated world and the new condition of immersiveness says you have you experience these worlds around you three-dimensionally as if you were in the world at the center so typically these days virtual reality is experienced using a headset such as here the oculus quest 2 headset which has a headset that you uh you put on your face and a couple of controllers in your hand and you go in there and you experience a virtual world all around you um here's someone playing beatsaber a wonderful game inside the inside the oculus quest uh here's vrchat one of the most prominent uh social virtual worlds in current vr um here's i think this is magic leap glasses for augmented reality a closely related technology where you get to experience digital or virtual objects among the physical objects you see the physical world but you also see virtual objects in a kind of mixed reality so both the matrix and the metaverse are or closely involved virtual worlds the matrix is one giant virtual world immersive interactive computer generated so is stevenson's metaverse and zuckerberg's metaverse is perhaps best seen as a system of interconnected virtual worlds so i'm going to um try to think philosophically about virtual worlds and virtual reality i think this is a philosophical inquiry into the status of virtual reality starting with some very abstract philosophical questions but gradually bringing it home to some more practical questions at the same time i think of this what i'm doing here is what i like to call techno philosophy the idea behind techno philosophy is a two-way interaction between philosophy and technology on the one hand using philosophy to shed light on technology thinking philosophically about technologies such as virtual reality technology in principle you can do this with all kinds of technology smartphones the internet ai but here virtual reality but also using technology to shed light on philosophy i think that thinking about technology can very often provide input uh to make progress on very traditional philosophical problems the mind-body problem how do you know anything about the external world is there a god the nature of value what's a good life it's part i believe that thinking heavily about thinking hard about virtual reality in particular can shed light on some of those questions so today i want to do a little bit of techno philosophy this name by the way is inspired by what the philosopher patricia churchland is called neurophilosophy which was using philosophy to shed light on neuroscience but also using neuroscience to shed light on philosophy i want to adapt that idea to think about to thinking about the relationship between philosophy and technology so my central thesis when it comes to virtual reality and virtual worlds is that virtual reality is genuine reality there's a long tradition of thinking of virtual reality as some kind of fake reality it's an illusion it's a fiction it's mere escapism what goes on there isn't real this sometimes gets encoded into you know expressions people use like irl in real life this is vr and there's real life for the real world i want to say that in a certain sense that's a mistaken way of thinking virtual reality is genuine reality it's different from physical reality probably different from physical reality but nonetheless a first-class reality in its own right that thesis breaks down into uh at least three separate theses the first is that virtual reality is not an illusion or a fiction objects in vr are real objects events in vr really happen they needn't be illusory or fictional at all objects in virtual reality maybe digital objects but they're still perfectly real for all that second we can lead a meaningful life in virtual reality in principle you know people may well end up spending more and more of their lives in uh in vr perhaps working perhaps building relationships and so on it'll be very limited at first but as the technology progresses it will expand some people are going to say that's only ever going to be escapism i think that in principle one can lead as meaningful life in vr as in physical reality there you know there are upsides and downsides uh for both but it's at least irrational will be rational for some people to uh to leave their lives in vr eventually third this now connects to the simulation idea we might actually be in a virtual reality already it's not part of my thesis to say we are actually in a simulation i don't say that but it is a prospect i take seriously and i do think it's one that we can't rule out uh we can't know that we're not in a simulation and so in a certain sense you know i want to say that just as virtual reality is genuine reality i want to say physical reality may well itself be a form of virtual reality whether it's a simulation or even another idea suggested by contemporary physics physical reality itself may have elements of virtual reality so those are my three central theses and the way i'll approach them is to start with the last one the idea of you know the universe has a simulation talk about that and then that's kind of the extreme case of a virtual world and then draw it back to apply to uh the more practical case of coming virtual reality reality technology yeah so for this first part the uh the topic is the simulation hypothesis the extreme case of you know a matrix like virtual world could we be living ourselves in a computer simulation the so-called simulation hypothesis says we are ourselves in a lifelong computer simulation and you might say well why should we uh why should we believe that here's a picture of a computer simulation this is the uh the matrix which also shows two ways of being in a simulation this is uh this is trinity and the oracle talking to each other i think this was in one of the sequels uh it turns out that actually the oracle is herself a simulated creature she's one of the machines so she is herself generated as part of the simulation that's what i call a purism a pure simulated creature whereas trinity jacks in to uh to the matrix you know but she still has a biological brain and body and her brain connects to the matrix that's what i call a biosim a biological being connecting to the matrix here are two different ways that we could be in a simulation biological beings connecting to a simulation or purely digital beings for present purposes we don't have to choose one of these over over the other they're both versions of the simulation hypothesis then the question arises you know once we start talking about it looks like there are going to be universe simulations like this eventually simulation technology is getting better and better eventually they may be indistinguishable from the physical world which raises the question the philosophical question about knowledge how do you know you're not in a simulation right now and it looks like it's hard to see how you can have any conclusive evidence that you're not in a simulation maybe you think i don't know maybe you think your your cat is so delightfully playful that that could never be simulated or this beautiful forest could never be simulated or these other people could never be simulated but it just looks like for any evidence you might have that you're not in a simulation that evidence could in principle be simulated so a simulation could just build that in it would be indistinguishable so it's hard to see how you could ever conclusively demonstrate that you're not in a simulation this idea goes back in so many philosophical traditions you can find versions of this idea i mean admittedly the ancient traditions didn't put it in terms of a computer because they didn't have computers but look for example ancient chinese philosophy where the taoist philosopher granger put forward his parable of the butterfly dream where he says well he just woke up from a dream where he was dreaming he was a butterfly but now am i dwanja who dreamed he was a butterfly or am i a butterfly dreaming he's dwangju it's how do i know i'm not dreaming right now that i'm a drunk joke that i'm that i'm drunk here that's a classic version a classic analog of the simulation hypothesis you also find this in in rene descartes in his uh meditations on first philosophy a work that some people see as you know the start of of modern philosophy in the uh in the 17th century descartes said how do you know your senses aren't fooling you right now how do you know you're not dreaming right now how do you know an evil demon isn't deceiving you by producing sensations of an external world these are all versions of what philosophers call skeptical hypotheses hypotheses where nothing is real to try to undercut your knowledge here's a here's an illustration of this uh with the evil demon is messing with you by feeding you sensations this is a high-tech evil demon they get to use simulation technology the evil demon is is messing with you to produce experiences as of an external world around you descartes famously goes on to say oh well there's still something i know for sure i am here thinking i exist because i think i'm thinking therefore i am i exist so even if while i'm doubtful about the external world i can be sure that i exist but descartes at least thought you know we had very serious reasons here to doubt the external world by the way all these uh the illustrations i'm i'm showing here these are illustrations by tim peacock who's the wonderful illustrator that came up with uh 57 illustrations uh for my book to try and bring out these philosophical ideas so this is tim's version of an evil demon these days you can ask these cartesian questions you know directly using the technology the technology of simulation we put those questions of descartes by asking how do you know you're not in a simulation and in some ways the issues here are like those for descartes hypotheses but in some ways they become more serious in the context of technology it improves on the evil demon in at least one respect with the development of vr technologies actually now becoming a serious possibility that we have simulations like these vr technologies really being developed this will actually be possible before long so it's no longer a mere science fiction possibility it's becoming a serious possibility for technology in our world you know you could actually take they are descartes said you know i couldn't really be fooled into thinking that i'm sitting by the fire with this paper in my hand but yeah for all day god knows he might actually be in vr which gives him an experience just like just like this so vr in a way is making these old cartesian problems even more serious by making them more realistic nick bostrom has also put forward an argument that some of you may know that simulated worlds may turn out to greatly outnumber unsimulated worlds because simulation technology will be so widely used maybe it could be that most beings in the universe end up being stimulated and then you say what are the odds that i'm unsimulating maybe it's more likely i'm in a simulation oh here's an illustration of yeah bertrand russell said ordinary reality is the simplest hypothesis so maybe we should believe in that and here i have bostrom saying back ah but there may actually be many more simulations in which case we should expect a simulation in a way to be the default hypothesis all the more reason to take this seriously so you know they can't use this as an argument that we can't know anything we can't know first premise we can't know we're not in a simulation second premise if we're in a simulation nothing is real conclusion we can't know anything is real so i actually accept the uh the first premise i accept we can't know we're not in a simulation that's the i basically argued for that now that was the first of my three main claims i think we can't rule out that we're in a simulation it's a serious possibility they can't use that in an argument like this to argue then that we can't know anything is real because if we're in a simulation nothing is real that's the part that i want to uh i want to resist so here you know the common view of uh of simulations in our virtual reality is simulations are illusions virtual reality is illusory reality and you remember i want to resist this view i think virtual reality is genuine reality so although i agree with descartes that we can't know we're not in a simulation i totally reject the idea that simulations are illusions so here's here's cornell west the american philosopher expressing this this idea uh cornell west himself acted in the uh in the sequels to the matrix playing councillor west of zion here we have him you know he was in the matrix he escapes to zion then he escapes to the us um but cornell west actually says in his commentary on the movie it's illusions all the way down this is a very very common view everything in simulated reality is illusions maybe in physical reality too but it's a view i want to uh i want to resist my view is simulations need not be illusions if we're in a perfect simulation like the matrix the world around us is still perfectly real it's a digital world to be sure but the objects are still real there are still tables and chairs there are still planets and people now in the uh in the matrix we have neo saying this isn't real morpheus comes back by saying what is real how do you define real morpheus here he's a paradigm philosopher what even do you mean by real define your terms please how do you define real how do you define real well there's a lot of things you might mean with the word real but here are at least i think three central things we care about when we say something is real something is real if it makes a difference if it has causal powers in the world actually affects things something is real if it isn't all in the mind if something is all in the mind then often we treat it as less real but if it's external for the mind it's real and third something is real if it isn't an illusion um we got that back something is real if it isn't an illusion if something is an illusion then we say do we say somehow it's not real so i want to say that if we're in a simulation the objects around us are real okay i've got a keyboard which is doing something a little bit crazy here um let me just try and disconnect this keyboard which is um okay let me just uh so i want to say that if we are in a simulation the objects around us are real there are digital objects but they make a difference they're not all in the mind and they're not illusions so what i want to say is the following the simulation hypothesis is a version of the so-called it from bit hypothesis often taken seriously within physics the it from bit hypothesis says that everything in the physical world is made of bits we're living in a universe grounded in bits and this is a hypothesis that physicists take seriously and they don't regard this as the hypothesis where the world is elude is an illusion just the world is made of bits my argument is that if we're in a simulation we're living in a universe where the world is made of bits objects in the world are made of bits but they're still perfectly real here's an illustration of this here's like on the left-hand side we've got a traditional god creating the world by creating bits here's how it's what i call the it from bit creation hypothesis god creates that god creates some bits that make atoms that make molecules that make the world on the right hand side we have the simulation version of this the simulator who i'm thinking of now as a teenage girl in the next universe up a simulator is programming a computer thereby creating a world of bits thereby create thereby creating all the objects in this world digital objects i'm going to say the simulation version is equivalent to the it from bit version and the objects are just as real so if that's right yeah then if we're in a simulation objects to real they're just made of bits so yes we could be in a simulation but if we're in a simulation things are still perfectly real they're just digital so that gives us you know virtual reality is really halfway to virtual reality is genuine reality virtual reality is genuine reality it's just digital then okay so that's the matrix the matrix part now i want to kind of bring it home by talking about a less extreme case the case of the metaverse becoming virtual reality technology so the metaverse yeah stevenson's version was a single massive social virtual world zuckerberg's version is something like a global interconnected system of virtual worlds the immersive internet the metaverse idea is continuously kind of realistic vr the kind of vr that people are using now even with a say oculus quest headsets in real vr as opposed to matrix style simulations you don't spend your whole life there you go into vr for a while then you come out you know you're using vr unlike the matrix case perhaps and it's much much simpler than a universe simulation but i want to say some of the same morals of the uh the simulation case also extend to the metaverse and to real vr now again there's this common line that vr is an illusion or a hallucination william gibson the neuromancer said defined cyberspace by which i think he meant virtual reality as a consensual hallucination experienced daily by definition he defined it as a hallucination again i want to resist this idea that vr has to be an illusion or a hallucination in the movie ready player one you hear at one point reality is the only thing that's real by which they seem to mean physical reality is the only thing that's real again i think that's a philosophical mistake i think digital reality is real too so the standard view is virtual objects are unreal they're illusions hallucinations or fictions my view is virtual objects are real they're non-illusory digital objects and you can see why my view of the simulation case and the matrix case would generalize naturally to thinking about vr this way virtual objects really do make a difference when you're using a vr headset there are real digital objects doing real things i mean if we're in a full scale simulation like the matrix the objects we're interacting with are real digital objects running on a computer you know if i'm if i'm in the matrix right now then this apparent physical book is actually uh is actually a digital book that i'm interacting with i think you can generalize that point even to ordinary vr the objects we're interacting with are real digital objects their data structures concretely running on a computer real objects you're interacting with just digital objects here i've got this example we've got a biological kitten we've got a robot kitten and we've got a uh a virtual kitten now i agree that a robot kitten is not a real it's not a biological kitten we wouldn't normally say it's just a kitten it's a real kitten but it's still a real it's a real object my own view is that virtual kittens are at least as real as robot kittens they're digital which makes them different kinds of entities but it has just as many causal powers it's just as real as a robot kitten a robot kitten is a real thing in the world it's not an illusion i mean it's not exactly the same as a biological kitten it's digital but it's nonetheless real i want to say the same thing for the uh the virtual kitten one another question is where the vr is an illusion you might say okay virtual objects are real i accept that they're real digital objects but you might say nonetheless it's an illusion because things seem to be out there in physical space where they're not and i think maybe some users of vr get this kind of illusion novice uses a vr using vr for the first time they may experience objects as being out there in physical space which is an illusion but expert users of the uh experience objects as being in virtual space they know they're in vr they interpret the objects around them as being in vrs in virtual space and that's not an illusion when i see an object in front of me in vr i think yeah there really is a virtual object in front of me in virtual space i think expert users have known illusory perception of virtual world so i think vr needn't be an illusion the final question is the one about value and meaning can you have a meaningful life in a virtual world can life in vr be as good or for some people better than life in non-virtual reality and i want to say yes to both questions um you know you might you might uh be led to worry about this plato in in plato's cave said uh maybe we're just seeing shadows on the cave wall and none of this is real he thought that kind of life was not as good here's an updated version plato's cave for the 21st century that's mark zuckerberg on the on the laptop uh with the uh with the people all strapped in watching seeing virtual reality you might think okay this is trying to pump the intuition that virtual reality has to be second class not as real but that's actually what i want to reject another version of this idea of the the idea that vr is not as meaningful was put forward by the american philosopher robert nozick in his book anarchy state and utopia where he talked about the experience machine an experienced machine as a machine that gives you amazing experiences of being the world's best at what you do having wonderful family wonderful relationships all kinds of pleasure everything is good in fact your body is floating in a tank and this illustration we're kind of going with the idea that nozick should have realized or should have thought that he himself was in the experience machine successful professor at harvard winning the national book award prime candidate for experiences from an experience machine anyway so nozick asked the question should you enter the experience machine pre-programming wonderful experiences for life and he wanted to say no he said no and there seemed to be at least three reasons for this the experience machine is pre-programmed it has no autonomy you're just living out a script in the experience machine the experience machine is illusory none of the things you think you're doing are actually happening they're just delusions no reality third he said the experience machine is artificial we want to be in contact with nature with natural reality this is all human made i want to say none of those reasons are good reasons not to enter vr for start vr is unlike the experience machine vr is not pre-programmed it's not scripted it's interactive in a social virtual world you can make your own life you can you have free will you can make your own your own decisions you can build relationships you can build communities so it's in no sense pre-programmed furthermore i've argued it's not illusory what you do in vr really happens the actions you take in vr you really perform third yeah vr may be artificial but you know sewer cities many of us i spend much of my life in new york city most of us spend most of our lives indoors that's an artificial that's an artificial reality but it doesn't seem to be a blockade to living a meaningful life so i think none of these reasons of nozix are good reason not to enter vr in my view what does give our lives meaning and value i think our lives have meaning because of the experiences we have the relationships we have with other people our projects and our achievements and more generally our desires and satisfying them maybe things like knowledge and understanding i think all of these values can in principle be present in vr yes the reality around you is digital rather than physical but you know but we find meaning in physical objects we invest them with meaning i think we can do just the same for digital objects it was true that vr may be missing some sources of value for some people i don't want to say like it's superior in every respect that would obviously be wrong if you value nature yeah you'll get more nature and physical reality than in virtual reality vr is by nature artificial you don't get full-scale birth and death inside vr which for some people will be you know a lack of a lack of one source of meaning you don't get sheer physicality in vr some people may value sheer physicality if you do then uh then fine but vr also has new sources of value new bodies in principle i'm remembering now that many people their access to physical reality is not so perfect say aging people disabled people oppressed people vr offers you new forms of embodiment in new communities they may have better access to new forms of experience you can fly in in vr near unlimited space an abundance of goods instant travel i don't say one of these is necessarily better than the other in the long term it's rational for some people to prefer physical reality but also rational for others to prefer virtual reality here's an illustration of this is there two people choosing there's like a virtual reality you can go to get in connect to vr or terraform reality a new planet somewhere in the uh in the distance that's been terraformed um and two people are choosing to build new lives there i think you can choose one you can choose the other there's nothing dictating the terraform is necessarily better than virtual reality just because one's physical and the other is digital so i'd say you can live a meaningful life in vr life may be good or it may be awful but the full scale of human experience is available this connects to this question which a lot of people worry about is the prospect of life in vr is it utopian or is it dystopian i would say that it's got potential elements of both if you're looking for utopia in vrvr has new bodies new forms of experience near unlimited space virtual abundance you know this idea that everyone can live near the beach wonderful mansion digital objects are so easy to uh to duplicate that if you want to be utopian you can find it there if you want to be dystopian there are many potentially dystopian elements of vr right now virtual worlds are almost all governed by corporations the reform of corporatocracy or corporate gods you know we'll maybe we'll have apple reality and facebook reality and google reality with each of these corporations controlling our worlds this brings obvious privacy issues these corporations are omniscient they're omnipotent which these are all kinds of worries about manipulation there's inevitably going to be unequal access to these virtual worlds there are worries about neglecting the physical world so there are yeah i'd say here there are many amazing potential upsides of er but also many perils there's many promises many many perils i don't want to minimize the perils but i think the promises are amazing too if i had to guess i would say the the metaverse will be like the internet it's brought wonderful things it's also brought awful things i'd like to think that in the case of the internet the net value has been positive despite all the awful things it's brought um i'd like to think the same is true of the metaverse anyway so then so to conclude my talk to sum everything up i'll just return to my original slogan virtual reality is genuine reality and i'll just add the rest is up to us thank you [Applause] you

2022-04-10 13:12

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