For the past three years, Cris Miranda has been taking VR pioneers down the rabbit hole of thinking about the deepest philosophical implications of virtual reality on his Enter VR podcast. He has been seeking out the boundaries of our understanding of reality through these conversations, and much like Elon Musk concluded a few weeks ago, Cris has concluded that it’s most likely that we’re already living within a simulation.
I had a chance to sit down with Cris at the Silicon Virtual Reality Conference to explore some of these deeper thoughts about the nature of reality through simulation theory, our predictions for the future of VR, how artificial intelligence will be dismantling the structures of society, the role of VR in cultivating empathy and shared realities, and the overall information war over what the story of reality is and whether we’re going to take control over our own destiny or let someone else define it for us.
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Rough Transcript
[00:00:05.452] Kent Bye: The Voices of VR Podcast. My name is Kent Bye, and welcome to The Voices of VR Podcast. A couple of weeks ago, Elon Musk was asked at the Recode Code Conference whether or not he thought we lived in a simulation. And his answer was pretty surprising to a lot of people. He said there's about a one in a billion chance that we live in base reality. In other words, he thinks that the odds are that we're living in a simulation. So today's episode, I'm going to be talking to Chris Miranda, who does the InterVR podcast. And he's somebody who subscribes to this simulation theory and has accepted the fact that we are living in a simulation. And so I first interviewed Chris Miranda back at the first Silicon Valley Virtual Reality Conference. And it was kind of like the one-year anniversary, the very first Silicon Valley Virtual Reality Meetup. Chris attended the very first meetup and very soon after that started this podcast where he started to interview all these different leaders and pioneers, talking about the deeper philosophical issues of virtual reality and what it all means. And so on today's episode, I wanted to check in to Chris again and to really dive deep into the rabbit hole exploring the future of virtual reality, where all this is going, how artificial intelligence plays into it, and talking about the underlying structures of reality in this simulation theory, as well as this ongoing battle for the information war about what is the story of reality? What's our place in it? And are we going to be able to control our destiny within it? Or are we going to be controlled by others who are dictating the story of what reality is? So that's what we'll be covering on today's episode of the Voices of VR podcast. But first, a quick word from our sponsor. Today's episode is brought to you by Unity. Unity has kickstarted this virtual reality revolution by making these easy tools set available for content creators to be able to take their dreams and make them into reality. There's no better way to learn about virtual reality than by getting started today by creating your own experiences. And it's easy with Unity. To learn more information, check out unity at unity3d.com. So this interview with Chris Miranda happened at the Silicon Valley Virtual Reality Conference at the end of April at the San Jose Convention Center. So with that, let's go ahead and dive right in.
[00:02:29.725] Cris Miranda: I'm Chris Miranda. I do marketing at Vivid Vision and I also host Enter VR and I also run the Metaverse Scholars Club in San Francisco. So Vivid Vision, we do VR vision therapy for people with amblyopia, strabismus and other avergence issues. Enter VR started three years ago and it's a podcast about virtual reality. And the Metaverse Scholars Club is a non-profit where we organize meetups, host VR tournaments, panels, teach classes, all for the goal of giving people the knowledge and the tools to empower themselves through the metaverse.
[00:03:05.632] Kent Bye: And so, if I were to try to characterize what you do, it feels like you are going into all sorts of philosophical rabbit holes about the implications of these new immersive technologies. How do you describe what you do? What's the story you tell yourself of what you're doing with this?
[00:03:21.548] Cris Miranda: Yeah, that is hard to say for me, because sometimes I don't even know what I'm doing. Like, I'm like, all right, that was a fun conversation, but why did I bring that up? And so my thinking has been, you know, from the very beginning, starting the podcast, for example, was I had this idea like, you know what, 10 years from now, people are going to wonder what were they thinking, what was going on inside the creators, the entrepreneurs, the startup founders minds when this whole thing got started. And so I wanted to capture the human aspect of this industry, of this momentum. And so I think that one thing that sets what I've been doing apart is I try to give people a door or a window into who I am as a person by putting myself out there, you know, showing my vulnerabilities and then letting that person on the other side of the mic feeling more comfortable with being vulnerable too. And at the same time, I also feel like it's important to make people uncomfortable through conversations. Because if we're not uncomfortable, I don't feel like we're growing. And so at the end of the day, I ask myself, if I didn't make people uncomfortable in a certain way, obviously, you want to make people uncomfortable in a good way, right? Then I'm not doing my job. And so, frankly, you know, and someone came up to me the other day and said, like, you know, I think the things that you're doing remind me of VR philosophers, because there's a lot of talk about what the tech is up and doing and, you know, the technical details. And I think it's important to frame that within the wider spectrum of things. You know, what does it mean to be alive? What does it mean to have a good life? What does it mean for the greater humanity or the human species that this technology is emerging? And where is it all going to end up? you know, questions that are really hard to answer but they're necessary to ask.
[00:04:58.020] Kent Bye: Yeah, and for me, the evolution of my podcast and my approach to it has been changing and evolving. One of the key turning points that I had was listening to Alex Bloomberg's course on storytelling and audio and podcasting, and kind of learning about the mechanisms of story. He's from Gimlet, right? Yeah, so Alex Bloomberg was from This American Life and then Planet Money, and then he moved on to Gimlet Media, and he's done the Startup Podcast. They have a very specific approach to telling stories. So for me, it's been like this evolution of me, I'm trying to allow people to tell their stories. I used to just speak for only 5-10% of the time, but now I feel like... getting into more of my own personal story, getting into the story of virtual reality, but also telling the story of the individuals and their favorite memories. So I've been asking people their favorite memories of VR, because you have all these stories of that. And for me, I wanted to sit down again with you after not speaking for two years, because it's been a lot. A lot has happened over the last couple of years. And I feel like I'm ready to go down the rabbit hole with you, Chris Miranda. Oh, man.
[00:06:07.778] Cris Miranda: Oh, man. All right. It's about to be on like Donkey Kong then. Let me ask you about like, what are your predictions or your speculations for the next year? Give me the next year of VR. Let's say, walk me from June 2016 to June 2017. What is that you're going to look like for VR?
[00:06:25.033] Kent Bye: So I actually, you know, take a step back and, you know, again, like when I look at it in the terms of the birth of VR in like 1968, and then this sort of peak from 2012 to 2016 has been sort of this resurgence of VR. And so add another 60 years and then you think about like where it's gone from that point of it first coming out and then where we are now and go 60 years I think you get to the point where you you start to get the full manifestation of having the holodeck and having neural implants and having all sorts of like complete overtaking the sensory systems to be able to make us completely believe that we are in another world. You know, you look at The Ultimate Display, which was written by Ivan Southerland in 1965, and he says at the end that basically, like, a bullet can kill you, and you'll feel the chair, and, you know, it's basically like being able to simulate the manifestation of matter in a simulated experience, but it's so real that it would actually kill you. And so I think that we'll get to that point eventually. I think actually when you get to that point, that's what we'll get. We'll get to the holodeck. We'll get to the full manifestation of the holodeck. I did an interview with Fred Brooks who was at a lecture where Ivan Sutherland basically painted his picture of what the vision of VR was back in 1965, you know. So for me, that's where I go in the long term. And then I've got other ideas about the shorter range too.
[00:07:48.184] Cris Miranda: Or alternatively, we're already in the simulation, can't buy. I mean, the cool thing about VR at this point is that it doesn't take much involvement in the industry to, once you try all the HMDs, once you get that feeling for what we're capable of. At least in my mind, I feel like we're more likely than ever to be able to create a simulation in our lifetimes. Like you and I and the humans who are working on this technology, I think we're going to be able to create something that will cross the uncanny valley and people won't be able to tell the difference. and what that would mean. And we have these discussions at the office all the time. We're always thinking about like, all right, so what that means is that if we're able to create a simulation, then in the vast infiniteness of the universe, there's probably something else out there that made a simulation. And if they made a simulation, they probably created another simulation within that simulation. And so you have all these layers. It came down to this. At the office, we've all accepted that we all live in a simulation. And that, and what layer of the simulation we're in, we'll probably never find out, most likely we'll never find out. But the most important thing of all to take away from those conversations is that it doesn't matter. Because life is really short, and you gotta live it, unless we become transcendent beings that are interdimensional, and just age doesn't matter anymore, which I'm crossing my fingers for, by the way. It's my ultimate goal, up to this point, to be able to live to 100, because if I get to 100, there's a good chance, just maybe, just maybe, I'll be able to upload my consciousness into something and hold on to my feeling of being alive or self-awareness for a little longer. I don't want to die, Kent Bye, that's basically what I'm telling you. I don't want to die. But yeah, what do you think? How far do you take these thoughts, these ideas of like, all right, so this technology is where it's at right now, where will it be, and then where could it be?
[00:09:40.217] Kent Bye: Yeah, well I want to answer that, but first I want to, is it okay if I tell you a story of an altered state? I love that. Yeah, I love that. So, you know, I live in Portland, Oregon where marijuana is now legal and so I was with some friends and I've only smoked like three or four times in my life and so I really don't know what I'm doing and so I take the biggest hit off of this bong and I am just totally in a state of like having a moment where I can't track my memory. I can't remember what had just happened and so I basically go into this state where it's like, in one moment, I see that there's this shared reality that I'm having with another person, right? Like, we are sharing a moment and we understand what's happening between us, but yet, the other two people are not in my shared reality in this thing. But then, the next moment, and everybody's laughing, and I don't remember what had just happened, why everybody's laughing, right? And so then, now I'm like, okay, I feel okay, because now we're in a shared reality where everybody's happy. and then I go into another moment where I'm being confronted with something where I don't know again like I'm lost and I'm like the only thing I could do to get out of this situation was to just tell the truth as to what was happening to me in this moment, right? And what I realized is that I felt like I was switching in between like these different realities like almost like if there was like 10 or a million different parallel universes that were happening all the time and then maybe that same event that was happening like There was one scenario where everybody was happy the whole time. There was another scenario where they were really mad because I didn't know how to smoke the pot right. And then they didn't get their fair share right. And I was like, I felt stupid and embarrassed and like, I don't know what I'm doing. And then there's another moment where just everybody's fine and happy and they're saying, what you just said was extremely beautiful. That was so endearing. I had no idea what I said. And so then as I was starting to wake up, I started to being like, oh my God, like I'm starting to come back into myself as to like, who I am, and I'm like, oh my god, you're squeezing my hand, my partner, I was with my partner, and I was like, oh, I'm so glad that I'm sharing this reality with you, and I kept waking up and I'm like, there'd be these moments where I'd be like, I just feel like I woke up, I just felt like I woke up, I just feel like I woke up, and each deeper and deeper and deeper layer, and I had this realization, it was kind of like, it has to do with identity and empathy in VR, where part of empathy is about sharing realities with people, So you can have your own experience. And I think what was happening was I was having my own internal experience of getting into this really projected fear, paranoia states that were being projected out, but yet my perception of what was happening was not actually what was happening. It was like some sort of like things were getting so jumbled that I couldn't quite understand what was happening. And then as I get back into these situations where I could see that everything was okay and we're sharing this context and sharing this reality, then I realize that the more that you're able to empathize with somebody, the more that you're actually able to tune into their reality and that you are sharing reality with them and that perhaps we're all kind of walking around in this world into these fear states and that VR has the capability to invoke these moments of empathy so that we can get deeper and deeper and deeper and keep waking up and waking up to the point where we're actually sharing what's actually happening because our perceptions could be so far off that somebody's recollection of what actually happened could be completely different about what actually happened. So I was at, like later that night, I was like brushing my teeth and I was like sitting there and I was like, oh my God, like, What if I am just like this soul having a human experience, you know And like I chose as a soul to live this life of Kent by and this was a simulation where Kent buys life had a certain trajectory and it'd be like job simulator where you're just like chopping up the cucumber in the kitchen and that like a We do that now. We pop in for 15 minutes, and maybe from the perspective of a soul, jumping into an entire lifetime here as a human on planet Earth is just like 15 minutes for us jumping into Job Simulator. And I was just like, boy, the haptic feedback on this toothbrush on my teeth is so real. I just feel like this is amazing. And I just had this moment of like, you know, some people may look at Job Simulator and think it's really boring, but I'm just really glad that I'm in my life right now, and I just love being here.
[00:13:47.017] Cris Miranda: Yeah, you know, I think what you brought up is something very interesting to me. I think, well, first of all, job simulator is probably the last job we'll all ever have once the AI machine economy takes over. But going back to your idea of like, yeah, that having this shared empathy, you know, it seems to me like many people walk around the world, you know, afraid, afraid of each other, afraid of others, afraid of the unknown. You know, fear is normal, fear is natural. But we're bombarded by so many noises of information, so many outlets of information, and I feel like it's something that is warping and morphing the world of people. And it's exacerbating the fear. And it's a funny era we're living in. It's the era of information. And yet, I don't know. There's so much information out there, and yet I don't know who to trust for it these days. It's becoming so much more crowded with noise. But going back to the simulation idea, you need to recommend me that marijuana strain. Because holy shit, that sounds awesome. That is some crazy, crazy weed. Man. It's Portland, yeah. Portland weed. OK. All right, all right, I remember this. Good stuff. But yeah, here's a question for you. If it hadn't been for VR, do you think you would have ever had that thought of like, yeah, this is a great simulation as you're brushing your teeth?
[00:15:05.371] Kent Bye: No, I think that's the thing is that VR could be, you know, I think learning more about our perceptual system and learning more about like how convincing VR can be, you start to wonder like if all this is illusion and that if I'm like touching this table and it feels real that there's something about this visual feedback of me seeing all this information that's here is giving you that feedback that that's what is the actual reality and we can have a shared reality that this is a table right here and it's at this size, right?
[00:15:34.344] Cris Miranda: here's the most part i think sorry for interrupting but i think you're hitting on something that i think is very it's going to be very profound because as this technology progresses and it becomes more and more ubiquitous and more and more people have and it gets better and better i think what's going to happen is people are going to start asking themselves questions that i don't think they would have ever asked themselves before like what is reality you know what is real what is and what matters what doesn't And so it's very interesting to see because like you, I found myself in these states where I was wondering about reality itself. And frankly, it's because of VR. It's because of VR that I've thought about not just myself in this country and this world, but myself as a being in this universe, in this reality itself. And I think those sorts of thoughts and conversations that average people will have all over the world,
[00:16:21.710] Kent Bye: The effects of that will be insane and no one can predict them, you know But I think it'll give birth to a new sort of revolution and thought hopefully yeah, you know, I think that there's we're in an archetypal time right now where we have this influence of the dissolution of boundaries and this utter blending of fantasy and reality that is going into imaginal worlds of dreamlike quality and mixed with Bringing it down to something that is very concrete and real like this technology has finally come about so the confluence of these two energies coming together is bringing about the birth of virtual reality the birth of artificial intelligence to a new level and You know, when you say the next one or two years, it's like I think about it a little differently because I'm looking at the larger patternings of what's happening and what's unfolding. And so I can start to think about different cycles of history and where we are in that clock, right? And so I could say it's like the first quarter, you know, it's a 25% into this story of the birth of VR, into the launch of VR. and that it's another 25% until we get to the full expression of that. Now we can take that, scale that back and look at a different scale. We can look at in 1989 was the birth of the Game Boy. The Game Boy, Jesse Schell had sort of pointed out and said, hey look, the Game Boy is really important because it was like the first mobile game where people were using and those insights were fed into cell phone technology. And so the cell phone technology was being able to see So a lot of these are interfaces and stuff that were born out there, right? So then nine years later, like 1998-99, we have the birth of the BlackBerry, which is the next manifestation of that mobile communication. Again, sort of going into something that's very concrete, but is able to take us into these imaginal worlds that, you know, people get addicted to the communication. They call them crackberries, you know, right? to be able to actually tune in to the communication. Well, guess what? Nine years later, in 2007, we have the birth of the iPhone. That's like the full moon expression of this coming into the full being. It's like you plant the seeds in the winter, they start to sprout up in the spring, and they come into full bloom in the summer. We're kind of in the summer with the iPhone. It was kind of like this groundbreaking way of something that was concrete that allowed us to go into these alternative worlds. Now we're at that next phase the the waning phase or that the full kind of like culmination of the harvest And the fall and the harvest of all of this is virtual reality It is this connection of being able to go into this capability of going into these other worlds, you know of our imaginations and to unleash our creativity and but yet there's other articles that are emerging right now that are talking about like the nature of reality about neuroscience and so these neuroscientists for many years talking about like our sense of reality or that we think is real is just a construction because we're basically editing out all the quantum layers of information that we don't need to worry about because we are only really worried about identifying that snake and identifying that tiger that's going to kill us and so we've developed our visual system to be able to integrate this at certain quantized levels. So it's anywhere from like 80 milliseconds when conscious thought is integrating all the signals that we're getting from our visual system, from our auditory system, from our haptic feedback, and from that, that's what our reality is constructed in our perception. And so when you look at this in terms of the barrier between objectivity and subjectivity, it's a lot more diffuse than I think we want to think it is. And I think that in this time with VR, it's like bringing all those questions up about what is the nature of reality. And I think that when we look at the history in that way, then we can say, okay, in nine more years, there's gonna be a start of a new cycle, where if we have the Game Boy, that's the seed, and then it's sprouting and harvest is virtual reality, then what's the next seed that's coming? So you kind of think of it like what's the thing that's going to lead to the next thing that's another 36 years after that. So for me that's kind of like I'm trying to find the patterns of the cycles that are happening rather than trying to look at this. Now I could say also if we look at the history of new communications mediums it's like this combination of this creative genius energy mixed with like immense expansion and those Times or whenever there's new communications mediums of film of radio of the phonograph Photography all these new communications means even you know going all the way back to the the Gutenberg press It's like it's like another one of those and so I think we're gonna be coming up on with on one of those from like December to July I think there's gonna be a moment where we're gonna have a culmination of perhaps magically will announce something maybe a dev kit or something maybe HoloLens will be launching by that time and maybe a Meta will also be launching so to me It seems to be pointing more towards like the augmented reality like the the VR is there but it's not Some I'm waiting for like Apple Maybe Apple is gonna like likely in that time period gonna come out with something that's gonna be they've been holding back and they're gonna like come up and they're just gonna nail the user experience of this and then maybe they'll have a headset that's ready to go and we'll be able to buy it and you know we'll be able to actually start to go into that first phase of having these headsets that are mobile and that are able to you know do a lot more than what we're able to do now you know like we don't see a lot of examples of dev kits from Apple. They just kind of wait. They sit back and they launch the consumer product. But for me, that's at least kind of how I'm thinking about it. And by doing that, I'm just kind of listening to see what happens and what topics are brought up to me in these. I kind of treat coming to these conferences as rituals and everything is an omen. And I'm like listening to different themes that are emerging. And so I just trace those themes and then follow my intuition of where to go and where to be. And I try not to plan anything. And so then By doing that, I'm leaving myself open as like a channel to transmit whatever deeper themes are coming on. So I just thought like, okay, I need to talk to Chris Miranda because he's the guy who has been really tuning into these deeper levels of like, what is the nature of reality? You know, like when I say I want to go down the rabbit hole, this is why, because it's like, there's some part of your curiosity that has been questioning like, who are you, why you're here, and what does it all mean, and what is real, and what is a product of my imagination?
[00:22:38.303] Cris Miranda: I think it's necessary to have a healthy dose of those conversations with others, with yourself. A healthy dose. So don't overdo it. Because learn from me, the rabbit hole is infinite. It goes on forever. But you brought up some really cool, really interesting points. Let me go back a little bit and see if I can reinterpret something that you said about the progression of the mobile display unit. It went from Game Boy to Blackberry to iPhone. And I think my interpretation of what you just said, it seems to me that we're right now in the Game Boy phase. You know, if we can translate the mobile display unit to the virtual reality volumetric interface, we're in that Game Boy phase right now. And I think the moment we land something wherein VR will go from something people want to something people need, then we'll be in the Crackberry's phase. And then when it goes from that, it's only a matter of time before it's in the iPhone, Ubiquitous, everybody's hands phase. And my thinking will be, this is probably not my thinking, I probably heard this from someone smarter than me, and I'm just gonna regurgitate it, but I think what he said, something like, you know, it's gonna make VR go from something people want to something people need. is the fact that volumetric interfaces, so it's not just VR, but AR as well. You know, Microsoft has done research with HoloLens, where they proved, they showed in volumetric interfaces, you're 40% more productive. And so it seems like productivity tools, I mean things that people use to do work, that used to take them four hours, now they can do it in two. And all of a sudden they have two hours left in their day that they're freed from. And I think that the most important thing people have in the 21st century, the most valuable thing we have is time, you know, more than money. And if VR gets to the point where like these tools and applications get to the point where they're giving people back their time to do whatever they want, whether they want to spend it more inside the Vetteriverse or spend it in reality, I think that will be that breaking point to bring in mass market. But going back to the nature of reality, I think that, you know, something that you're thinking about, you know, how the brain processes information, I think something very fascinating will be the idea that, you know, because VR will open up a new portal into the human mind itself, my hope, and I'm crossing my fingers, it will be that all of a sudden humanity and societies will start paying attention a little bit more to neuroscience. And we'll be basing our schooling more on neuroscience facts. We'll be basing our law more on neuroscience. And so it's another hope that because VR is sort of this thing that can crack open the mind and you can peer into someone's consciousness in many ways. Then I think that will open avenues for those kind of conversations. Steve LaValle from Oculus said a while ago during a talk in a university that he's like, at 20 milliseconds, there is no free will. And he's talking about latency in the headsets. And it seems to me like that is extremely powerful in the technology to be able to go around free will and the funny thing is it's like yeah it's you know it doesn't seem like it's a big deal right now because we don't know what to do with it really you know but you get into these questions about mind control these questions where like one of my biggest fears is that all of a sudden you're going to be a human being 10 years 20 years from now and your life will be a huge part of it will be looking at a screen it will be your AR or VR interface And inside that VR interface, you know, deep learning or AI algorithms will make sure that you're never looking at information that you're not supposed to see, that someone else doesn't want you to see. And that scares me, because people are easy to shut themselves in when they're comfortable. And so it's important and something that I really value is podcasts like you and others who are out there having conversations and asking questions. I think questions are the most important vehicle information of our time until we have the SpaceX Dragon thing. Right now, all we have is questions. And so it's good that we're using them, Kent.
[00:26:27.688] Kent Bye: Well, yeah, and I think, you know, as we're talking here, I'm just sort of like, we're trying to in a lot of ways peer into the future and see what's going to happen, you know, and so I have my own methods of trying to find these different moments that I can start to say these are kind of the arc of a story that's unfolding and then From that, you can kind of peer into the trajectory of where it's all going overall. And so, for me, as I'm looking at that, I'm kind of seeing a lot of things that are really exploding right now in terms of technologies that are going to help define our future. They're so early right now, and things are happening so quickly. For me, one of the things that I've been really noticing since the last time I went to a conference is that there's been all these things in terms of artificial intelligence. The AlphaGo just beat someone who is they thought that Go was going to be many years before the AI was going to actually be able to beat a human being who was like an expert player. And so the fact that AlphaGo won 4-1 against Lee Sedol and that I watched that and tracked that and tried to really think about, okay, what does this mean? This is really interesting to see that like, There's the open AI initiative. There's the initiative for Google and Facebook to say, okay, everything we're doing is going to be open source It's out there. It's free Nvidia is basically saying okay We're creating an entire GPU for people to do like neural network training and like, you know it's just like exploding out there and that like it's just at the very beginning and that there's a a lot of confluence in terms of virtual reality, in terms of creating embodied agents that are, you know, these non-player characters that we're going to be able to engage with. And, you know, Phil Brosedale just says that this is going to be a neutral space to meet with AI characters, because, like, if you have an AI robot, there could actually be fear that that AI robot could kill you. But if you're in a virtual environment, like, you can't be killed by the robot, but you can also not kill the robot, right? there's a sense of like VR may be this meeting place of how we actually engage primarily with AI where we feel like it's a safe environment where if at any moment we need to eject we can. Right, so AI is going to be a huge thing you know this kind of like biohacking with people that are you know embedding sensors into their bodies in some sort of ways and so I was just told that people putting magnets into their hands and being able to sense like electromagnetic fields because they're able to actually start to expand their sense of what they're able to perceive based upon these different sensors they're putting into their body. And like our body has the capability to start to interpret these signals that are coming to it. And so you start to realize, okay, well, where is that gonna go? With people hacking their bodies and editing their genes and All these things that, to me, I feel a little skeptical. Like, oh my god, that sounds terrifying. I don't think I want anything in my body. I don't want to edit my genes. I'm fine, thanks. I'll just let evolution and my fate determine where I'm going. I don't need to muck with it. I just trust it, that it's all meant to be perfect. But I completely respect people who want to do that. But I think that there's going to be kind of a split in people when they do that. And so AI, biohacking, what are other things? You've been exploring a lot of these things for many years. And so for you, what are the things that you see are these hot topics like that?
[00:29:40.191] Cris Miranda: It seems to me that VR is the right place to be because through it you're able to intersect so many other things. It seems like VR will be able to have reach into so many other fields, like AI, like neural interfacing, like synthetic biology and biofeedback, like 3D printing and internet of things, big data and things like that. You brought up something really interesting and I think I'm 100% on board with what you said about how AI and the manifestation of it, you and I and everybody else on planet Earth will be interacting with the manifestation of AI inside of a VR world. Cortana will appear in front of you and she will be just like the Halo video game. She'll have natural conversations with you and then you'll fall in love with her and then you're gonna have to divorce your wife because all of a sudden you fell in love with Cortana from Halo in your VR game and shit went down. Exactly how the AI wanted to by the way if that happens But here's the thing going back to this idea is I think deep learning is extremely powerful when you're able to Get all this aggregated user data and all of a sudden the algorithm can learn from the person and so my thinking has been that you know at some point someone's gonna create some sort of plug-in some sort of software that is you know, will monitor everything I see, everything I say, and it'll put it into some sort of deep learning algorithm. And that deep learning algorithm at the end of the year will spit out a replica of me. And that replica of me will be kind of like my twin, my virtual reality twin, but he'll be out there living in the world, being my free agent, my... What was that movie with Bruce Willis? Remember that one? It was a really bad movie, but it was a movie where he would go and take a nap and then he would show up on the body of some other avatar. Surrogates. But something like that is gonna happen in VR, I guarantee you. And I don't know why there will be uses for it, but I'm sure there will be. And so I think AI will be hugely manifested in VR. I think neural interfacing. If you ever heard of MindMaze, dude, MindMaze went under the radar for me. Because holy shit. So I interviewed for them, hush hush, and I ended up finding out a month after that interview that they had been acquired for $100 million at a valuation of $1 billion. And I was like, what the fuck? How is this possible? Because basically, MindMaze is a neural controller for VR. And that's coming. It's this company that completely, if Kent Bye doesn't know about MindMaze.
[00:32:03.707] Kent Bye: I've heard of it. They were at GDC two years ago, and they had a demo in the side room. And there's a whole entire conference called Neuro Gaming. And so there's a whole element of brain control interfacing. So there was a OpenBCI kit that I supported on Kickstarter and got. Here's the thing with what I've looked at, brain control interfaces, is that basically they're trying to get the neural input of the activity in your brain. you either have to decide whether or not you want something convenient, so you just stick something that's easy to put on your head, and then you get a weak signal, or you go full on, you shave your head, you put this thing on where you put this paste, and then you put it on. You just imagine putting paste on these things through your hair. Just shave your head, put it in the thing, you'll have the exact controller. The other thing is that the military's actually been working on this for many years. It's highly likely, let's just speculate, that the military has been working on this and in terms of the fighter jet pilot programs that they have and that this is something that's already integrated into fighter jets. So I think that if you trace the history of what Tom Furness was doing back starting in 1966 with the Air Force and what he was able to do up into the 80s in terms of creating a virtual cockpit, so being able to have like fighter jet pilots being able to go completely into virtual world or augmented reality worlds and basically you have the design problem as a fighter jet like there's not enough real estate to control all the different controls and so they need to have some sort of augmented or virtual reality. Now, this is all speculative because I presume that that has continued since the 80s and that like as the technology gets more and more advanced, that there's more and more capabilities of things that people can do in order to use this technology to be able to fly fighter jets, right? And so there's all sorts of defense applications of stuff that is now just getting commercialized maybe 10, 15 years after it's already been in existence and kind of, in a vault, secret, locked away. So for me, that's sort of what I kind of extrapolate from that. So here's the thing, I think that we will able to have neural interfaces, but there is that challenge of trying to extrapolate brain activity from basically kind of like listening to the radiation of your head and that you can put more signals and get more fidelity of that signal, but I wonder how good that's gonna be able to do. I expect that eventually people will be able to start to evoke different images in their minds and be able to speak a language that's like a mental metaphoric language of being able to kind of speak and actions and that there's gonna have to be a training for this system though for you to train your mind and and to have that iteration and be able to actually do that. It'll be kind of like a speech recognition, you know, 5-10 years ago where you actually had to train it and correct it. I think there's going to be a little bit of that like neural interfaces where they'll be able to do some simple things, but it'll be interesting to see if people have the patience to be able to have the benefits of that. if they have other ways that are higher fidelity. So you get to this like, would you rather speak something and have a 80% accuracy or push a button and have 100% accuracy? And I think that even though the button may take more energy, the frustration that comes from it not working 100% every time, I think is going to be something in the realm of these brain control interfaces.
[00:35:30.536] Cris Miranda: You know, I think, so my opinion in this is that I think we're going to cross that bridge, you know, the bridge wherein we have full fidelity, you know, from a neural interface. And I feel like, you know, by what I mean is that basically we're going to have the ability to go back inside of our thoughts, our own thoughts, rewind back and forth. All right. What was I thinking on that day? You know, or what was I, especially because it just seems like my theory or my idea for the progression of technology as we speak, is being propelled by the need for efficiency. You know, everything is more efficient, every iteration of it, you know, it has to be. So what's gonna be more, I mean, if we go from like, if you think about like, all right, we went from the paradigm where we used to have our keyboard and our mouse and our computer two feet away from us, to we went to smartphones and now it's just a screen that's on our hands, right? And it seems like we're significantly faster. And the idea is like, if I wanted to live stream myself right now, You know, if I use my laptop, it'll take me a minute to log on and, you know, launch Periscope or whatever app. If I use my smartphone, it'll take me like 10 seconds. And so the idea with virtual reality or AR, for example, it'll take me one second, right? And so what's next? And so in my mind, what's next is the brain. And I'm already thinking about like, all right, well, you know, I know we're going to get there. So what are the implications of that? Is the NSA gonna know what I'm thinking? Are we gonna start charging people for thought crimes? Are we not gonna be allowed to think some certain things because all of a sudden every single thought you've ever had will be collected in some sort of database? Because you will have access to it. It's just a matter of time. Black Mirror is a fucked up show. If you watch Black Mirror, it gives you a very fascinating, very realistic vision of the future. The best science fiction is the most believable, and I think Black Mirror is one of those shows that presents a very believable picture of the future in many ways.
[00:37:22.503] Kent Bye: Yeah, I think it is a great show and does a lot of really interesting taking things to the extreme of one concept and principle. And, you know, me personally, I'm kind of skeptical about this whole transhumanist dream of being able to capture consciousness and upload it and be able to redownload it. You know, I think I just think that with AI, you just think about the process of training a neural network is that you input it all sorts of different signals, and then that forms the opinion to be able to have it be able to make judgments and decisions after that. You just imagine that you've been here in your life for 20, 30 years, however old you are. And so with that, that's as much data that you have had. living life and so you have this brain but also a consciousness and you're in a moment in time that is a quality of that moment in time that changes as the world changes and so to go back and start at this moment and start to try to retrain something where the culture has changed from when you were born you know and so VR exists now, and it didn't exist when you were born. And so the quality of the moment of this time is completely different than if you were to try to create an AI version of Chris Miranda to be running around in virtual worlds, to be your doppelganger double that's doing all sorts of great or malicious things.
[00:38:40.956] Cris Miranda: Who knows? Definitely malicious. Definitely. They have to be malicious. Otherwise, why would I have one? I need an outlet, right? Everyone is both a beautiful being and a fucking monster. Don't hide it. You know you are. I am. And so this drives me to an idea. And I know this might sound a little crazy, Kent, so walk with me. Try me. All right. Here's what I thought. I've been reading a lot about people being harassed inside of social VR spaces. And that's not cool. No one likes being harassed in social VR spaces. I think a potential solution to that would be to, and out there, you can take this idea for free if you're listening to this, someone out there should create the 4chan of VR. A virtual space, virtual world, where right before you log in there's a disclaimer and a form that says, before you go in there, We are not liable for the racism, the sexism, the nonsense, all the hate that you're going to hear in there. Because here's the thing about human nature that I feel like is just in us. It's the fact that if you tell humans, don't, stop, don't do that, they're going to find a way to do it and go around you. It's the reason why the drug wars failed miserably and it sucks that it's still going on. We're in denial somehow. But it's the same thing with harassment. I feel like what should happen is that Just give them a place where people can be trolls and assholes and racist and sexist and monsters And then you know, you're gonna have youtubers like PewDiePie and you know do videos about like, oh my god guys I'm going into Chris world today. It's gonna be crazy. I think it's gonna be necessary I think someone's gonna create it and if someone doesn't I will but it's for free right now and
[00:40:20.707] Kent Bye: Well, I think there's a couple of dimensions to that because first of all I think the experience of media on a 2d medium gives us a certain amount of distance and and objectification of it so that we're able to know that that's not reality and you know when you watch a movie you don't have an experience of that being real and I think that there's a certain amount of dehumanization that 2d media has been able to do so that we lack all sorts of empathy, and I feel like virtual reality, if anything, is going to bring the humanity of our engagement online. Now, to unpack different dimensions of 4chan, there's an anonymous component where people can go and do and have the freedom to explore without the fear of being able to be shut down or whatnot. So there's definitely elements of anonymity and to be able to express themselves in different ways. Now, on the other extreme, I think there's a certain amount of chasing a high of people wanting to do things that are going to give them a thrilling experience. And I think that is definitely going to happen in terms of people in a simulated environment being able to experience all sorts of horrible things that, you know, why would anybody want to do that? it's gonna be a little bit of like, well, because we can and there's, you know, what's the harm, you know? And so, you know, there's all the, I wonder if any sort of regulation or the, you know, right now it's a wild west. You can basically do just about anything that you want. There's no sort of ethical or moral implications of doing things that, for example, you could create an experience that's very relaxing and then all of a sudden do all sorts of horrible jump scare horror shows, you know?
[00:41:56.022] Cris Miranda: Although I bet you though, I bet you that if I try to publish a VR application where you're supposed to have sex with the corpse of Saddam Hussein and Hitler, I bet you Google wouldn't like that. I think there's been instances where stuff, applications, VR experience that have been pulled from app stores. So yes, it's the Wild West in many ways, I agree, but it's also not as free as the internet was once when it first started off, right? So I think it's a complicated subject there.
[00:42:24.986] Kent Bye: Well, there's a couple of dimensions there. One is a free speech thing. Do we have the free speech right? And, you know, the Electronic Software Association, Mike Gallagher, I did an interview with him at the VRX, and basically they took it to the Supreme Court, arguing that video games were a medium that were protected by the First Amendment right. So kind of like this violence in video games question of like, do we have the First Amendment right to create video games that have violence in them? And it turns out we do. So we have the First Amendment right to do all sorts of things. however, there are other elements in terms of like Pornography and pedophilia for example, like what does it mean to have a virtual experience of pedophilia? Right? Like what does that mean?
[00:43:03.843] Cris Miranda: Because we need psychologists and neuroscientists on board with this because you know at some point like yeah You can say I mean again This is a conversation that if you and I aren't making people uncomfortable and we're not doing our jobs, right? So I think it's important to take a step back, yes, pedophilia is a fucking horrible thing, but it could also mean that, you know, with VR we could find a tool to give people an outlet to not do the things that they would otherwise do in real life. Maybe, maybe. Again, this requires a lot of research, this requires involvement of some people smarter than me, but I think that kind of like when I was growing up and I used to play a lot of Grand Theft Auto San Andreas and I used to blow up helicopters and parachute and just kill a bunch of people. It wasn't an outlet for violence, but it was sort of like this stress relief. There's something about like, you know, being this God thing was liberating, you know. And so I think that a lot of psychological disorders, we should look into ways to seeing if VR could be a tool rather than banning altogether any sort of discussion about the possibility of seeing if this could be useful. But again, this is a hot topic, requires very smart people thinking about it. And I don't mean politicians, you know, because they're not the smartest. They're just puppets.
[00:44:25.157] Kent Bye: Yeah, these are realms of open questions. And I think that, you know, when you mentioned the 4chan of VR, there's going to be people that want to push that edge to take it to the extreme. And so I don't know if this is something that you can stop people wanting to do. I know there's been some sci-fi where people go into like this VR club and they like commit suicide because it's something they just want to experience and they just kind of keep Going back and doing it over and over again. And so all sorts of different questions that in terms of content I I think it's so early that There's gonna be a lot of times you have to have a transgression of a boundary before you can set the boundary and so I think that there's gonna be this period of people experimenting and putting stuff out and then I don't know who's going to be setting that boundary. Certainly, Oculus and all the Vive and the people who are controlling the distribution of these on a large scale, it's just going to be no question that it's going to get shut down. But it's more of like kind of the underground, seedy parts of the internet, like 4chan, where stuff like that would exist.
[00:45:29.082] Cris Miranda: Yeah, and I mean, these are things that are This is humanity. We fall on a spectrum, I think. At every given time, throughout your life, human beings are beautiful, happy, monstrous. They're everything at the same time, and I think we're going to have to be very vigilant. about what should and what shouldn't be censored, if at all. And so it's really important that we keep asking really uncomfortable questions and talking about uncomfortable subjects because we don't want to shut out people who might actually benefit from this tool, from being able to use it. I bring up the idea of using virtual reality in prisons, for example. If VR is able to rewire the brain, and we know that it can because of things like Howard Rose's DeepStream VR and all the other VR psychological treatments, if we can rewire the brain and reach certain parts of the cerebral cortex that we couldn't before with other tools, I wonder if there's hope for people who are sociopaths or people who don't have strong neural pathways to the empathy centers of their brain. Now that I'm thinking about like, well, if we use this in prisons, do you think that it'd be possible to reprogram people? You know, all of a sudden you go into prison and the rehabilitation program involves you being inside of a VR simulation that is training you to become more empathetic over time. And I wonder if that is ethical at all, like, because that's kind of like clockwork orange, mind control kind of shit. But at the same time, I can also see the positives of something like that, you know?
[00:47:05.746] Kent Bye: I think that the main issue here is consent. So I think that there's an element of that if there's some sort of incentive that, you know, if they're making a choice of their free volition to be able to do that, then I think that's a great idea. I think that it's possible to be able to perhaps have these series of virtual reality experiences that allows people to perhaps step into the shoes of the other.
[00:47:27.508] Cris Miranda: Just going back to the idea of what shouldn't we and should we allow for us to experience, I think that if we don't let this thing grow organically, if we don't let this paintbrush paint itself on that white canvas freely, I think we won't be able to see a true mirror of humanity. I feel like movies can be a great mirror of humanity because when you look at it from an outsider's or a bird's eye view, You see that you got funny movies, cynical, satirical, all sorts of movies and they're a representation or a snapshot of what humans are. And I think that VR needs to have that sort of free reign. And it's tough because it's not like movies because VR is so much more of a powerful medium. And so I struggle with that too because it's kind of like, man, I don't know. My thinking is that if 10 years from now, as a VR user, consumer, if I'm not constantly being wowed by new things, new worlds, new environments, then I think the industry has failed. My biggest hope for the future of virtual reality is the idea of tapping into human neuroplasticity. What I'm trying to say is basically this. For the majority of humans on planet Earth, they're living a very structured, patterned life. You know, they go to work 9 to 5, they come home, eat dinner, you know, hang out with their family a little bit, and go to sleep. And then rinse and repeat. And I think, kind of like the muscles in your body, the brain is a muscle. And the example I give is like if I do bicep curls every day and I do a hundred bicep curls every day What's gonna happen? You know at first there's gonna be some growth some muscle growth and some strength But at a certain point I'm gonna plateau and the human brain is just like that but with reality itself We're so used to reality that we've plateaued and we're not growing more neural connections. We're not plastic and And I think my hope for VR will be that it'll activate neuroplasticity, it'll make us a little bit more open-minded, it'll allow us to change and be willing to accept change more. Because all of a sudden we'll be bombarded by this universe, this digital universe that we'll be able to create. And so I'll be a very sad man 10 years from now, if I don't die during this 100-hour project, if all of a sudden I find myself like, Kind of like the internet today I am sad about the state of the internet today because I'm finding myself that I'm spending 90% of my time on five websites reddit Facebook Twitter YouTube and Pornhub and it's cool but monotony in the grand scheme of things in my opinion is not the best of things and So I hope that VR doesn't end up like the internet is today, you know Because that will bring about a new era of mass control of minds.
[00:50:14.423] Kent Bye: Well, there's many dimensions of that. First of all, we're talking about a context in which the mechanism of capitalism that we have right now is such that is driving so many different dimensions of other aspects of our society due to our political and economic structures that we have. So you have to take that as the underlying fabric of our reality that we have right now. So VR has the capability to start to cultivate these other rules and regulations. So what would it be like to go to an environment where you can cultivate a culture that wants to create the world that you want to help create? So you go into the virtual world, you have the different social relations that are enabled by that type of gift economy. And so from that, then you come back and figure out how to change the underlying operating system of our reality, which is our economy, our political systems, and our legal systems. Those three are the underlying pinnings of everything else that drives that. You could just say that's at the lowest level. So you see that if you change those, then you could change the different behaviors because there's an incentive structure with how the money works that is coming into these power law distribution curves where the 80% of all of the economy and attention and traffic going to 20% of the things that are out there, right? It's somewhat a function of nature that we have these power law curves and that there's a few big huge winners and those few big winners have all that control. And so there is a long tail of the internet that's still out there. There is still that freedom that's out there. it takes a lot of time and energy to run your own server. And so this is a conversation that I had with Ebe from Linden Lab talking about this tension between control and power and people's willingness to give up their control over these things and to have a ruler so that they can have the access to be able to be connected to the people that they want to be connected to with their friends and family, especially with an example like Facebook, where they've been able to create this social capital and peer pressure that, you know, all of your friends and family are there, so therefore you feel like in order to maintain that social connection with them, you participate in this website. So for me, there's many different, like, underlying things that are assumptions that we have to question. Like, even within our political system, I don't necessarily see, like, either a Donald Trump or a Hillary Clinton changing the underlying, like, structure of our political or economic or Any of that. That's just the operating system is still gonna be on the 0.5 beta release and we're not gonna continue to upgrade all these underlying things that we need to in order to advance our society So so man you open up a can of worms can't buy it's about to be on.
[00:52:53.099] Cris Miranda: All right, so I think so It's fascinating to see that where we are. We're at a point where we had to choice between a fascist a socialist and an oligarch and And now all we're left is an oligarch and a fascist. And it's kind of sad. You know, it's the reason why I got out of politics. I studied poli-sci for like five years. I minored in Chinese and I had this grand plan for my life where I was going to open the doors of government for the people. And no, it's not about that. And it's the reason why VR has inspired me and I've been so gung-ho about it is because it's given me the opportunity to dream. Like to give myself a chance to be like, what if? What if we could achieve a world wherein people go to VR spaces and they meet people from all walks of life, all colors of skins, all religions. And because they're avatars that are like, you know, Warcraft avatar versus Iron Man avatar, Hulk avatar. no one gives a fuck about the color of your skin or your religion or your looks then you walk back to the reality and you ask yourself like well why can't the real world be a little bit more like that you know something like you said earlier Kent like I think that's going to be extremely valuable and so yeah it's crazy i think in terms of capitalism though i think that the reason why i'm gonna sit back and i hate to say this but and just watch it all go down is because whoever wins neither trump or hillary are going to be able to contain the AI economy. Within the next eight years, I think the world's going to flip on its head because we're seeing self-driving trucks, we're seeing self-driving cars are just better than humans at driving. Why do we have to lose 40,000 lives every year to car accidents that are human error? Why? And so we're all going to get to a point one day where we're going to wonder like, why the fuck did we drive cars? Or why the fuck did we let human doctors operate on us? Because it's just deep learning and the machine economy. The biggest threat to human society is not super intelligence, in my opinion. In my opinion, it's an AI economy. It's automation, it's deep learning, it's the encroachment on blue-collar jobs, intellectual jobs, creative jobs, that back in the day or before, you know, the last 25 years have been safe, but they're no longer safe. And so the biggest fear, and this isn't my idea, this is other smarter people have been saying this, is that, you know, it's, what are our socioeconomic structures going to do? How are we, I asked Ray Kurzweil this, like, dude, what are we gonna do? Like, are our socioeconomic structures ready for this monumental change, where all of a sudden, you can have, like, what, four million people out of jobs who do transportation jobs? You know, you're gonna have all these other millions of people out of jobs that do all sorts of other jobs that are gonna be replaced by AI? it's not about the AI itself, it's about how humans are going to react to it. And so I'm really big on basic income because I think that no human, this sounds like idealistic naive shit, but it really is practical. Every person should have a base income to be able to survive and take care of their Maslow's pyramid of needs. How can you have a productive forward-thinking society if 80% of your population is living paycheck to paycheck every fucking month, you know, I've lived through that You know, I don't know how the fuck I'd oh, I know how I did it I lived paycheck to paycheck and yet I was still able to think about these higher questions Because I was in denial and I was fucked up in the head, you know, and I was smoking a lot of weed that helped But you could naturally achieve that for the rest of humanity by giving them a basic income, letting them feed themselves, clothe themselves, have health care, and then giving them the opportunity to find meaning and purpose. I'm not worried about what we're going to do once the AI takes over, because if we find a proper solution like a basic income and perhaps a metaverse economy, again, I'm sounding crazy, but I think the metaverse economy will be necessary. But once we have those structures, Then what are we left to do? Find meaning. If you ask me, Chris, what is it that gives you meaning? I'll tell you, Kent, I'm going to spend the rest of my life finding out. And that's going to be my job. And I think that could be the jobs of billions of people on Earth if we achieve sort of this Star Trek economy kind of world that I hope we see. Otherwise, I have a plan, man. I have a plan to clone myself and put that clone on a spaceship along with my consciousness and send it off to the next galaxy, you know. Yeah, because again, if humanity doesn't have a shit together, you know, I'm not going to rely on humanity for my own survival for the next billion years.
[00:57:42.048] Kent Bye: Yeah, I think, you know, you put it at eight years, I say it'd be like nine, 2025 to 2026 is going to hit a breaking point. And at that breaking point, there's going to be something new. And my prediction would be that perhaps it would be finally that's when we'd be ready for a new economic political structure that is just a new approach. So we look at what we have right now when we have the blockchain, right? And so we have cryptocurrencies and we could start to predict like, what does it mean that we don't need to have trust mediated by these corrupt institutions that they're more about their interests? What if the peer network is able to mediate some of that trust and to to say what does an economy look like that's based upon cryptocurrency and not about debt-based economy that is based upon people being able to manipulate that in whatever ways and just kind of create those dollars out of whole cloth. And so essentially I think what I'm seeing here is like with the blockchain as a way to mediate trust against a distributed network, what that gives you is that we don't need the big banks of the world to mediate that trust and sort of like these oligarchs and plutocrats. this ability to be able to distribute that amongst the people. At the same time, we have this breaking down of society while we have these new structures we could start to see like during this time, we could start to really pay attention to the things that are going to really set that groundwork for that new phase that's starting in like 2025, 2026.
[00:59:03.434] Cris Miranda: Yeah, I think that we're going to have to wage an invisible battle for the future of reality. And what I mean is that, you know, these things like, you know, cryptocurrency, like mesh nets, really empower the individual. But groups of people, I don't know, I think Carlin said this, like, he is in love with being able to talk to people one-on-one, but he's scared of crowds because I think, you know, individuals are smart, they're analytical, you get one-on-one and you get inside their heads. People are reasonable one-on-one, but mob mentality crowds are more manipulable. Marketing, time and time again, has shown that you can get people to vote against their own interests, to believe things that actually hurt them, you know, It's crazy dude, it really is crazy to think that you can really manipulate the shit out of people. And so I think that there's going to be an information battle. for what is reality, for what will reality be? Are we in a reality where everything is already set in stone for us? Or are we in a reality where we can define the paths of our destiny? And I believe the latter more. And I think that's what, at least that's why I'm here in VR, because I think that this is a technology that will give people a key, maybe just a key to perhaps have a chance to open a door to be the master of their destiny. And I feel like most humans, that's all they need. They just need a chance. And so it's gonna be a crazy fucking time to be alive in the next 25 years, can't buy. I'm not gonna lie, it's gonna be crazy.
[01:00:36.903] Kent Bye: Well, Chris Miranda, what do you think is the ultimate potential of virtual reality?
[01:00:42.507] Cris Miranda: Oh, man. Duh, the porn. No, I think the ultimate potential, it's multifaceted, it's multilayered. There's so many things. I talk about journalism being the empathy vehicle of this medium, where all of a sudden my hope will be that oligarchs will put on HMDs and all of a sudden they'll feel what it's like to be homeless in San Francisco. I had this experience two months ago. This experience hasn't left my mind. I was walking down Market Street and on the sidewalk there was a man laying down who looked mentally ill and he screamed guttural, visceral sound to the top of his lung. He screamed out, you could be me! And that's all he said. And I sort of just ignored him and walked away. But those words, dude, it's been two months and I can't get them out of my head. And, you know, there's a famous song back in the day that I used to listen to. My mom used to have us listen to during the revolutionary days in Nicaragua by this group called Molotov. And Molotov rap, it was a Mexican rap group. And they rapped about social equality and, you know, and the fact that rich people don't give a shit about the poor. And I'm willing to go on record and say that the majority of rich people on planet Earth don't give a shit about poor people. And that's a fucking problem. And I think that VR, if done right, and again, maybe I've been smoking too much of whatever, that's making me hope that maybe one day they'll put on the headset, you know, or maybe the daughter of one oligarch will put on the headset and she'll see what it's like to be a girl who's Orphaned because of Ebola and you gotta live in her shoes and see what it's like, you know and just shit like that I think one of my biggest thing is is that no matter what we have to make sure that we are able to bring out the uncomfortable aspects of humanity into the metaverse Because we can't be hiding from reality. I think that virtual reality should be a magnifier of all the things that we need to see or pay attention to reality even more like poverty like war or like famine, like corruption, you know? And this is why it's the ultimate communication medium, because how can you argue against someone's visualization of what it's like to be there, you know? Because words are so ambiguous, and this is why VR is, again, so ultimate potential is that, and empathy, the ultimate communication machine, you know, next to telekinesis, VR is right below that. It's also the next tool for education that will bring about at least a million Einsteins. We need a million Einsteins in this century if we're going to make it through it, man. Climate change is no fucking joke. And I'm going to call it out, like billions of people might die if we just keep going about the way we're going. And so hopefully we'll be able to create the scientists that will be able to innovate and create the solutions of the technologies that will allow us to all of us have our cake and eat it. Maybe we'll figure out a source of infinite and renewable energy that will really carry humanity into the 23rd, 24th century. Who knows? you know, but again that'll come from the fact that we'll have universities all over the world that you'll be able to have access to Harvard from Malawi from Kazakhstan and that again tapping into the true human potential of our collective mind collective consciousness will be Probably our best weapon against if we ever get super intelligence, you know, this is again another crazy idea I think that our best weapon against super intelligence will be a hive mind a Woven in hive mind that we all become a part of and you sort of see it inside of reddit You know the reddit hive mind, you know in many ways. I see the top post the top most voted comment as sort of this manifestation of a hive mind at least the seed of it and what it will look like. And so I see a lot of potential. I see a lot of ultimate potentials for VR. And at the same time, it also can be a dark future. And this is why this is why Hollywood is important in many ways, because they're able to point out the worst case scenarios. The Matrix is a worst case scenario. Surrogates, like the Bruce Willis movie that I forgot earlier, that's a worst case scenario. And all sorts of other movies, like we look at these movies and science fiction books and we learn from them and say, fuck that, we're not gonna be 1984, we already are. We're not gonna be Brave New World, we already are. But at least we have a chance to keep saying that and have that thought, right? So yeah, I don't know.
[01:05:13.740] Kent Bye: Is there anything else that's left unsaid that you'd like to say?
[01:05:18.465] Cris Miranda: You know, I look forward to having you on the interview our podcast at some point Kent I love to have some more deeper philosophical Philosophizing and I thank you for having on the show. It's it's been a pleasure and Yeah, if you're out there listening to my voice, you know brace yourself because the future is coming faster than you think and It really is. Yeah. Synthetic biology, dude. You don't even get me started. Next podcast, we're going to talk a lot about synthetic biology. I got some shit to share with you. OK.
[01:05:50.154] Kent Bye: All right. Well, Chris, thank you so much for joining me today. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me again. So that was Chris Miranda. He runs the Inter VR podcast, and he also does the Metaverse Scholars Club, as well as does marketing at Vivid Vision. So there are so many different takeaways that I had from this conversation. In fact, it's one of the conversations that I had at SAVR this year that really stuck with me because Chris started to bring up a lot of different points about artificial intelligence and how it's going to really be a much larger force in shaping the future of our society. It's going to be more disruptive, I think, than virtual reality will be. I think VR will be there, but the number of jobs that are going to directly be lost because of this advancement in terms of automation, I mean, this is something in terms of automation that's already been happening for a long, long time in terms of robots kind of displacing manual labor jobs. And I think with the level of artificial intelligence, it's going to be able to take that job displacement to the next level. So over the next eight or nine years, I think there's going to be huge shifts in our economy, and there's going to be a lot of need for training. And I think that's one role that virtual reality will have was to be able to actually train people for the next level of jobs that are going to be out there. But just to kind of take a step back and look at, you know, this conversation and asking about the fundamental structure of reality and whether or not we live in a simulation. I think it's interesting to hear that perspective, but I have to agree with Chris that at a certain level, it doesn't really matter because there's not much agency that we may have and to be able to change our control that, you know, whether or not we're able to break out of the Matrix or escape the dome of the Truman Show or to break down the walls of the Dark City, you know, whatever metaphor you want to use, if we're talking about we're living in some sort of contrived simulation, I think we still have this certain level of free will and agency that we're able to exert into the world. And so we do have a lot of seemingly control over our destiny. I think that virtual reality will have a role to play to be able to envision these futures and these worlds that we want to help create, to actually go experience that and create a culture and social connections that then allow us to bring that back into reality. And what our legal systems, our political systems, and our economic systems look like, I personally see that there's going to be a shift that's going to be starting to happen in terms of perhaps using some of these distributed technologies to bring more equality, fairness, and justice to our overall system. And I'm hopeful that these types of changes can happen. Because right now, I see that we're kind of in this battle of figuring out whether or not we're going to have just a handful of big, huge winners. Like Chris said, there's just a handful of websites that he goes to and get the majority of his attention and time online. And so there's a few big winners, but does virtual reality present the opportunity for more people to exert their creativity and imagination in a world? You know, because another big theme that kind of came out for me for the Silicon Valley Virtual Reality Conference was, you know, this question of whether or not we're going to live in an open future or more of a walled garden future with lots of silos, especially with my conversation with Ebe Altberg and Philip Rosedale was kind of like these two kind of represent the split between Project Sansar, which is this walled garden where you go and have an experience that's very tailor-made, you know, the creation tools are there, but it's something that's hosted by Linden Lab, a private company, that you're able to essentially make the choice that you're foregoing certain levels of freedom and control. Whereas you can go to the other route where you have complete freedom and control, but the tools may not be as advanced at first. Maybe they'll get better over time. And you have that capability to host your own server and to kind of control your own domain a lot more. not be subjected to the rules of somebody else. And so I really see this future of the metaverse and the internet is going to have to make these different decisions, whether or not you're going to live in these walled gardens or whether or not you're going to create these open worlds that you have a little bit more control, but you may have to do a little bit more work on the technical back end. And so there's a lot of other thoughts and ideas about the future that came up in this talk. But one thing that I just wanted to highlight is Chris's dedication towards having these uncomfortable conversations, these conversations that are really forcing us to look at some of these deeper questions that we may not want to really look at. And so I think the deeper intention of exploring some of these difficult questions is to not be so disconnected from our actual reality for the problems that we are facing in the world. For us to use virtual reality as a mirror to amplify the injustices that are happening in the world, but also to build empathy with other people and their plight of what they're going through and to create what essentially is this shared reality. because we all walk around going through our own individual perspectives of reality and sometimes we may get into a place of fear and projected fear out into the world and we may start to interpret everything that's happening to us through this kind of paranoid perspective. You know, I can't help but think that this massacre that just happened in Orlando in terms of somebody who got into some type of altered state of either rage or anger or some other level of disillusionment decided that his best course of action was to go into a nightclub and kill 50 people, and that really speaks to this state of getting into this completely altered fear state where this person's reality wasn't really a shared reality. He was just projecting his fears out into the world. And having my own kind of personal altered state of kind of feeling like I was jumping through these different levels of parallel universes and seeing what the world looked like when I look at it through the lens of fear, see what it looked like through the lens of love, see what it looked like through the lens of laughter and fun and joy. You know, each person can be looking at the world through these different lenses, and that, I think, is the big lesson of virtual reality, is that A lot of people are suffering in the world right now. And it's really difficult for us to put ourselves into their shoes. And that's the thing that virtual reality is able to do. It's able to allow us to step into somebody else's shoes and to fully share their context in terms of their living conditions, what they may be going through. You know, Clouds Over Sidra is a great example of what it might feel like to live in a refugee camp. in a war-torn country. And so the ultimate potential of that empathy is to start to break out of our own bubbles of our realities and be able to actually empathize with other people's realities. And the more that we're able to empathize with the stories of other people's realities, the more that those shared realities start to create the context that really informs the world that we want to shape together. So with that, I wanted to just thank you for going with Chris and I down this rabbit hole of talking about the future of virtual reality, artificial intelligence, simulation theory, and where this is all going. There's a lot that's going to be changing in our world, and I just honored and privileged to have you go along on this journey with me and think about some of these deeper questions of where this is all going. So if you enjoy the podcast, then please join the email list that I have. I'm going to be having more events of trying to create the culture that I want to create in this new world of virtual reality. So sign up for the newsletter and email to get notices about future events that will be happening. Tell your friends about the podcast, just spread the word and pass along this podcast for anyone that you think might enjoy some of these deeper philosophical thoughts. And if you do enjoy the podcast, then please do consider becoming a contributor to the Patreon that I have at patreon.com slash Voices of VR.
