Simulation Hypothesis vs. Decentralized Cosmogeny
As we pointed out in the beginning of our discussion, you can’t mend the centralized Internet with some APIs [1] (e.g., Web3), you need a whole new construct with a new set of decentralized mechanisms – like DAC economy[35]. Similarly you can’t fix the centralize metaverse by injecting cryptocurrencies into its virtual economy and call it decentralized. As long as pretender of value reigns supreme, the metaverse will always be centralized and ever more oppressive than the late Internet. The superficial injection of cryptocurrencies to the virtual economy of the metaverse will be hard not to fall into the speculative trap, which had plagued blockchain games¹³².
A decentralized metaverse had to be rebuilt into a new construct with new decentralized mechanisms where real value[31] flows and thrives. Luckily, we already have a prototype to begin with – DAC economy. The decentralized mechanisms of DAC economy make it suitable to metamorphose into DACmos, the true decentralized version of the metaverse. Why?
The metaverse and DACmos both deal with creating alternative realities – world building. However, the ways they build worlds (universe, multiverse, cosmos) are fundamentally different. In the centralized metaverse, there is always the distinction between the entity of an all-encompassing power – admins, deities, kingpins, whatever you call them – and their subjects – that’s everyone else in the system. To the individuals in the metaverse reality, there is always the existence of an external power, the centralized regime, whether it’s hidden or not. Such
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¹²⁹ Big Tech and Telecom Follow Facebook in Metaverse Ramp-Up.
¹³⁰ Brave New World.
¹³¹ The Singularity: What It Is and Why It Matters More than Anything Else.
¹³² Remember FOMO3d? (once popular in 2018, it appears to be defunct now) FOMO3d seems to have exposed the curse that cryptocurrency brought to blockchain – the ruinous lure of money’s zero-sum games that drives human psyche to rational insanity.
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sentiment is reflected in the modern philosophical trope called the simulation hypothesis¹³³. It coincidentally resonates with the ancient Hindu cosmogony that our reality originates from a dream (of a deified creator)¹³⁴ ¹³⁵. All of them bear the semblance to an external reality forced upon us, not by our own choosing. In DACmos, on the other hand, the new reality will be our own making. We shall be our own creator – we are the world, and the world is us, by us and with us – in other words, DACmos is fundamentally decentralized, just like DAC economy.
One striking characteristic of an external reality is that it is incomprehensible, which applies to our base reality and the metaverse. For our base reality, a final, grand unifying theory of the universe is ever elusive scientifically – whereas spiritually and religiously it is always kept mysterious. For the metaverse, the incomprehensibility comes from the fact that the virtual reality is painted to us by the system where the operator wants to lead our attention, and the operator doesn’t answer to the hosts (that’s all of us hooked to the metaverse virtual reality). The world painted to us can be illogical, inconsistent, and erroneous – and such wrongs are just tugged away as glitches, which are great tools in a centralized regime for oppression and exploitation. The consequence of an incomprehensible external reality is that it is not accountable to us – which is what centralization is all about – external reality is a centralized reality.
Conversely, DACmos is essentially a decentralized reality, which is accountable to us – because it is made by us. By having accountability, decentralized reality can rid itself of coercion, corruption and exploitation that plague centralized reality such as the metaverse (and its predecessors, the late Internet and all MMO games). The ramification of decentralized reality being accountable is that it ought to be comprehensible to us. Since it is made by us, we must build it comprehensibly – that means we build it in an accountable way – there is nothing to hide, and we hide nothing from each other – in other words, by consensus.
The external reality, the metaverse, is built toward us; whereas decentralized reality, DACmos, is to be built the opposite way – it originates from the individual Self¹³⁶ and reaches out to others. In DACmos, reality starts from the Self – It is self-contained, self-governed, and self-sustained[38]. The centralized reality is one over many, while the decentralized reality is many to one. The overcoming “one” in centralized reality is a coercive One, while the accomplished one in decentralized reality is a consensual One. The many individual-centric
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¹³⁴ The Hindu concept of Creation of the Universe, slide #6
¹³⁵ In Hindu metaphysics, the conceptualization of the constant reality – Brahman (ब्रह्म) (absolute), and the temporary, perceived reality, Māyā (माया) (illusion), corresponds very well to our modern notion of base reality and virtual reality.
¹³⁶ In Hindu metaphysics, Self – Ātman (आत्मन) – is considered the ultimate reality, as opposed to Illusion (or Appearance, Apparition) – Māyā (माया) – the perceived reality. Brahman and Ātman all point to absolute, ultimate reality (the cause), they only differ in the dualistic sense; together with Māyā, perceived reality (the effect), the trio became the Hindu metaphysical trinity, with Brahman being the single binding unity behind diversity in all that exists in the universe.
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(Self) realities reaching out to form one consensual reality framework could be our mechanism
model to imagine the decentralized world building – for DACmos.
Up until now, every simulated virtual reality is centralized. We as hosts are placed in the simulation like chess pieces or hardy tin soldiers¹³⁷– this simulation actually wears our personae (called avatars¹³⁸) as skin for the reality. Hardly existed or attempted before, can we imagine how decentralized virtual reality work? Well, here’s what it’s like: in DACmos with individual- centric cosmogeny, everyone can wear their reality as a skin. In such decentralized cosmogeny you can shed and change reality like shedding and changing skins. Another way to look at decentralized cosmogeny is to imagine DACmos as a primordial cosmic ether with individual- centric realities popping up into existence all the time, then they also split and respawn to form new copies of decentralized realities. The notion of reality copies can trace its lineage to MMOs, e.g., instance dungeons¹³⁹ – these are location copies to solve a practical technological limitation of centralized MMOs that too many players crammed into one server for a game instance would crash that server, resulting in bad gaming experience for all users. Location copies are actually scaling solutions to ease gaming demands and loads, they are essentially what we call sharding¹⁴⁰ today. Of course those location copies – instances – are not decentralized reality copies since they are still external centralized reality forced onto players. Also from a software engineering mechanism design angle, reality copies as well as instance dungeons are like parameterized templates¹⁴¹, [38].
The individual-centric realities in the DACmos naturally clustered into different lineages by sharing common traits – the result of reaching decentralized consensus. These lineages of realities, or families, are the DACs in DACmos. It is quite similar to DAC as unit of decentralized business in DAC economy. Each DAC individual-centric family could be implemented on its own Metis sidechain. In that sense we can say, from a mechanism design pattern view, that DACmos is metamorphosed from DAC economy. As in DAC economy, the dynamics of DACmos is also dissipative in nature.
Unlike in the metaverse, where rules are made by external power, in DACmos rules are negotiated through the consensus process. As we’ve pointed out earlier, the metaverse and its innate centralized reality is incomprehensible because it doesn’t need to be comprehensible – its external rules would completely drown out any inner, indigenous voices. On the contrary, decentralized reality regime like DACmos must be comprehensible because the collective individual-centric reality must be able to communicate with each other and reach consensus. Rules in decentralized reality are just individual voices, here rules lose its coercive connotation.
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¹³⁷ The Hardy Tin Soldier by Hans Christian Andersen (1838), symbolizes passive acceptance of blind fate and one’s assigned social role to play as pawns in a reality that treats its subjects with abject cruelty.
¹³⁸ Avatar (computing).
¹⁴⁰ See What is Sharding? Note that this is traditional scale-out[6] sharding, not the scale-up[7, 7] functional sharding[8] we discussed in Part I.
¹⁴¹ Parameterized Classes (Templates).
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The necessity of rules in decentralized reality being comprehensible to reach consensus has a
profound implication on how decentralized cosmogeny works.
DACmos can be seen as a constructive application of the computational universe¹⁴² ideation. The old notion of rules, especially the kind that could be labelled as fundamental, supreme, celestial, is that they are absolute and unbendable – surprisingly both science and religion hold this view. DACmos, in agreement with the computational universe view, views the situation differently. It is not so important that the rules can be bent or not, but rather there are so many rules that we can’t observe them all and the paths of our observation produce different set of observable rules a posteriori. Our limitation of observation is rooted in the fact that we are internal to the meta-existence of all rules¹⁴³ – as opposed to the metaverse, where all rules are external and thus a priori and unbendable.
DACmos is constructed as a realizable slice of the meta-existence of all rules of the computational universe. Resonating in parallel with the fundamental question of why the universe appears to be the way it is?¹⁴⁴, the slice we carved out for DACmos follows a simple rule – the anthropic principle¹⁴⁵, which stipulates that DACmos has to make sense for its individual-centric reality families[43] – DACs in DACmos. This brings us back to the necessity of comprehensibility in decentralized reality[44] to reach consensus. Comprehensible consensus implies coherence. Coherence in turn implies a framework for causality, which points to the necessity of the rule of sequentialization in time¹⁴⁶. Coincidentally (or fatefully) in DACmos we already have a construct for the sequentialization in time – the underlying blockchain itself (the layer 1 blockchain), blockchain as a log[32] – to simulate the arrow of time[32].
Now that we have built an important characteristic in DACmos’ decentralized cosmogeny – arrow of time, what about another fundamental cosmic property – energy¹⁴⁷?
Similar to DAC economy, energy in DACmos is value – PVE[37] (programmable value entity).
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