The Metaverse vs. The Dacmos
Ever since we were born into existence, either as an individual or a species, there is the quintessential question that haunts us from now and then – What is reality¹¹²? And, will my 8k VR¹¹³ headset¹¹⁴ arrive before Christmas?
Reality is the center of philosophy and the origin of our epistemological quests as an intelligent species, e.g., metaphysics, science, and religion. No matter what ancient or modern school of thoughts you believe, one thing about reality is that it is elusive – it is always our mind vs. the world, and at times also the others (other minds). Advances in science and modern technology lately have given us new insights into this perennial concept – that reality as perception and projection of the mind could be both real and different at the same time – e.g., people with stereoblindness could not see in 3D¹¹⁵, and colorblind people couldn’t perceive color; on the other hand, night vision and infrared vision goggles enable us to see a different kind of reality that many animals perceive. Our mind can also retrieve and reconstruct from memory previous experience and create a non-real-time reality – in this sense, our stories, myths, legends, folklores are a kind of virtual reality. Now with computers we could create ever more immersive simulations of reality – the most recent creation being VR headset that could be said to replace our real-time reality – imagine what Parmenides, Aristotle, Buddha or Zhuangzi¹¹⁶ would say when they put on those VR headsets!
(cont.)
_______________________________
¹⁰⁹ Such as C++ Template Metaprogramming.
¹¹¹ Metaprogramming.
¹¹² Reality through the ontological lens.
¹¹³ Virtual reality (VR).
¹¹⁴ What is the resolution of the eye? And a very good summary here.
¹¹⁵ Why some -- including Johnny Depp -- can't see in 3D.
¹¹⁶ Parmenides, Aristotle, Gautama Buddha (बद्ु धः), Zhuang Zhou (莊周/莊子) – ancient philosophers that had dived deep into poking our notion of reality.
_________________________________________________38_________________________________________________
(cont.)
For a long time we are trapped in the reality that we normally perceive – yes, we can imagine a different reality like in a story or play but that’s just too weak for replacing the current reality. Alternative ways that did replace our current reality are either too sporadic, uncontrollable – like dreaming, or too invasive – such as psychedelic-induced psychosis¹¹⁷. In dreams or psychotic experiences, the lingering feelings that overhung us are often the loss of our own volition – those episodic experience often felt scripted (like watching a movie) afterwards, as if someone else is pulling the strings. Btw, such is also the feeling of many living under a centralized regime – losing control of their free will to a certain extent – though mostly in a rhetoric sense.
Now with computers and the internet, we as a species finally acquired the capability to replace our current reality with alternative, operational, and indefinitely sustaining virtual realities – in a medicinally and psychologically safe way (generally – as compared to psychedelic-induced psychosis) – and on the surface it seems that our real-time sanity and immediate volition could be preserved. Computing enabled virtual reality is the best of two worlds – the real world (our base reality) and the dream world (alternative reality), where you are always conscious – knowing that you are in two worlds and switching back and forth, to and from either world is instant, non-invasive and within your own immediate control – a plug-and- play experience. We’ve had this for some time now, the best manifestation is the kind of computer video game called MMO¹¹⁸ (all computer games simulate alternative realities but MMOG/MMORPG simulate virtual social life). The newest iteration, resembling MMOs, but with a twist of VR headset based technology, and touted as the next Internet, is called the metaverse¹¹⁹. Metaverse also boasts a virtual economy¹²⁰ – to make the simulated virtual social life appear more complete – though virtual economies are a stable feature of MMOs for a long time. It doesn’t take long for virtual economies to interact with the cryptocurrency world and as a counterpart to DeFi[18], GameFi¹²¹ is born – and there should be no doubt that GameFi will be brought to the metaverse.
So far so good – or is it?
Not quite good if one looks from a societal perspective – the metaverse is a copy of the centralized regime in our base reality. It has every characteristic element of a centralized regime – centralized security, identity and ownership – the whole 2nd trinity[34]. Its 1st trinity[15] regime – boundary, spoil and enforcer – became a shape-shifter. In the metaverse trinity metamorphoses into divinity –the rule setter becomes the world creator. Metaverse is an almost infinitely more powerful centralized regime in itself – the operator of the metaverse is
(cont.)
_______________________________
¹¹⁷ Like this account in Let’s Talk About Psychedelic-Induced Psychosis.
¹¹⁸ Massively multiplayer online game (MMOG or MMO) as well as Massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG).
¹¹⁹ Metaverse.
¹²⁰ Virtual economy.
¹²¹ See What is GameFi? An introduction to play-to-earn and blockchain games, and What Is GameFi (GAFI)?
_________________________________________________39_________________________________________________
(cont.)
more than a Godfather – he is God¹²². In our base reality, though our society and economy are centralized, the centralized regime does not possess the power of nature and their power stops at the boundary of our individual volition – we might yield to them under the coercion and weight of the trinities but we still retain our free will (to a certain extent). In the metaverse, its centralized regime has God-like power – the metaverse operator has absolute control over every minute aspect of the metaverse reality – its start, execution and end.
Now imagine this God-like power in the hands of Big Tech¹²³.
Among the prevailing worries people had for the metaverse in the hands of Big Tech, one is that it will make them even bigger¹²⁴, another is that it will solidify a one-world worldview¹²⁵. In other words, people worry that the metaverse would strengthen an already centralized tech reality. They worry that the metaverse shall create a dominant alternative reality that is so strong, it will drown out all other realities. Already encroached into our lives so much, people are wary that the metaverse will drive out the last air pocket left for us to breath freely. Under the auspices of the metaverse, we might finally lose our last stand in freedom.
What is freedom? Is it just free will? Free will, or individual volition, is the manifestation of the conscious mind. Free will is the core of our freedom, but freedom is more than free will. Freedom is the unity of mind, body and nature. Throughout human history, it seemed that we have gained more freedom by extending our mind to the body, then our combined sentient agency of mind and body extended their power to conquer nature¹²⁶. Whether we view mind as independent from the body¹²⁷ – the spiritual and religious enlightenment path, or that mind is perfunctorily the sensorimotor phenomenon of body itself¹²⁸ – the modern scientific and technology (especially in AI[37]) path, the canonical history of human progress always hinges on mind over body over nature. Right now we are at the pinnacle of that triumphant progress – the Internet that connect us all and promising advancement in AI – we are at the eve or predawn of becoming a super species. But before we could celebrate such achievement in progress and freedom, we could just lose them all – to the Big Reversal delivered by the crème de la crème in our ranks – Big Tech.
Centralized regime came to power by usurping our collective human sovereignty over nature – and technology, especially the Internet, the once united agency that was supposed to advance the common interest of humankind, fell, one datacenter at a time, to Big Tech. The
(cont.)
_______________________________
¹²² if we dig into anthropology, unlike the patriarchal gods, the indigenous goddesses represent matriarchal societies that were actually quite decentralized in nature – matriarchy societies are often egalitarian and will exhibit as caretaking and nurturing negotiation-oriented communities.
¹²³ Big Tech.
¹²⁴ The Metaverse is simply Big Tech, but bigger.
¹²⁶ This is usually expressed as drive, perseverance and Mind over matter.
¹²⁷ See Mind-body problem. The term free will came implicitly from the lineage of subjective naïveté of dualism, but here we use this term without taking a philosophical stand.
¹²⁸ See Embodied cognition.
_________________________________________________40_________________________________________________
(cont.)
next phase of the fall of the Internet, is the metaverse, and Big Tech goes all in¹²⁹. Thus at the seemingly pinnacle of our species progress and freedom, the Big Reversal begins. Big Tech’s centralized power amassed via conquering nature – the technology that brought us the metaverse – comes back to demand its dividend and prize – the core of our freedom, our free will, à la Brave New World¹³⁰. Guess who’s behind the coup d'état of the Internet that brought us the Big Tech’s version of the metaverse? Money, pretender of value[33], of course – obviously, harvesting souls is a very profitable business.
Metaverse is still in its baby stage today, but given what it might become¹³¹, it is urgent we – free people of the world, the blockchain community – rise up and build a resistance. Reverse the Big Reversal. Build an alternative – a decentralized version of it. That decentralized version of the metaverse – with trinity expelled by unity – we call it DAC cosmos. Since the term metaverse is a wordplay of universe (a similar wordplay related to universe is multiverse), we would create a new word based on cosmos as a counterpart to metaverse – DACmos – dacmos.
Last updated