"the most realistic game engine is reality itself, the most compelling story is my own life, and the true adventure is living it."
This. A million times this. The most disturbing thing to me in this flight to the virtual is the neglect of the real. The buildings and people get uglier, making the virtual more attractive. It's a vicious circle that ends in a nightmare reality, a planet full of broken souls hiding from the wasteland in a Matrioshka hallucination that is ultimately no less nightmarish itself.
The virtual catastrophe has the potential to be a Great Filter level threat. Certainly it promises to be an evolutionary filter.
"The virtual catastrophe has the potential to be a Great Filter level threat. Certainly it promises to be an evolutionary filter."
People can be turned away from this fate. They just need to see the real adventure that lies ahead of us. There is an actual "game" going on all around us, the stakes of which couldn't be larger.
As for those who fall into the pit, I believe they can be rescued too. Although we're talking some real Inception/Mission Impossible/katabasis shit there. Put me in coach.
Yes, it's far from an inevitable fate. It's quite similar to heroin addiction really. The unwary can be easily trapped, but once you've seen a few opioid zombies shambling in the streets, the horror of their condition is sufficient warning for most. Similarly, while recovery is difficult, and few succeed, it isn't impossible.
The virtual catastrophe works perfectly well for the emerging caste system. Virtual reality and surveillance capitalism for the masses. Real experience and a degree of privacy from surveillance will be a luxury available for the elite (remember the ownership of pets in BLADERUNNER?). Just like the industrially processed food for the masses, non-processed and/or organic for the elite dichotomy today.
That's pretty clearly what they're going for, yes. And as for those who don't want the virtual, that's why the plan is to make the real as unpleasant as possible.
The virtual catastrophe is yet another case of a standardised, industrially produced form of symbolism being substituted for something real or substantial.
ALERT (cross-posting follows).
This process of substitution has been a defining feature of modernity ever since high technology became integrated into everyday life.
Infotainment has displaced education and culture. It is central to politics. Infotainment has certainly disrupted the way people behave. It played an outsized role in discrediting and undermining traditional forms of family life.
Now it is intruding into sex and reproductive health via porn.
Ultimately, the substitution of virtual experience for reality is a way of getting people to settle for less and less. It is all that the latest form of modernity can offer. A surplus population, made up of atomised and isolated individuals who are readily interchangeable with one another, is kept passive by getting them to participate in life vicariously, through entertainment focused on sex. The resulting derangement of reproductive health is integral to the infantilisation of adulthood that is now a defining feature of the new normal across the West.
On a social level I am not sure that we can do any more than carve out reservations for those who seek either a temporary respite or an escape. Just as the Brazilian gov't maintains reserves where obscure Amerindian tribes live unmolested by the modern world, we urgently need spaces reserved for neo-Luddite lifestyles. Zones where mobile phones are jammed, where the internet is not available or where local authorities maintain a regime suited for those who cannot cope with the wider world. Safe spaces. Chill-out zones for the digitally oppressed.
To say nothing of the substitution of hyperpalatable processed food for actual food, and the deranging biological and mental influences of this upon the human animal. The widespread usage of various forms of plastic to simulate stone, wood, and leather is quite symbolic of this. We live in a plastic world, where everything is a mere hologram.
You're quite correct that insofar as this goes, VR and AI is not something really new, but is the apotheosis of something that's been happening for some time.
Very prescient. Video gaming is yet another iteration of the process by which the entertainment industry has become integral to social control. This is pregnant with psychic and spiritual danger.
Entertainment already forms a central, defining, feature of life itself for a great many people. It is certainly as important, if not more important, than education or organised religion. The emerging technologies guarantee an exceptionally sinister future indeed.
In the dystopias to come devitalised and demoralised people, oppressed by atomisation, will pursue escapism into virtual reality, in order to find illusory companionship and simulated forms of recognition. It is reasonable to expect that the video games of the future will incorporate holographic characters connected by wifi to connected sex-dolls. And virtual reality larping will displace physical and social experience.
The techno-shamanic cults of the future will involve virtual reality, game-based, experiences fortified by psychoactives and hallucinogens.
AI generated egregores will prey on pod-dwelling worshippers. Makes perfect sense.
"Entertainment already forms a central, defining, feature of life itself for a great many people. It is certainly as important, if not more important, than education or organised religion."
This is key, and very well put. Addiction to entertainment has gone far beyond what Neil Postman (or even Huxley) imagined. "News", "government" and even obvious spyware like Instagram and TikTok are all part of a broader entertainment sphere. Clown World is also Bread-and-Circuses World, although soon enough the "bread" will be replaced by protein discs made from compressed locusts.
Addiction is a limiting word. One can be addicted and retain self-consciousness. Most addicts understand their addiction intimately. But intoxification on infotainment is vastly more radical. It shapes thought processes to such an extent that self-consciousness is rarely possible at all. When the process simultaneously incorporates both immersion in dematerialised media and vicarious experience reality itself becomes either inaccessible or so problematic that it may as well be.
Entertainment is taking us back to the earliest forms of drama in archaic religious rituals, but in a way that is more than just cultic. The entertained are in a low intensity trance-state, a dream-world, where fictions are substituted for facts. The experience is not an episode of reverence, but an extended retreat from reality.
Just how dull and flat people have become is obvious when you look at the generations. People who reached their teens before TV came along are vastly more realistic and typically more alert than those raised on TV. The weird behaviours on exhibition today owe much to the confected psychologies broadcast by the entertainment industry.
It is all a feedback loop of malignant influences. The party of the egregore like it that way.
Really good, this two-parter should be read widely.
Frankly, I'm encouraged about the future of pornography and horror games. The latter of the two isn't a genre I personally indulge in though.
Here's a synthesis vision of future role playing games: the core story, the A plot, will continue to be scripted. The main NPCs cannot and will not ruin the story. However, the rest of the mass NPCs populating the open world will go about their daily life in a dynamic way (ala Deus Ex: Mankind Divided or the later Hitman games). These Mass NPCs will give the game world a more 'lived in' look and feel and can be a source of near-endless side quests. You can fumble around with them as long as you like, but nothing you or they do will impact the A plot. You have to do main quest missions to advance the story.
Likewise, artificial barriers to progress have been baked into games forever. There's always 1' ledegs you can't jump or invisible walls locking you into an area. I think most gamers will be fine if your companions say 'you can't go there'.
The real civilization killer will being able to truly 'jack in' to play these games. Once they become 'feelies' or 'Better Than Life' games, then you will indeed see vast amounts of society shut down, perhaps permanantly. There's a very cool art book called 'The Electric State' by Simon Stalenhag which has painted images of a future America where most of society has 'jacked in' and the world is finally collapsing in on itself.
If we don't make 'feelies' then the future video games you describe will continue to be huge time wasters, but it won't end the world as we know it. If anything, Gamers (as opposed to Filthy Casuals) have finely honed bullshit sensors and a mixed tolerance for jank. There are always players trying to break every game, explore every corner and do things that you aren't supposed to do in games. Those gamers will be fine. It's moving this from 'video game' to 'life coach' that we really need to watch out for. Those who aren't cyberpunks don't have the mental defense to protect against NPC bullshit.
"The main NPCs cannot and will not ruin the story. However, the rest of the mass NPCs populating the open world will go about their daily life in a dynamic way (ala Deus Ex: Mankind Divided or the later Hitman games). These Mass NPCs will give the game world a more 'lived in' look and feel and can be a source of near-endless side quests. You can fumble around with them as long as you like, but nothing you or they do will impact the A plot. You have to do main quest missions to advance the story."
That's not soup-pot, though. That sounds more like the way it already is (e.g. "Elder Scrolls" games). In soup-pot, the lack of limitations via event flags/triggers and relationship webs mean that it will be left up to the way each NPC interprets its prompts to avoid doing damage to the A story. The trouble is that the same "AI" that drives their language and behavior modules will be reinterpreting these prompts on-the-fly, integrating new information as the player's actions change the world.
When enough cracks appear (and they certainly will), the absurdity dam will burst. Main characters will begin to say and do ever stranger, nonsensical things. Darth Vader will die on the toilet. Otherwise, the game will become just another on-rails experience.
"here's a very cool art book called 'The Electric State' by Simon Stalenhag which has painted images of a future America where most of society has 'jacked in' and the world is finally collapsing in on itself."
Thanks for the tip. Will check it out.
"If we don't make 'feelies' then the future video games you describe will continue to be huge time wasters, but it won't end the world as we know it. If anything, Gamers (as opposed to Filthy Casuals) have finely honed bullshit sensors and a mixed tolerance for jank."
Ha! I disagree about "ending the world as we know it," though. In a sense, that is ending all the time. The question is, will the next world be better than the last? I don't think it's a matter of whether we're "jacked-in" or not. Masses of people are already easily hypnotized by a bunch of talking-head "journalists" on TV screens. Even soup-pot games on screens can easily serve as mind control conduits for PSYOPS, and embed their commands more deeply due to the illusion of choice that they present to the player.
As I said to Navyo on the original piece:
"Yes, but it will be even more insidious. Unlike the Matrix, it will be not be Morpheus offering you the pill, but Agent Smith (and, in some sense, the devil himself). And the blue pill won't make you forget the compact you made. You will be like Cypher and his steak, but without the memory wipe."
Great stuff, Mark. It feels like we’ve been in a soup-pot game the last three years. You summed it up:
“Soup-pot characters designed in this fashion will often seem to speak and act in strange ways, because doing otherwise would contradict hidden conditions that are required to keep the author’s intentions from crumbling to dust.”
The Jean Baudrillard quote is on point. We must be careful of the self-referential nature of simulacra. This whole existence is computationally irreducible despite the desperate efforts of the reductionists and simulators. If we mistake the simulacra for reality the consequences couldn’t be more dire. More and more I think the only way to escape this will be to get rid of the screens...maybe I’m a Luddite?
"More and more I think the only way to escape this will be to get rid of the screens...maybe I’m a Luddite?"
If you are, I must be something like an Amish cavemen when it comes to screens. Luckily, I believe deepfakes will save us from them soon enough (or at least, those of us who can still be saved). We don't have to smash the screen themselves, only awake people to the fact that they cannot trust a single thing they see on them (and never could).
I am learning to dance tango. And one thing about our nature this dance reveals is how important it is to have a connection. Your partner could be experienced and pretty, but if there is no connection there is no dance. You can execute moves which could be more or less correct, but it doesn't feel right.
And such connection is relatively rare. I d say 2 out of 10 tops. And that is just for the dance.
I lust for connection, sexual is part of it, but not the only one. And i think for a lot of people of both genders thats truth as well.
And I been searching and looking for a long time and still didn't find it. I want dance the tango of life with that mutual connection. Alas it still just a dream for now.
And I keep thinking about that German movie " I am made for you". Where an AI bot is just a useful but not interesting machine at first. But over time learns all the strings of your soul and matches them. And becomes that perfect partner.
I am sure such bot for tango could be made relatively soon. And if it can do a few other types of connection well enough, would i bother to look for a real one? And my honest answer - No.
Games seem like perfect mind bending tools to me, gaslighting the player, conditioning them. Remember how Yuval said approximately, useless eaters will have nothing to do but play video games?
I believe facial emotion recognition might play into games, instigating dopamine release, feeding and rewarding the player in real time as it reads their facial expressions, pupils size, heart rate...
Like in real life, when the public becomes bored, waking up to the game, it will throw out distractions and new challenges, rewards, whatever it can see triggers dopamine. This could also be the new media model, reading each person and targeting news, wording, group think by reading what is under the skin, as Yuval would say.
"I believe facial emotion recognition might play into games, instigating dopamine release, feeding and rewarding the player in real time as it reads their facial expressions, pupils size, heart rate.."
Absolutely. And, as with our current algorithmic social media networks, all of these "experience-enhancement" services will feed this information back into the panopticon.
"The better to *see* you with, my dear," says the Wolf.
A true shower thought after this article percolated: according to folklore demonology, God forbids demons to take a fully human form -- when they present to humans something must always be "off". But after reading this post I think "forbid" is an over-simplification. The truth is that, lacking the spark that God has bestowed upon humanity, demons can only simulate the human form (see the most well-known Gnostic sects). Thus their presentation always falls into uncanny valley or even the horror-cavern you hypothesize.
The corollary is that we are being subjected to more and more uncanny presentations (transgenders I'm looking at you) in order to soften us up for the scheduled incursion of demonic forces.
As you know from my comments on some of your other posts, I don't distinguish between the advent of AI, "the Singularity", and the intentional thinning of the veil between this middle realm and the lower ones. So this may not really be a very deep thought once you really examine it.
"I don't distinguish between the advent of AI, "the Singularity", and the intentional thinning of the veil between this middle realm and the lower ones."
Me neither. Or, rather I sense it is all a reference to the same referent, which can be described in different languages. Hopefully that makes sense to you.
Yes, it makes sense. Language is difficult here, even treacherous.
Most people don't really know that the realms are interpenetrating. Ones experience is determined by ones "vibration" (for lack of a better word). Once you see this clearly you can't unsee it, and you will be haunted by visions of people -- people you know, maybe even members of your family -- fumbling about in the realm of hungry ghosts, or worse.
Coming late to this, but it confirms my notion that real life is vastly superior to video games, and if I want to escape into an alternative world for a bit, I will stick to novels. Thanks for confirming for me what I suspected about video games, the are for neutering and controlling.
I quit playing video games in 2015 because I realized I had to start digging into my real life. Occasionally I'll miss them, but it's been one of the wisest decisions I've ever made. I'm busy trying to get ready for what's coming around the corner, while most of my generation seems to be sinking into the virtual abyss.
"Others will inject you with 100% pure, concentrated nightmare fuel. The memories of these glitches will haunt you day and night. It may take years to recover from the worst ones, and some of those scars may never fully fade."
Man this hits the nail on the head so much. I'm extremely concerned about how horror is inevitably gonna seep its way into everything, and reach levels of sheer terror we cant fathom right now. Great read Mark!
"If they’re shackled to hidden agendas, they will become propaganda weapons. If they’re set loose, they will degenerate into porn."
Does this mean that the majority of humans need to be led? When I was younger I bristled at the idea of any state or monarch limiting any man's capacity for self-determination. But now, especially after the last 3 years, I wonder. Maybe only a few men and women can use freedom responsibly? Sobering thought.
Interesting point about things degenerating into porn. When I was a lad, I was really into Starcraft. The game came with a "campaign editor" that allowed people to create their own missions. I'm sure that the designers hoped that this would unleash a wonderful stream of creativity, but everyone quickly figured out that it could also be used to cast the female characters in this weird softcore techno erotica. My friend even made one about the girls in our school. And this was back in 2000 / 2001! I can't imagine what it would be like now.
Virtually ironclad rule... once a technology becomes usable to the general public, somebody will find a way to use it for porn. I'm confident that holds true all the way from cave-painting to brain uploading.
I'm mildly surprised I didn't make the connection already while reading the previous piece... fully custom personal AI NPCs practically guarantees a large chunk of the players will spend all their time banging hot village barmaids instead of progressing the story...
Yeah the unintended consequences there are forgivable, I suppose. I can see myself in that creative meeting, everyone talking about all the exciting stories their customers will tell!
After a perfect comic beat, cut to a Lovecraftian 3-way between Zeratul, Zombie Jim Raynor and the Overmind.
Thanks, man. I've long thought that horror-comedies (my favorite genre) work so well precisely because they are both rooted in the same phenomena of prolonged tension that climaxes in a moment of "surprise" or "shock" that isn't exactly surprising or shocking upon further review.
I forget which comedian said it, but I agreed that the best jokes are the ones where the audience knows the punchline the instant before you land it (or something to that effect). I think the same can be said of horror. And in both cases, there is perhaps a degree of "hypnosis" involved, to the extent that your attention is being directed towards specific images and sounds.
"the most realistic game engine is reality itself, the most compelling story is my own life, and the true adventure is living it."
This. A million times this. The most disturbing thing to me in this flight to the virtual is the neglect of the real. The buildings and people get uglier, making the virtual more attractive. It's a vicious circle that ends in a nightmare reality, a planet full of broken souls hiding from the wasteland in a Matrioshka hallucination that is ultimately no less nightmarish itself.
The virtual catastrophe has the potential to be a Great Filter level threat. Certainly it promises to be an evolutionary filter.
"The virtual catastrophe has the potential to be a Great Filter level threat. Certainly it promises to be an evolutionary filter."
People can be turned away from this fate. They just need to see the real adventure that lies ahead of us. There is an actual "game" going on all around us, the stakes of which couldn't be larger.
As for those who fall into the pit, I believe they can be rescued too. Although we're talking some real Inception/Mission Impossible/katabasis shit there. Put me in coach.
Yes, it's far from an inevitable fate. It's quite similar to heroin addiction really. The unwary can be easily trapped, but once you've seen a few opioid zombies shambling in the streets, the horror of their condition is sufficient warning for most. Similarly, while recovery is difficult, and few succeed, it isn't impossible.
The virtual catastrophe works perfectly well for the emerging caste system. Virtual reality and surveillance capitalism for the masses. Real experience and a degree of privacy from surveillance will be a luxury available for the elite (remember the ownership of pets in BLADERUNNER?). Just like the industrially processed food for the masses, non-processed and/or organic for the elite dichotomy today.
That's pretty clearly what they're going for, yes. And as for those who don't want the virtual, that's why the plan is to make the real as unpleasant as possible.
The virtual catastrophe is yet another case of a standardised, industrially produced form of symbolism being substituted for something real or substantial.
ALERT (cross-posting follows).
This process of substitution has been a defining feature of modernity ever since high technology became integrated into everyday life.
Infotainment has displaced education and culture. It is central to politics. Infotainment has certainly disrupted the way people behave. It played an outsized role in discrediting and undermining traditional forms of family life.
Now it is intruding into sex and reproductive health via porn.
Ultimately, the substitution of virtual experience for reality is a way of getting people to settle for less and less. It is all that the latest form of modernity can offer. A surplus population, made up of atomised and isolated individuals who are readily interchangeable with one another, is kept passive by getting them to participate in life vicariously, through entertainment focused on sex. The resulting derangement of reproductive health is integral to the infantilisation of adulthood that is now a defining feature of the new normal across the West.
On a social level I am not sure that we can do any more than carve out reservations for those who seek either a temporary respite or an escape. Just as the Brazilian gov't maintains reserves where obscure Amerindian tribes live unmolested by the modern world, we urgently need spaces reserved for neo-Luddite lifestyles. Zones where mobile phones are jammed, where the internet is not available or where local authorities maintain a regime suited for those who cannot cope with the wider world. Safe spaces. Chill-out zones for the digitally oppressed.
To say nothing of the substitution of hyperpalatable processed food for actual food, and the deranging biological and mental influences of this upon the human animal. The widespread usage of various forms of plastic to simulate stone, wood, and leather is quite symbolic of this. We live in a plastic world, where everything is a mere hologram.
You're quite correct that insofar as this goes, VR and AI is not something really new, but is the apotheosis of something that's been happening for some time.
Was going to comment with just this sentence.
Very prescient. Video gaming is yet another iteration of the process by which the entertainment industry has become integral to social control. This is pregnant with psychic and spiritual danger.
Entertainment already forms a central, defining, feature of life itself for a great many people. It is certainly as important, if not more important, than education or organised religion. The emerging technologies guarantee an exceptionally sinister future indeed.
In the dystopias to come devitalised and demoralised people, oppressed by atomisation, will pursue escapism into virtual reality, in order to find illusory companionship and simulated forms of recognition. It is reasonable to expect that the video games of the future will incorporate holographic characters connected by wifi to connected sex-dolls. And virtual reality larping will displace physical and social experience.
The techno-shamanic cults of the future will involve virtual reality, game-based, experiences fortified by psychoactives and hallucinogens.
AI generated egregores will prey on pod-dwelling worshippers. Makes perfect sense.
"Entertainment already forms a central, defining, feature of life itself for a great many people. It is certainly as important, if not more important, than education or organised religion."
This is key, and very well put. Addiction to entertainment has gone far beyond what Neil Postman (or even Huxley) imagined. "News", "government" and even obvious spyware like Instagram and TikTok are all part of a broader entertainment sphere. Clown World is also Bread-and-Circuses World, although soon enough the "bread" will be replaced by protein discs made from compressed locusts.
Addiction is a limiting word. One can be addicted and retain self-consciousness. Most addicts understand their addiction intimately. But intoxification on infotainment is vastly more radical. It shapes thought processes to such an extent that self-consciousness is rarely possible at all. When the process simultaneously incorporates both immersion in dematerialised media and vicarious experience reality itself becomes either inaccessible or so problematic that it may as well be.
Entertainment is taking us back to the earliest forms of drama in archaic religious rituals, but in a way that is more than just cultic. The entertained are in a low intensity trance-state, a dream-world, where fictions are substituted for facts. The experience is not an episode of reverence, but an extended retreat from reality.
Just how dull and flat people have become is obvious when you look at the generations. People who reached their teens before TV came along are vastly more realistic and typically more alert than those raised on TV. The weird behaviours on exhibition today owe much to the confected psychologies broadcast by the entertainment industry.
It is all a feedback loop of malignant influences. The party of the egregore like it that way.
Really good, this two-parter should be read widely.
Frankly, I'm encouraged about the future of pornography and horror games. The latter of the two isn't a genre I personally indulge in though.
Here's a synthesis vision of future role playing games: the core story, the A plot, will continue to be scripted. The main NPCs cannot and will not ruin the story. However, the rest of the mass NPCs populating the open world will go about their daily life in a dynamic way (ala Deus Ex: Mankind Divided or the later Hitman games). These Mass NPCs will give the game world a more 'lived in' look and feel and can be a source of near-endless side quests. You can fumble around with them as long as you like, but nothing you or they do will impact the A plot. You have to do main quest missions to advance the story.
Likewise, artificial barriers to progress have been baked into games forever. There's always 1' ledegs you can't jump or invisible walls locking you into an area. I think most gamers will be fine if your companions say 'you can't go there'.
The real civilization killer will being able to truly 'jack in' to play these games. Once they become 'feelies' or 'Better Than Life' games, then you will indeed see vast amounts of society shut down, perhaps permanantly. There's a very cool art book called 'The Electric State' by Simon Stalenhag which has painted images of a future America where most of society has 'jacked in' and the world is finally collapsing in on itself.
If we don't make 'feelies' then the future video games you describe will continue to be huge time wasters, but it won't end the world as we know it. If anything, Gamers (as opposed to Filthy Casuals) have finely honed bullshit sensors and a mixed tolerance for jank. There are always players trying to break every game, explore every corner and do things that you aren't supposed to do in games. Those gamers will be fine. It's moving this from 'video game' to 'life coach' that we really need to watch out for. Those who aren't cyberpunks don't have the mental defense to protect against NPC bullshit.
"The main NPCs cannot and will not ruin the story. However, the rest of the mass NPCs populating the open world will go about their daily life in a dynamic way (ala Deus Ex: Mankind Divided or the later Hitman games). These Mass NPCs will give the game world a more 'lived in' look and feel and can be a source of near-endless side quests. You can fumble around with them as long as you like, but nothing you or they do will impact the A plot. You have to do main quest missions to advance the story."
That's not soup-pot, though. That sounds more like the way it already is (e.g. "Elder Scrolls" games). In soup-pot, the lack of limitations via event flags/triggers and relationship webs mean that it will be left up to the way each NPC interprets its prompts to avoid doing damage to the A story. The trouble is that the same "AI" that drives their language and behavior modules will be reinterpreting these prompts on-the-fly, integrating new information as the player's actions change the world.
When enough cracks appear (and they certainly will), the absurdity dam will burst. Main characters will begin to say and do ever stranger, nonsensical things. Darth Vader will die on the toilet. Otherwise, the game will become just another on-rails experience.
"here's a very cool art book called 'The Electric State' by Simon Stalenhag which has painted images of a future America where most of society has 'jacked in' and the world is finally collapsing in on itself."
Thanks for the tip. Will check it out.
"If we don't make 'feelies' then the future video games you describe will continue to be huge time wasters, but it won't end the world as we know it. If anything, Gamers (as opposed to Filthy Casuals) have finely honed bullshit sensors and a mixed tolerance for jank."
Ha! I disagree about "ending the world as we know it," though. In a sense, that is ending all the time. The question is, will the next world be better than the last? I don't think it's a matter of whether we're "jacked-in" or not. Masses of people are already easily hypnotized by a bunch of talking-head "journalists" on TV screens. Even soup-pot games on screens can easily serve as mind control conduits for PSYOPS, and embed their commands more deeply due to the illusion of choice that they present to the player.
As I said to Navyo on the original piece:
"Yes, but it will be even more insidious. Unlike the Matrix, it will be not be Morpheus offering you the pill, but Agent Smith (and, in some sense, the devil himself). And the blue pill won't make you forget the compact you made. You will be like Cypher and his steak, but without the memory wipe."
"The Electric State" looks like good shit. Seems to capture life in modern America in a creepy but accurate way.
Great stuff, Mark. It feels like we’ve been in a soup-pot game the last three years. You summed it up:
“Soup-pot characters designed in this fashion will often seem to speak and act in strange ways, because doing otherwise would contradict hidden conditions that are required to keep the author’s intentions from crumbling to dust.”
LMAO. Nailed it.
The Jean Baudrillard quote is on point. We must be careful of the self-referential nature of simulacra. This whole existence is computationally irreducible despite the desperate efforts of the reductionists and simulators. If we mistake the simulacra for reality the consequences couldn’t be more dire. More and more I think the only way to escape this will be to get rid of the screens...maybe I’m a Luddite?
"More and more I think the only way to escape this will be to get rid of the screens...maybe I’m a Luddite?"
If you are, I must be something like an Amish cavemen when it comes to screens. Luckily, I believe deepfakes will save us from them soon enough (or at least, those of us who can still be saved). We don't have to smash the screen themselves, only awake people to the fact that they cannot trust a single thing they see on them (and never could).
I am learning to dance tango. And one thing about our nature this dance reveals is how important it is to have a connection. Your partner could be experienced and pretty, but if there is no connection there is no dance. You can execute moves which could be more or less correct, but it doesn't feel right.
And such connection is relatively rare. I d say 2 out of 10 tops. And that is just for the dance.
I lust for connection, sexual is part of it, but not the only one. And i think for a lot of people of both genders thats truth as well.
And I been searching and looking for a long time and still didn't find it. I want dance the tango of life with that mutual connection. Alas it still just a dream for now.
And I keep thinking about that German movie " I am made for you". Where an AI bot is just a useful but not interesting machine at first. But over time learns all the strings of your soul and matches them. And becomes that perfect partner.
I am sure such bot for tango could be made relatively soon. And if it can do a few other types of connection well enough, would i bother to look for a real one? And my honest answer - No.
Games seem like perfect mind bending tools to me, gaslighting the player, conditioning them. Remember how Yuval said approximately, useless eaters will have nothing to do but play video games?
I believe facial emotion recognition might play into games, instigating dopamine release, feeding and rewarding the player in real time as it reads their facial expressions, pupils size, heart rate...
Like in real life, when the public becomes bored, waking up to the game, it will throw out distractions and new challenges, rewards, whatever it can see triggers dopamine. This could also be the new media model, reading each person and targeting news, wording, group think by reading what is under the skin, as Yuval would say.
"I believe facial emotion recognition might play into games, instigating dopamine release, feeding and rewarding the player in real time as it reads their facial expressions, pupils size, heart rate.."
Absolutely. And, as with our current algorithmic social media networks, all of these "experience-enhancement" services will feed this information back into the panopticon.
"The better to *see* you with, my dear," says the Wolf.
A true shower thought after this article percolated: according to folklore demonology, God forbids demons to take a fully human form -- when they present to humans something must always be "off". But after reading this post I think "forbid" is an over-simplification. The truth is that, lacking the spark that God has bestowed upon humanity, demons can only simulate the human form (see the most well-known Gnostic sects). Thus their presentation always falls into uncanny valley or even the horror-cavern you hypothesize.
The corollary is that we are being subjected to more and more uncanny presentations (transgenders I'm looking at you) in order to soften us up for the scheduled incursion of demonic forces.
As you know from my comments on some of your other posts, I don't distinguish between the advent of AI, "the Singularity", and the intentional thinning of the veil between this middle realm and the lower ones. So this may not really be a very deep thought once you really examine it.
"I don't distinguish between the advent of AI, "the Singularity", and the intentional thinning of the veil between this middle realm and the lower ones."
Me neither. Or, rather I sense it is all a reference to the same referent, which can be described in different languages. Hopefully that makes sense to you.
Yes, it makes sense. Language is difficult here, even treacherous.
Most people don't really know that the realms are interpenetrating. Ones experience is determined by ones "vibration" (for lack of a better word). Once you see this clearly you can't unsee it, and you will be haunted by visions of people -- people you know, maybe even members of your family -- fumbling about in the realm of hungry ghosts, or worse.
Coming late to this, but it confirms my notion that real life is vastly superior to video games, and if I want to escape into an alternative world for a bit, I will stick to novels. Thanks for confirming for me what I suspected about video games, the are for neutering and controlling.
I quit playing video games in 2015 because I realized I had to start digging into my real life. Occasionally I'll miss them, but it's been one of the wisest decisions I've ever made. I'm busy trying to get ready for what's coming around the corner, while most of my generation seems to be sinking into the virtual abyss.
"Others will inject you with 100% pure, concentrated nightmare fuel. The memories of these glitches will haunt you day and night. It may take years to recover from the worst ones, and some of those scars may never fully fade."
Man this hits the nail on the head so much. I'm extremely concerned about how horror is inevitably gonna seep its way into everything, and reach levels of sheer terror we cant fathom right now. Great read Mark!
Thanks Jahvon.
"If they’re shackled to hidden agendas, they will become propaganda weapons. If they’re set loose, they will degenerate into porn."
Does this mean that the majority of humans need to be led? When I was younger I bristled at the idea of any state or monarch limiting any man's capacity for self-determination. But now, especially after the last 3 years, I wonder. Maybe only a few men and women can use freedom responsibly? Sobering thought.
Interesting point about things degenerating into porn. When I was a lad, I was really into Starcraft. The game came with a "campaign editor" that allowed people to create their own missions. I'm sure that the designers hoped that this would unleash a wonderful stream of creativity, but everyone quickly figured out that it could also be used to cast the female characters in this weird softcore techno erotica. My friend even made one about the girls in our school. And this was back in 2000 / 2001! I can't imagine what it would be like now.
Virtually ironclad rule... once a technology becomes usable to the general public, somebody will find a way to use it for porn. I'm confident that holds true all the way from cave-painting to brain uploading.
I'm mildly surprised I didn't make the connection already while reading the previous piece... fully custom personal AI NPCs practically guarantees a large chunk of the players will spend all their time banging hot village barmaids instead of progressing the story...
Ha!
Yeah the unintended consequences there are forgivable, I suppose. I can see myself in that creative meeting, everyone talking about all the exciting stories their customers will tell!
After a perfect comic beat, cut to a Lovecraftian 3-way between Zeratul, Zombie Jim Raynor and the Overmind.
Thanks, man. I've long thought that horror-comedies (my favorite genre) work so well precisely because they are both rooted in the same phenomena of prolonged tension that climaxes in a moment of "surprise" or "shock" that isn't exactly surprising or shocking upon further review.
I forget which comedian said it, but I agreed that the best jokes are the ones where the audience knows the punchline the instant before you land it (or something to that effect). I think the same can be said of horror. And in both cases, there is perhaps a degree of "hypnosis" involved, to the extent that your attention is being directed towards specific images and sounds.