For at least the last few years now, Immersive Virtual Reality has been science fiction no more. When I was a kid, I remember reading books that described virtual reality as computer-generated worlds so sophisticated and detailed, it was no different from the reality.
Dr. Rand Waltzman sat with Dr. Steven Hassan in the lastest episode of the Inflience Continum Podcast and things got pretty sobering in a hurry. I was running errands and if not for that, I probably would have fainted at least twice. His tried to warn the government in the early years of Social Media and the internet but his warnings were mostly ignored.
Dr. Waltzman worked for DARPA in the 70s and 80s. He is an expert on Artificial Intelligence as well as Psych Ops and 4th Generation Warfare. You know 4GW but not the name itself: Terrorist groups, cyber ops and other types of non-government groups focus on not the enemy in front of them but the enemy giving the orders. In other words, the state and others in power. The attack on the U.S. Capitol on 1/6/2021 is an example of that too.
The introduction of the Metaverse to a unprepared and unquipped world creates a host of legal, ethical and legal problems as well as a new warfront for those who may be looking to do you or your loved ones harm. I’m talking about war against the mind itself and your perceptions.
The most effective types of psychological warfare are the kinds in which you don’t even know you’re being attacked. There is little to no reason or need to engage in a kinetic or physical war if you can manipuate people mentally and emotionally. Combined with artificial intelligence, the Metaverse is going to make it far easier for people with bad intentions to attack countless unsuspecting minds worldwide.
…Fiction is about to get real.
Virtual Reality as an idea has been around for a long time. It was conceptionalized in various fictional mediums since the late 70s. I mean movies, TV Shows, video games and more recently the internet as well as Augmented Reality.
Virtual Worlds as a concept has been heavily popularized and romanticized over the last two years in movies like Ready, Player One, Japanese anime like Sword Art Online and video games like Assassin’s Creed. In all three example cases I referenced, people from the real world basically have their minds uploaded into a virtual world that is almost completely indistinguishable from the real world.
All five senses are engaged in real time and in the case of the first season of Sword Art Online, dying in the virtual world means dying for real. In all three cases the subjects know they’re in a virtual world from the beginning but their disbelief is suspended due to how detailed and sophisticated the world they’re in is.
Fiction doesn’t touch on this as much as it should but prolonged time someone spends in virtual reality can really mess with a vulnerable person in unforeseen ways. The biggest and most obvious being while your mind is being engaged in the virtual world, your physical body is still in the real world unaware of the passage of time. In recent decades, they sidestep the obvious physiological problems with this in Fiction by having it explained while the mind is in the virtual world, the body is asleep. That doesn’t make it any better and more so given the passage of time in a virtual world would likely be much faster than the passage of time in the real world.
Try to imagine being in a virtual world for 10 days but only two or three hours have passed in reality for example. That’s also going to be one of the ways companies will try to get people to spend large amounts of time engaged in virtual reality: “You can spend as much time as you want in our world(s) and not miss much in reality”. I can imagine a scenario in which someone spends years’ worth of time in a virtual world in a single session but only 8 to 12 hours have passed in reality. That could be pretty shocking or traumatic for someone whose mind was in another world for a long time to then return to reality knowing what they experienced in the virtual world was far more appealing to them than what their real life is.
In other words, we could see vulnerable people just decide they want to live in worlds of their own making instead of reality. In time, their perception of what reality is becomes warped and typically does by the time they decide they prefer virtual reality over reality.
Before Virtual Reality becomes more commonplace nationally and globally, laws and regulations need to be put in place to prevent the exploitation and abuse of the users. I could imagine a scenario in which virtual reality is used to attack people in ways they otherwise couldn’t be harmed. I am doing this on a singular level but imagine this being done on a much larger scale involving thousands and millions of people.
That brings me to this more immediate threat of misuse of Virtual Reality and Artificial Intelligence that everyone on the planet should be concerned about right now: Cognitive Dissonance.
As described in the image above, Cognitive Dissonance is when someone who holds a strong core belief is presented with contrarian evidence and rejects it in favor of their core belief. They reject any evidence that know conflicts with their core belief.
Remember what I said earlier: The most effective kind of psychological attack is the kind in which the subject doesn’t know they’re being attacked. A lot of the mass manipulation that has been going on across the world over just the last 20 years will be nothing compared to what is coming with the Metaverse and A.I. Dr. Waltzman is trying to warn the world: If you choose to enter the Metaverse, be on your guard.
You may have heard this in Sci-Fi or Fantasy books or movies: “Don’t trust your senses. They can fool you.” Anyone who dabbles in the Metaverse or any other kind of virtual reality should assume that at all times.
If you have enjoyed this post or other posts I have made on this blog, please consider making a monetary donation via PayPal. Whatever amount you can provide would be greatly appreciated.
Serene Adventure Politics and News 