STDWYTK Live: The Future of VR

Since the dawn of civilization humanity has attempted to understand the nature of reality, and (relatively) recent breakthroughs in technology have allowed our species to move from encountering reality to creating different forms of it. But there's a dark side to this technology that goes beyond gaming. In their first live show, the guys examine the future of VR. (The audio's a little rough, but hey - first try!)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. Hello,
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my

(00:22):
name is Noel. I'm ben. I hope you are still
you and that would make this stuff they don't want
you to know. But not just any ordinary episode, folks.
This one has a plot twist. Yeah, there's a first
time for everything, and last week we had a significant
first four stuff they don't want you to know. We
did our very first ever live podcast. Yes, we were

(00:43):
invited to go to the Terminus Festival here in Atlanta.
It was a great experience for us. We we got
to talk about VR what you're about to hear, and uh,
we loved we loved it. We enjoyed ourselves and before
we joined the live show currently sort of in progress
depending on how you look at the nature of time.
We do want you to know that this was a
live performance and the audio is a little bit different

(01:05):
than we're used to but we enjoyed ourselves so much
that we really thought that you should hear it as well.
So let's let it roll. One of the strangest things
about our show and this whole being human beings thing
that we're doing in general, is that out of all

(01:25):
of the strange stuff that we look at every day
and every week, uh, the weirdest thing that we encounter
is always directly around us, surrounding us, in indeating us.
And that's the nature of reality. And well that might
seem like a really cut and dried, you know, concept,
As it turns out, there's a lot of room for interpretation. Yeah,

(01:47):
and so, and we've been thinking about this, I mean,
the three of us and probably you as well, but
the human species of orange has been thinking about this
since the dawn of time, since antiquity. Right. We all
know this story the all door of Plato's cave, right,
And according to Socrates, Plato says, I don't know, I
don't know if I can say this here, but I

(02:08):
was pictured it kind of like one of those old
Stoner movies, and Plato was somewhere on the couch and
it's like, hey man, what, uh bro, what if they
were like these people and they were like a cave.
They're indicated, but they're like chained up and they're just
they can't move their heads. Yeah, and they're just staring
at this wall. But like behind them there's a fire

(02:32):
and they're there are people and and things walking between
where they are in the fire, and it casts a
shadow on the wall they're looking at. Yeah, they're doing
like sick shadow puppets, you know, as a sick puppy
around there. Bro, Thank here, we're done it earlier. And
uh and then these people and we can still do
the playo voice if you want, but these are people
are these people are seeing these shadows, these reflections, and

(02:57):
then this is the universe. And then Plato further says,
what if one person, very lucky, you're very unlucky, was
able to somehow escape these chains and go towards the
surface world, Their eyes, accustomed to fire light, would be
blinded by someone a light they had never encountered before.
And Plato says, well, the first thing that person would

(03:20):
do is to run back into the cave, terrified. Things
just got weird, And so he says, someone would have
to force this guy out of the cave. But when
they forced him out of the cave, eventually his eyes
would acclimate to starling and then the moonlight, and then
in Plato's story, the moment of realization of the true

(03:40):
nature of reality would be when he is able to
regard the sun. And this sounds like this is one
of those old saws. You know, this is one of
those to be careful with that joke. It's antique kind
of thing, but we see it still applies. And if
you've seen but any number of science fiction and films
can't had any number of science fiction authors. Philip K.

(04:03):
Dick is a great example of the matrix. There's that
moment where the person who has been who has had
their mind completely blown, their total reality completely shattered, have
the opportunity to go back and tell his buddies that
are left behind in the cave and what he has
discussed in Plato. By the way, it says that no
one will believe this Porschebuck, because he'll come back and

(04:24):
his eyes acclimated to the sun will be essentially useless
in a cave, and they'll say, laur right, buddy, maybe
it went somewhere, but clearly it's not that great. Yeah,
maybe you had some kind of visions because you can't
see anything obviously, And this this sort of the question
about reality. You know, we've We've seen this as the
inspiration and the well spring for so many different science

(04:46):
fiction films right, and science fiction stories and philosophical explorations
after the time of Plato, and it goes to show
this is the amount of time that our species has
been considering the nature of reality. But now, to steal
a line from Fox News, now, more than ever, we're
in a weird situation because our species no longer simply

(05:09):
has to regard or contemplate the nature of reality. Instead,
we're arriving at a moment where we have the technology,
the hardware and software to begin to manufacture our own
versions of this reality. You've gone from contemplation to fabrication.
And one of the biggest driving factors here, oddly enough,

(05:31):
it's not some noble pursuit to the stars for the
inner mysteries of humanity, but maybe it is. It's gaming. Yeah,
I mean, we've been doing this forever for a long time.
You've just with gaming in terms of developing more and
more immersive ways of experiencing games and manipulating that perception
of reality. We have to our own benefit. Mon it's
for fun or whether it's to explore, you know, new

(05:54):
terrains through you know, role playing games and making those
mass bigger and bigger and bigger, and now we're joy
more and more into well, how do we go even
beyond that and naked completely immersive through virtually? Yeah? Yeah,
revealing you with a glorious problem, he does. I don't
know about a lot of you. I wear a lot
of hats in life. I'm a parent and a podcaster,

(06:16):
but I'm, at the heart, I think, in a gamer.
And this is a great and also very unfortunate thing
because of the amount of time that I spend existing
in virtual worlds. Um, which is great and I love
every second of it. But then you realize maybe perhaps
what you're neglecting in base reality this one. I think

(06:36):
this is reality what We'll get into that later. Um.
But the great thing is that most of most of
you in this room, we probably tell me tales of
the forty hours you've spent in tam Rail or some
other you know realm that exists virtually. And is this
a good thing? I mean it is in a lot
of ways, I think, right, but it doesn't have the

(06:58):
potential to be a bad thing. Well, earlier, off the air,
you had you would come to Nolan I and you
had said head hanging. By the way, you had said
that you had a calculation of your time spent in
a virtual world. Yeah. I did some stats on characters
in both sky Room and the Dark the Dark, souls,

(07:18):
demon souls, all of that. And I don't don't even
want to say I don't even want to say the
number of the biggest things. I just enough now. It
was bad because it was in three digits in hours.
It was really bad. I just got done with a
thirty eight hour stint in Corrupt, which is a far
far cry for Little World. It's you, guys. I'm scared

(07:40):
for myself, but I'm also really scared for her humanity
because this is where what we're doing now anyway, this
is all for later. But is it? Is it a
bad thing? I mean, at the very least the paraphrase
Michael Jackson, you were not a little Yes? Is ancient? Right?
Like we've found notch bones and dialog devices that date

(08:01):
back into antiquity. Like we're still as a species hunting
down the oldest game in the world. And our best
guess is something that's sometimes called the African Stone game,
sometimes called the Colla Right. Yeah, yeah, this is a
great game. Maybe some of you played it in grade school.
I don't know, and we got to learn in and
play it once or twice. It's where you have these

(08:22):
little pits. Earlier it was in the ground. Originally it
was in the ground, but now it's these little wooden
pits that have seeds on them, and you kind of
just move the pits around and whoever has the most
seeds of the end wins. So that's the oldest game
that that exists that we know of, which sounds fun. Yeah,
and they clearly evolved some strategy. I mean, we probably
think of some games that probably evolved from that kind

(08:45):
of thing game game and their real world's implications of
this game at the time, because they tied into the
concept of agriculture. So gaming, while it has sometimes been
portrayed as a frivel this past time in some parts
of the world of parts of history, it turns out
in the original versions it's always an educational thing. It's

(09:08):
a matter of how to survive better in this reality,
which is tribute when you think about it. Well, we've
been digging about a long time because we have seen
a continual evolution. I guess this isn't going to translate.
So if you're listening to this later and doing a
cool thing with my hands, I mean, so what we've
seen is that there's this continual evolution. You know, we

(09:32):
the game changed, in the game changed. Okay, we'll addit that.
In nineteen seventy four, in September when Ralph Bear first
pioneer the very first home video console, which was mind
Ploy the Magnavox odysty had these three dots on this
TV screen and depending on the game, the dotsmard move

(09:53):
in different directions, and it had two controllers. It went
to your TV man, most popular kid under block had
by our standard. I mean, what even is this? How
could you even interact with something like that? I mean
basically just like an even lower five version of the Atari,
which as we know is pretty well five. I understanding,
but awesome. Yeah, but it's like, you know, you introduced
a little sound, introduce the sounds of your poem piece

(10:15):
going back and forth, and then you've you know, you've
changed the game again, right right, and it's ali you
had this. I'm just gonna rans about this for a second.
So Asari had this strategy, so we don't have the
technology to make something completely immersive. You will play Frogger,
for instance, or et and you're never gonna have that
moment where you think I am become frog shumper of highways.

(10:37):
But but what their strategy was instead was to make
the games incredibly difficult and to have some really cool
cover art. They had great cover art. Oh Man going
through the arcade, it was glorious. Today gaming is an
increasingly mainstream pastime. It's no longer something where one out

(10:57):
of two hundred and fifty people are hiding away or
her missing away in in a basement or used to
pave Yes. We got to the point where it's almost
a little weird if you don't game, at least a
little bit, maybe on your phone or something. You know,
your parents probably game. My dad keep showing me all
these new games that I've never heard of. I'm trying

(11:19):
to figure out, how does he said that on Facebook?
Oh yeah, everyone's a while trying to try to ignore those.
But there's some stats. We've got one hundred and fifty
five million gamers in the US right, leading to an
average of two per households. Four out of five homes
actually has a device used to game, Whether it's a console,

(11:40):
whether it's a PC, laptop or you can even count
you know, a smartphone. Yeah, and that's you know, that's
a tricky stat because a device used to game has
some tricky language to it. Just over half of the
homes in this country own the device dedicated to gameing.
A PC console that only plays games, you know, a
PS four that technically can do lots of amazing stuff.

(12:01):
But let's let's be honest. You're playing, you know the few,
you're playing some amazing game. You know some last I'm
not naming them because I'm sure about them before disclose,
because I didn't get as for you. We have something
to celebrate. Do you guys know what the average age
of a gamer is in the US? Anybody thirty five?

(12:22):
Thirty five tries to the end of the back llow
average what it feels good. And that's a tricky thing
in average. So I told yourself there's some other things
that violate popular stereotype. So it just proved it would
be a better word, you know, he started, Oh yeah,
you should go. Thanks. Okay, now let's let's let's keep going. Okay,

(12:45):
let's do it together. The women over eighteen year older
represent thirty three of the gaming population, while boys eighteen
or younger represents fift Yeah, take cool. Is that's pretty cool?
I mean, especially if you can consider anything like all
of the Gambrigate Shenanigans. We don't want to get into

(13:06):
his troops and icons are stereotypes, are not people. They're
just sort of shortcuts that the human mind uses to
not think of people as people. And so now the
next one of the next big steps is this entirely
immersive world, this thing where it's no longer you know,
the shadow of a dog on a cave wall. It's

(13:28):
no longer something that could maybe be your frog. It's
now something that looks and feels exactly like a frog.
The slippery skin were ribbit ribbit ribbon, and the smell
of gas and the sound of cars you get across
the highway. That is virtual reality game. And it's something

(13:49):
that you know has been attempted unsuccessful even for a
long time. Like I mean, it's you know, it comes
from our desire to kind of match some of these
tropes that we see in science fiction, like oh yeah,
we can do that. It's time let's check the virtual boy.
That'll be a thing that don't don't do anybody remember
Virtual Boy? Yes, yeah, yeah, the Migrane. One person in

(14:11):
the honest remembers Virtual Boy. She was so clunky, was
so huge. It looked like so we go around your
face like this. It protruded out about this far. But
so it was a set of like the worst foculars
on earth. And it had a little tripod on it
because you have to put it on the table and
then go like this, and then it basically saw everything
the way Terminator sees everything. It's all reds as you know,

(14:37):
do you hear about my strain using like Oculus rister
or any other virtual advice and we have now and
this thing I strained was almost immediate upon seeing it.
So that was fun. So that was successful. I mean,
you know they got that right. But it was money
blowing too. I mean, we're kicking rocks at it, but
it was until it was incredibly disappointed. But now it's
like we've got into a place where the technology is

(14:58):
finally caught up to these tropes in a pretty big way.
You know, the kind of virtual reality are like holograms,
for example, that we're used to seeing in like Blade Runner.
At one of these kind of sci fi films. We
actually have the technology to match that, and we're getting
to a place was becoming much more readily available. I
don't know if you guys have seen these. There's so
many videos of like Occulus rifted tests on Eaton's grandparents,

(15:18):
for example, where they make them put it on and
play a horror game and they practically fought out of
their chairs every time. I mean, the stuff is very,
very immersive, and it does a really good job of
recreating these environments and putting view in the game. But
it's yeah, it's incredible. I mean, we live in an
age right now where posthuously celebrities and musicians can make
appearance and to be a hologram that is bizarre, explained, blowing.

(15:42):
It's amazing. But it's still not the end because right now,
if we look at it, we we look at our senses.
Right the average game approaches approaches to primary senses, sight
and sound. But the next move, the next one that's
coming up soon is tactile. It's hot, thick feedback, it's
it's playing a game where you can differentiate between the

(16:05):
feel of the fabric on this table for everyone listening,
and I had and touching the table, I feel like
I have to tell everybody in this uh. And you
can also feel the difference between the class, wait for example,
and weight, or even if you could feel the sensation
of sand, you know, going between your fingers, things like that,
or grass under your feet. Right, and we're already working
on happy feedback in different ways. We're we're getting closer

(16:27):
and closer, but we're nowhere near what you're talking about,
but not yet. The point is, though, in the dutidium
of game design, game creations, the end goal, it seems
to me, has always been to make it more and
more and more immersive. So as immers of those things
are now, what's it gonna look like in twenty years?
As you know, tactile for anologies are made better and
better and more street bines. And that's that's the million dollar,

(16:47):
billion dollar question, because a strange thing is happening. First.
As as you guys probably know, you know we often
hear about five senses, they're more like if our complete
bring your Senses where an album. These are like the
five breakout singles you hear about on the radio. Because
the human body and the mind have many more senses.

(17:10):
And I'm not No, I'm not talking about the means
or exile stuff, not in this episode. Uh. This would
be more more stuff like your ability to sense temperature, heat, cold,
the difference between on different parts of your body. There's
also something called proprio perception, which is very dr SEUs
in the way it sounds, but is immensely important all

(17:33):
of us. And that is the ability to know where
parts of your body or limbs and such are when
you're not directly looking at them. That's the reason you
can close your eyes and touch your fingertips. This is
one of the things that virtual reality will emphasize and
gaming and experiences because it will go beyond gaming as well,

(17:55):
and the other senses where they're not going to get
left out, uh smell to taste of butter for fans
of the Witch, the the other senses are all going
to ideally be addressed. Because what we are trying to
create as a species turns virtual reality into a misnomer.

(18:17):
Virtual reality is only virtual at the moment because it
can be differentiated from the world in which we live now.
So the projections in the cave versus life on the surfaces, right,
But when if we can build the surface, ah, you
hear that music. That means we're taking a quick break
to hear a word from our sponsor. Oh man, you guys,

(18:45):
I think we should get back to the slash show. No, yep,
right now, we still call it virtual viality. Yeah, I
hope we're still there. But but here's the craziest part
of this is that we'll usually hear about this advertised
or journalists will talk about it as a new way

(19:06):
to play What was that far crime? So yeah, that's
what I mentioned. Yeah, cry, I'm not game shaming you that,
just want to make sure to get it right. It
was okay, it was okay, it was it was pretty good.
Well the next iteration, it would want it to be
an entirely new wor all a matrix of swords. But
some of the most important advances virtual reality now are

(19:27):
occurring not through games due to the real world. Immediately
in Life Saving the Life Destroying Wings. Yeah yeah, I
mean we're not talking about just using virtual reality for entertainment,
either sexual or otherwise, which is how it tends to
be used. That's how a lot of innovations occur in

(19:49):
VHS fields, yes, or you know, playing some weird RPG
it's it's gonna be used for training purposes, and it
is being used and it has been used for training purposes,
um every in from in a classroom to let's say
you're a surgeon and you need to learn how to
do a specific surgery and you don't have you know
a lot of humans to operate on that need a

(20:12):
bypass of some sort where their art or you know,
or the cadaver that you would be working on. You
know if the blood as a flow right in this cadaver?
Oh wait, because it's dead. So with these virtual reality
worlds that you can create, in this case it would
be an operating room, you can have a full scale
human being. Right. Yeah, the age of resurrection and has passed.

(20:34):
So there are things like the Surgical Theater and Congquer
Mobile uh company, and they make these VR simulations because
let's face it, surgeons are vital to the world. Right.
Unlike for instance, cosmotologists or a barber. You can go
to a school where those students will give you a
discount haircut. Do you want a discount appendectomy? I don't.

(20:59):
I'm not particularly fantom and I'm a very very much
achieve person. I'm just gonna confess mess Okay, well I
said it, but but so instead, what we can do
is we can enable a simulation of reality that is
so so very similar that operating there is like operating

(21:20):
on a living person because it's actually scanned from medical
documents like three D imaging, cat scans and the like.
Every detail can be recreated and the feedback is there.
So if you mess up and nick and artery, it's
going to react in the way that they would in
real life because the whole system is laid out of
that specific person, not of that group of people night

(21:42):
the theoretical person. And this is a new idea, Like
the idea of training surgeon to be a simulator goes
back to at least two thousand ten, which means that
the technology probably existed research level in the nineties. And
what they found is they can make these three D models.
The first one was something called neurotouch in this game
from Canada, and what they did with neurotouch was they

(22:04):
specifically operated on simulations of brain tumors when they were bleeding,
and that's a ticking time bomb. When you're a surgeon,
time is very very important. What they found is that
these new surgeons were being trained on this, we're actually
showing a higher rate of success than veter insurgents who
had knocked up to a certain threshold. And furthermore, when

(22:27):
they actually operated on living people, that success rate carried over.
So is this still a game or is it a
life saving things? And this neurotouch had relatively limited capabilities.
There wasn't ever a surgeon who was like, oh, I
thought I thought it was there. But what we did

(22:47):
find is that that training does matter. Side note or
star Trek fans. The neurotouch guys are trekkies. So they
invented their Kobyashi maru, which I think was brutal and unfair.
There was no way to save the patient, and they
did not tell the kids going in. They just let
it have. Shouldn't do that. I mean, there are surgeons
they have to learn, but also Google cardboards, So then

(23:09):
simplist Google cardboard was used to save baby's life. When
doctors in Miami combined this with three D imaging and
then the surgeon conducted heart surgery, you were not there.
You have about the kind of things you might see
and like Minority reporter Exambu, where you could have a
surgeon interacting with some sort of virtual reality interface and
then on the other end, somewhere across the planet, there

(23:30):
is a device that can mimic the motions of the
surgeon would do right down to the precise move and
actually save the life from across the planet. And I
know there's telemedicine things that they're happening right now, but
I think this is probably going to be the next
step of using the same technology taking out of the
training realm into right if the real Harbor played the
best surgeon in the world happened to live in Singapore,

(23:52):
for instance, and then they're working on someone via this
virtual reality connection in bangor Main. Yeah. And on the
flip side of all this, we've we've we're we are
also using virtual reality technechnology not just to save people
in this way where we're also using it to train
uh people for combat. Right, So, and we've known them

(24:15):
this for a while. There the U. S. Army, the
Air Force, and the Navy, they all use their own
types of simulators. There. They have various different kinds. Uh.
There's usually you know, a VR headset or just a
set of monitors, and there's they're usually sitting on top
of something that moves around, so that let's say you're
you're learning how to fly a plane or a jet

(24:36):
in combat situations, or you're learning what happens when your
jet is on fire? Um, what do you do in
that situation? Rather than you know, flying a jet and ejecting,
Let's put them in this VR thing. It's probably a
good idea. It gives you that have to keep back
sort of like you might find it like a game
controller where if you're playing like Mario Kart and around
a corner doing a drift, you know, you get that

(24:56):
vibration on the control where it gives you have to
feed back to as going out sort of more later
re version. Yeah, and many of these many of these
technologies are first cooked up by Uncle Sam's resident Math
Science department, which is something called DARTBA, and dart BA
typically has a lead time on technology. And sometimes people
will tell you this this sounds crazy, but if you

(25:19):
hear about something being publicly announced by dark but the
odds are that they've been working on it at least
six years, and you will hear different time curves. But
that's that's essentially it. These simulators can also run training missions.
This stuff is not just for a medical surgeon. And
this stuff is not just for training a pilot in

(25:41):
a safety or emergency situation, although it is for those things,
it's also for things like sniper training, which means oddly
enough that I don't know if anybody here played Called
Duty at some time, right, it means oddly enough, they
found that kids who were growing playing Call of Duty

(26:02):
had a faster learning curve as ciphers. They were just
better at it. And Call of Duty, of course it's
not I don't know if accurate is a fair word,
but it was. Apparently it was. It was very, very
similar to it, to the point where that they were
able to to these weapons they had let to use

(26:23):
in the virtual reality and this one. Yeah, there's and
there's you know, there's things like Commanding Conquer. I don't
know if you guys ever played that or any other
top down strategy game like that that exists. It's real.
They've got real versions of this where you can look
at an area in Afghanistan, you can move your troops around,
see what happens, play out simulation what happens if we

(26:44):
moved troops here, what happens? How do they respond? Right?
And then you run the AI. It's pretty it's pretty advanced.
It's super cool. Ben, you had a professor who was
working on something like that, right, yeah, yeah, I guess
you can't talk about that. So I went to Georgia
Tech where time and one of my professors was a
guy named Dr Brecky. And Dr Brecky is it can

(27:05):
close our eyes at picture a mad scientists the Abbott
like a Doc Brown type figure, yes, with glasses various? Okay,
So this guy revealed to us that he was working
on a program to create a virtual simulation of Afghanistan.

(27:26):
And the idea was that if we account for all
of the variables involved, then what we're able to do
when we push these variables and nudge them and make
small changes is want to be very close to what
would happen in the real world. Were those variables to
change spooky stuff? Right? Uh? And the idea was to
build models of different countries and eventually have some kind

(27:50):
of weird digital oracle that could roughly predict the same
way asthma psychohistory did changes throughout large swaths. Is to
hu the population. Yea, but I mean good right, I
don't know if he did it all the way I should.
I don't know if I want to ask him. So
we we know that there are all these different uh

(28:11):
the Navy has their own research programs into this, the
various medical technologies. That there's a beautiful thing about classrooms
where we can decentralize the physical location that holds a
lot of students back. So we can say, we have
these kids who have this amazing talent or trigonometry right,

(28:33):
or these amazing artists, and we would love for them
to learn together because human means are more than the
subtle our parts. However, one kid lives in Blutan, one
kid lives and Peru, two kids live in Canada, and
they can all meet at the same time, no lag time.
They can learn together. There's another darker reason why this

(28:54):
is fundamentally important, and that is because virtual reality also
encapsulates the ability to It also encompasses the ability to destroy.
The most apparent example of this in our time would
be turnal technology. So we have had instances very recently
where there is what it's called, you know, collateral damage,

(29:15):
right a schoolhouse is confused or an arms warehouse, and
because those children had to be in the same room,
they got with something like this, there's a decentralization of
that physical location. And what this means is that it
doesn't mean that people are going to be saved. It
doesn't mean that are all people are, and it doesn't
mean that terrible things won't happen. But it doesn't mean

(29:39):
that we're finding different ways to address this problem. So
there's a child born today. When that child is eighteen,
then they may graduate college without ever having to set
foot physical foot in a campus. And so we see

(30:01):
that every invention is sort of like it is like fire.
You know, it can earn, it can warm, and the
various realities we are constructing are the same way, very similar.
And this this leads me to think, you know, the
old question we still haven't answered, what is the nature

(30:21):
of reality? You know? Sure, so we we get back
to the senses and we and we really think everything
you know, everything you think you know, I'm speaking myself,
by the way, is what you've taken in through your senses, right,
you've you've read words, then you have thoughts. Then that
is what you know. And if we're in a device,

(30:41):
if we're hooked up to a device, that we cannot
distinguish what we are seeing and hearing from me talking
to you on this microphone. Then what the heck? Where
are we were? Is reality? And we get into the
situation where we're gonna be building so many of these
things because they're gonna be profit is all heck, right,
Because if you could go and live in another world

(31:03):
that's so vastly different from this one and yet indistinguishable,
and you can go do whatever you want, I'm gonna
make money for that. I already do. I pay sixties
seventy dollars a pop when I get a new game.
Oh god. But yeah, So what I'm saying is if
I could exist in those worlds right now, I probably
would be doing it. And it terrifies me because there

(31:25):
is something inside me that wants to do that well,
and it already kind of happens when you're playing a game.
In some games, there are games within the game. There
are people who will go into a massive of multiplayer.
Granda thought it was a really good example. Yeah, all
the many things and grands of daughter that you can do.
And then it makes just think, you know, is that

(31:46):
reality still virtual? Is it just another form of reality?
Is experience really just a like nesting? Ma Throcia dolls,
you know, get a game within a game within a
game within an experience. And I know that's a little
bit weird to say at four thirty in the afternoon,
but it's true. Yeah, I feel like it's a little
early for all us. And I I was just like, as

(32:06):
we see technology exponentially getting more and more advanced, like
we can see these things in our lifetime becoming just
insanely anas more so than we could in the past.
Oh you go, okay, So I just I don't want
to end like have a negative note about the importance
of decentralizing classrooms, although it is very important. There are

(32:27):
amazing things that are going to happen as well, probably
within the lifetimes of our lifetimes, and that will be
the realm of filth. So we're already approaching a point
where computer generated imagery can plausibly replace a person and
still look not not just similar enough, not that's really

(32:47):
good c G. I but oh I thought Marilyn Monroe
was dead. And it goes further than that, because a
managinal world wherein you can watch what's a movie that
what I saw that you like recently? The Lobster is
good Okay, all right, so you can replace the protagonists
of the Lobster, right, but it's not you're walking through

(33:10):
it like an old dragon Quest game or something. Instead,
what you're doing is you're having agents so you can
move around to all these other actors become in PCs
nonplayer characters that will react to your decision. So what
if in the Lobster are gonna be careful as to
soil it for anyone who hasn't seen it? Um, what
what if in the Lobster was the very beginning? Uh?

(33:30):
This guy goes through a hotel. What if you're in
the movie and you decide that you want to make
a different decision than the movie moves with you. And
this is so fundamentally different from the other realities we
have tried to create in the world of theater, which
is again ancient. Uh, it would be like you're watching
performance of Hamlet and then you stop it and say, no,

(33:54):
say this, And not only do they say it, but
it ripples out and affects the rest of the plate.
That's what's going to happen and Phil and what happens
after that is a little bit difficult to guess, but
it's gonna be an exciting thing to watch. It's also
of these things where like it does that fundamentally go
against the idea of like a singular vision and a

(34:15):
creator who took the times right and you know, produce
a film like The Lobster, which is a very unusual,
interesting film. You know, do we really want to put
that in the hands of any any old person that
wants to popping there and change it up for their
own You know, I think it will happen. You think,
you guys, we're missing the biggest thing. What's the biggest thing?
The biggest thing is are we in this room changed

(34:39):
to a wall? And look are we staring out? Is
that everything that exists in here? Is this just shadows?
And how do we how do we prove that it's not?
That's the biggest thing. And I know it seems easy, right.
You can knock on the table. Hey, that's easy. I
can throw something and when you will probably catch it. Well,
you're a good cash I can tell you're a really

(34:59):
good cat. Um. I mean, how do we prove that? Right?
So then we have a lot of people thinking about
this problem, but that have been thinking about this problem.
I don't know if any of you saw Elon musk
is the little video where he's being interviewed and a
person posed a question, how do we know we are
existing in base reality right now and not in a simulation?
And he went aroundabout way of answering it, talking about

(35:22):
how much time he spends in uh what hot tubs?
He apparently how must spends a lot of time in
hot tubs. But anyway, he said, uh, he said, we
have a one in one billion chance of existing currently
in base reality. And that sounds a little crazy. Um,
you gotta take it with a little grain of salt.
But what are you speaking to? Was about Moore's law

(35:44):
and the advancements that we've made in technology. What forty
years ago we had pong? Now what are we I'm
trying to think of the most advanced game? Was the
most advanced game right now? Seemed yes, you know, I know,
you know the new belt you're selling new meddle here.
Solid is crazy, huge world. You can do so many
different things. And the way the way the NPCs interact,

(36:07):
it's incredible that I have a question or point of order. Yes,
where was a lot Musman the centerty took place? What
directly was he in a hot top. He was not
in a hot top, so he was allowed to talk
about it. He said that he's not allowed to talk
about this in hot toes. It's really weird. You should
watch it. But anyway, that's one guy, just one of
the most you know, wealthy human beings on the planet,

(36:28):
discussing this, which is pretty cool to know that he's
at least thinking about it because it's kind of important.
So let me just gory. So he's positive that there
is a chance that we right now what we are
experiencing is in fact part of some greater simulation than
we are unaware of. No, he's saying there's a tiny
chance that we are not in a simulation. Serious saying
it's over well with likely and we're finding we're finding

(36:52):
more of the old trope or lord, the old ideas
that came in out about science fiction have become science fact.
And to paraphrase on Nest to everyone on the internet,
what a time to be all alive. This is the
part of the show usually where we do listener mail

(37:12):
or a shoutout corner, but our show is listener driven
because not to give us through a hard time. All
of our best ideas come from people who listen, So
we wanted to talk with you guys about it, and
you're like, what do you think is going to happen
with film? If you have any questions? Do you think
we're in base reality? Is Elon mus on the money

(37:33):
or is he just coming too far into the hot
up game. It's just just not something you even want
to think about, because I usually don't want to think about,
you know, reality shuttering concepts. I thought you were gonna
just say it'll hold us in a hot top. Well
you know well that it's not too bad? No, all right,
well to being open, Okay, so do you do you

(37:54):
have any questions for us? Guess? Or I'm just curious.
I know that they're on a residue evil VR game,
but like horror games to me just sound like how
do you get somebody but you can like be able
to really experience because like what they have a heart attack?
And I was just terrified dangerous. Right, you're gonna saying
all these videos where you you know, you put a
VR headset on your granny and walking through you know

(38:15):
it as an evil level and it's just about to
you know, totally seize up right there. I mean, yeah,
I know it's intense, but you have to kind of
go into it with orphanizing. You probably shouldn't play tricks
on your your dear own brandewy from a medical perspective
or from a legal perspective. The way that the liability
for that will be handled is going to be the
same as liability for games that might cause seizures and

(38:37):
people with epilepsi. Yeah, any any games as you buy
has a crazy amount of disclaimers within the paperwork when
you pick it up. Probably never look at it. I
certainly didn't, but yeah, it's in. There's something there about
when not to operate this machine. There's plenty of games
that have a big disclaimer right at the front it
says this game has flashes in it that could cause
stures certain people. What about PTSD dealing with virtual reality experience?

(39:01):
That's just too intense for you, you know worse, maybe
you trigger something else previous PTSD or something like that.
I mean, there, if there's some real stuff we're gonna
have to deal with and make some decisions about. Yeah,
I don't want to ben too political, but I feel like,
hopefully we won't make a bunch of laws about it.
We'll just work on it, you know, kind of as
an industry, but we'll see. Yeah, similar thing happened with

(39:22):
the Mirrors Edge, which mas a first person free running
park pour game. Uh, beautiful game, but it was hacking
that sense we talked about before for preeception, and so
people were becoming violently ill because their stomach was saying, no,
we are twenty feet away from where we're supposed to
be and it's the wrong direction. Uh. And so I

(39:44):
know that, um, that was not a life threatening thing.
So the case is a little bit different, but personally
I cannot, like, I can't agree. I can barely handle
the The Boss level of music and el done. So
I don't know how I would. I don't know how
I would. I would like an emotionally prepaired for it

(40:05):
every time that happens. And some people in general just
don't have the constitution for putting on that headset. I
mean they're even like three sixty degree videos, so you
can get like a Google cardboard whatever put it on,
and it just throws people's delivering off some people, and
some people love it and they totally get immersed it.
It's great. But I had this wild idea that far
enough down the line, what if we ended up in

(40:26):
a world where there was a divide between people that
just chose to live their entire life hooked up to VR.
They got fed their nutrients through like you know, I
V tubes and they just never let their apartment and
they just want one of the people. It could be
like like, you know, like an open world kind of thing,
like a second life or something like that, you know,
where you have a VR version of this world that

(40:48):
you created for yourself, all your friends are. They're sort
of like heaven or something. You know. There's this Philip
technovel called Ubick where the idea is that in order
um you preempt yourself before you die, you decide, okay,
I want to live forever in the virtual reality of world.
So they put you in a box, they cryagetically freeze
you and keep your brain alive, and you choose the
conditions of your world, and then you basically live in

(41:10):
that world forever. Obviously that's not a thing, but I
could see its being not too much of a jump
to be in a place where there's a divide for
people who want to live in the real world all
the time, and then a whole continue that just want
to be able to stay home, work in virtual reality,
live in virtuality, have all their interactions and their relationships
in virtuality. I just I just want to know what
that really fast. I want to I want to get

(41:31):
your question, but really fast. I just think it's really funny.
We kind of do that already, and all the work
that we have ever done except for this. This is
the first time I remember talked to other human beings
in the room like this. Everything we've done is in
a virtual world on the internet. Yeah, like our show
exists in a virtual world already. We have T shirts.

(41:52):
I guess I'm talking about this sort of an escalation
of that. But it's to me seems like a natural
edge given you know, how exponentially this technology is improving.
You know, what's that gonna likes question? It um what
you guys kind of mentioned about how you would make
choices in the film, but you know it kind of
it makes a film on most video games right now,

(42:15):
but the mat the detail purpose of a filmmaker trying
to tell a story, and then also just the you know,
the limitations on okay, well, how the actors or instant
you know, how are they going to adjust to whatever
you decide to do. I mean, it just it seems
I guess that it dilades you filmmaking genre because it's

(42:37):
you know, one person of multiple persons. Yeah, that threats
and makes a new genre because if you look back
and um, if you look back on the role of
so much hardware, what we see is increasing a globoration
of things into a single device or single concept. You know,
it's it's not really a secret that one of the

(42:57):
main reasons a laptop up in the television or a
computer into television were separate for as long as they
are is because there was a profit move behind it.
You know, why why sell somebody one thing when we
can sell them free. And now that phones have become
ubiquitous sort of catch all devices, right depending on the phone,

(43:18):
what we're going to see is the same sort of
thing happening with the genre of entertainment that they have.
I personally hope that this does not mean there's an
end to what I would consider actual film, because this
choose your own adventure thing. As amazing as it would be,
there is a there's a certain catharsis that occurs right

(43:39):
when we're part of a story as we're along with
an ambissition narrator, right, we bond with a protagonist, I mean, hey, antagonists, right,
and I don't think that will go away. It almost
has the illusion of making it more personal, where it's like,
this is my experience with this film, this is these
are decisions I would make. I am, you know, guiding
the the destinies of these characters myself. But in a

(44:03):
way it makes it more impersonal because everything becomes about
the individuals who shared experience anymore now and so anti
to me like this, the future of everything existing in
this way or being you know, focused in that way
is very impersonal and kind of a little you know.
One weird example of this would be, uh, when Mr

(44:24):
if you're Mr torrets in an interactive version of the
Shining Right. Horror movies are what are those things where
people watch and they say, no, don't go in there.
We have all these we have all these stereotypes about
various people and their their role in a hard horror film,
their art type, right, But anybody in their right minds
playing the role of Torrance and being able to make

(44:46):
a decision and really thinking that they're in all haunted
perfidious living mansion would obviously not go into a room
where a decomposed lady gets out of a tub and
strangles you. That's just not a good life of goal.
And so I I that's why I don't think this

(45:07):
you would all go away, And I agree with you know,
I think I think that people would ultimately feel, um,
it feels a little bit empty. You know, if you
play the video game for a long time, for instance,
and you're beating everything on it and at the high score,
you've gone through all the cheats or whatever. You've been
walking around in the sandbox of the world saying I

(45:28):
have infinite power and an infinitely board. That's what would happen. Well, yeah,
that's that's where you had. I'm not on the show,
but no one will talking about people will happen to reality.
Perfect sleep would have so later. Yeah, I'm not necessarily

(45:54):
saying you would have to choose. I just think there
would be people that would choose like to exist in
that alone. Yeah, that's right, you mean we'll hang out.
The thing is, uh, you know, I was thinking about
virtual economies in in like Second life for some other
virtual world like that, and how much money there is
to be made inside those things, and there would be jobs.

(46:15):
There will literally literally be hundreds, not thousands of jobs
doing that. And well, yeah, and we're gonna lose all
the manufacturing jobs, all the all the manual work jobs
here in mase reality, or they'll be a So what
I'm saying is it won't be a human doing any
of that. So we're gonna have to go deeper down
into the levels. Oh my gosh, so that we can

(46:36):
have jobs. Oh boy, I'm scared. It's gonna be fine.
It's gonna be fine. Does anybody happen? Yes? How do
you think TVs and like monitored will exist with virtual realities?
Do you think virtual reality will just like make them obsolete?
Or anythink they'll exist alongside each other at least? All right,

(47:00):
I'm really excited about this. All right. So, one of
the biggest impediments to humanity interacting, like if you look
at the definition of a cidework and the average person
with a cell phone functions essentially is a cidework. Right.
One of the things that is currently a barrier to
that sort of seamless unity, whether you want it or not.
And I know that's a different episode, is is that

(47:23):
we are still bound by our inability to internalize right.
The some of the most common top of the line
computer is still in eased to work right, and we
still have to have something in front of our eyes.
So as development continues on things like contacts that are
essentially functioning screens, we're getting the screen closer. And for

(47:48):
most of the evolution of monitors, now we've been trying
to build we being humanity, not Nolan, Matt speak yourself, Okay,
well everybody but Matt. And the what we've found is
that as we look like we've made humongous screens that
are really big imax right. Imax is large enough that

(48:10):
if you're sitting in a theater and then you get
that awesome shot where they go over the cliff, part
of your body for a lot of people jumps with well,
there's no hands to your field division, rather like it
compasses your entire field because you have like curve screens
and everybody. So once one step would be that the
screen essentially gets closer becomes a contact, the next step,

(48:31):
which is tremendously controversial, would be at the visual input
is somehow put like wet wear, directly into the parts
of our brain that decode signals from our optic nerves
the read The scary thing about that is the idea
of what what would you do if somebody said we'll

(48:51):
give you this enhanced supervision that we'll give it to
you free. You just have to agree to watch spans. Yeah,
adds every five minutes. It just depends on the schedule
and what's on. Right they fast forward to neither you
would have got to sit through this information about tie.
But it's a privilege to have the technology and it's free,

(49:12):
so you know, sure, I'll watch. Yeah, So that's that's
what that's what we think is gonna happen. And then
voice commands can eventually go to subvocalizations, to muscle movements
that are silent, so you'll just we'll see we'll go
away from a restaurant thing where you see the pictures
of everyone in their phone where you see pictures of

(49:33):
people just at the same table sort of staring up
into the left and going like um, yeah, but you
won't see them. Then you'll be doing the same thing.
That's you're right, okay, I'm okay. So that's that's why
I think. And then after the subvocalization of course, then
it would just be information directly from the consciousness. We

(49:55):
there's amazing research right now wherein h teams of scientists
have been able to take, uh, take kind of input
from some way and construct from that that input they
thought and figure out what they're thinking. Now, this is
not this is not amazing stuff. They're not like, is
that the first line of T. S. Eliott's The Hollow

(50:15):
And they're not at that level yet. They're like, oh,
you like this, you you don't like this, but it's
on the way. Yeah, okay, have you seen this? I
swore I saw this from the last year, but there
was a it was a real live event, but it
was a like a live version of Back to the
Future where you were basically standing on the square and

(50:37):
you would see Doc browning them leave in the DeLorean.
But I'm thinking about like if you could do that
in a virtual reality thing, you could like stay in
a different place on the street and like you could
go see what else was going on in the town.
You imagine all the remakes that would happen if you
could virtual world like a classic film like that. Oh yeah,
that sounds almost like an augmented reality. Think too, where

(50:58):
you and you combine your surroundings with something that's projected
on top of it. I don't know. I'm not worried,
and I think they're the reason. I think they were
doing like a Star Wars and he would be like,
you know, standing in different places and locations and they
would act it out. It's kind of like a play,
but you're gonna be walking around a thet and see

(51:19):
all the different locations. And there's there's a lot of
amazing stuff happening with camera work at this point that
allows for that kind of three hundred and sixty inclusive vision.
We're probably going to see more and more of that
as well as far as how far it will go,
I don't know, because the the film industry is very

(51:42):
risk averse. So that's why there's a sea boel for
everything before there's a original film. There's even a camera
that just came out and I wish I ar with
the name, and it's not exactly three camera. It's a
camera that the way it captures photons, you can capture
them from behind, so it actually it does capture three
of sixty degrees, but not in the traditional VR kind

(52:02):
of way. It would just allow you to like separate
the foreground from the background. So it captures the subjects
and the background and what the subject is blocking, and
the post you can move, and it captures the light
in a way that you can manipulate the exposure and
the focus after you've already captured the image. So I
mean that to me, it's just mind boggling and energy

(52:23):
into all of this, you know, future technology. Yeah, it
also means that it's going to be a less possible
to separate the real photograph from a photoshop plant. You
won't need a gree screen anyone. So that's cool. Politics
are going to be really fun in the next two decades.
So any other questions to your one, Yeah, when does
each of the old favorite piece of speculative fiction that

(52:43):
kind of speaks to these issues surrounding a VR that
we're gonna be dealing with the next couple decades, Not
the Matrix, Black Mirror, Black of Mirror, And I would
say Black Beer or whatever other episode that he's not
talking about. But there's other there's other ones. I was
gonna say, the filth um Grand Morrison, there's some he's
a comic book writer, and there's some thoughts and they're

(53:05):
about virtual worlds and basically junkies that are addicted to
be our we won't leave their their nests. Remember a
strange taste. Yeah, that was pretty apprescient, you know, like
it hasn't real occurred to me until now. But that
was all about like playback, like you know, putting yourself
into a recorded moment, recorded memory. But it basically is

(53:27):
you know, virtual reality, but like a heavy kind of
emotional than to where you're reliving the moment that you
are experienced again, or it could be something that's that
you bought in someone else captured putting yourself. But like
with the whole lack mirror on, there is the this
isn't exactly virtual reality that there's the entire history of
you where we're talking about these implants and the idea

(53:48):
that everything that we see is being recorded at all
times and then can be played back for various reasons. Yeah,
we're like going through the screen line the airport. Instead
of having to you know, go through all these religious
processes and mines, et cetera. They just played back your
last forty eight hours and see you didn't know in fact,
he did not pack you know, explosive places like one through,

(54:09):
but things like that. In technologies like this, there's always
these emotional aspects that we don't think about, like what
does that mean? Due relationship? What does that mean? You know?
Like to if people fight with your spouse, for example,
they can just say, I know you totally said this
thing here for you. Yeah. Um, to answer your question directly,
William Shatner's tech Universe, I'm kidding. Uh, I'm some that

(54:32):
non many people are familiar with that. I have a
tough time picking a favorite. Um, but I would say
and I love the Twilight Zone. And I'm I'm recently
biased because I finished Ready Clear one which was great,
uh is, and I would I would recommend it. Um,
but I'm gonna have to college taint about that for
a moment because it picking favorites tough. What's your weight?

(54:53):
What's your favorite one? Oh? Yeah, a good question. Um,
probably your room, Like William Gibson, m hm, which you
have ended up with groups? And he was like right
on the money with that. Yeah, that's true, William Gibson.
Is I want to see what he's writing right now
and save it for fifty years. We have time for
one more question. This daily goes to you really is

(55:14):
just gripping off of what you were saying about, say
a scenario being in the airport and being able to
access what you've seen. That opens up in another scary
possibility of people being able to hack that and change
than your memories and being able to set you up
for same murders and stuff like that. That's really important.

(55:37):
Dark memory as a memory as it exists now is
far less stable. What we're sacer saying to ask people
would have us believe because every time we remember something,
remembering the last time we remember coffee of a coffee,
and we're telling telephone with ourselves, so with hang up
my visible telephones with so with with that in mind,

(56:00):
I would say that, yeah, the security concerns are terrified.
And because this this is now direct access to you,
not to pieces of you, but to the thing we
consider ourselves, are playing blackable too. And as the world
we live in now where anything we create and there's
someone going to try to distort that and constantly trying

(56:22):
to be ahead of those peoples, so that brings in
all the kinds of crazy possibilities with as technology advances. Yes,
along with of course a backlash move towards primitivism. Right,
we'll have a new rise of yeah, neo Luddites tracks
and that ends it. My only idea about having a

(56:44):
group of people who are just on VR there could
be a backlash of consul that just the only like
in the way you could be or we do a
little bit art here and then we play some games
that there could be a whole group of people to
come up an opposition to that and just completely to
shoot any kind of DW technology. I mean, like we
always see the coming back US with any you know,
wholesale migration towards extreme technology. Are you've seen the people

(57:07):
over reacts what okay? And that we're gonna see. We
want to thank you guys so much for coming out
to our very first live podcast and really appreciate babe.

(57:31):
And here we are back in I guess what passes
for the present for US sixteen? Yes, the day that uh,
the United Kingdom decided to leave the European Union. Yeah,
that is a kerfuffle right there. Hullabaloo. Also, I feel
kind of weird about Satan this, but we didn't put
that applause in and post. Now that was real. That

(57:53):
was cool, that's you know, and we were honestly a
little bit nervous about doing is it being our first
live show, you know, we didn't have the safety net
of these padded walls of this studio, yes, that we
usually podcast from. But I'm gonna have to say, fellas,
I I thought you you two in particular, did a
great job. I I think I helped my own, but
I think I think you two did a great job.
I am still not sure if the folks at the

(58:15):
live show we're clapping because it was over, oh come on,
but no one clapping for each other for making it through. Yeah,
that was probably. But one thing we wanted to mention.
We did not talk about this that we were going
to do this show. We didn't promote it. We wanted
our first foray into the live world of podcasting to
be you know, and not not be heralded with anything.

(58:37):
We just wanted to see what it was like, a
proof of concept, a secret show, sort of a secret show.
But I don't know about you guys, but I personally
enjoyed that a lot, and I have a feeling that
there will be more of these in our future. That
being said, next time, I'm gonna take it upon myself
to bring some of my snazzy recording gear and uh
and get a really high quality recording that we can

(59:00):
we can present to you guys next time, and we
can take it about myself, not to surprise pressure you
guys into beatboxing with me before a show. Actually the kids,
which I don't think made it to air this recording,
I took it out of the video, by the way.
But if if you're listening to this and you're interested
in what we looks like while we were up there talking,

(59:21):
you can watch our video on on YouTube this week.
We put it out so you can see that there's
a one part where Ben you're making hand gestures and
you talk about how you can't see the hand gustures.
I guess what you can see them. Yes, And we
want to give a huge thank you to the good
folks at Terminus for having us over and we may
be making an appearance there and this time next year

(59:42):
it sounds like we might have gotten a second date.
We'd also like to thank you for checking it out,
and thanks to all the listeners who came by and
new and uh new and veteran listeners who tuned into
the show in the meantime. If this exploration in virtual
reality has piqued your interest, or you have any feedback, comments,
hot tips, strange high coups, or cryptic limericks. You can

(01:00:05):
feel free to send them to us directly. We are
conspiracy at how stuff works dot com m