Metaverse: Taming the Genie
Martin Bartels
18 February 2022
Protection of mental integrity
Immersion in a virtual reality is a necessary subtraction from the natural interaction with the real reality which we are built for. Nevertheless, immersion into fictional worlds is not necessarily a negative. We have long learned to project texts or pictures into our minds and to use this to enrich our interaction with the real world. Reading a captivating book is an example of this. We can use it to expand the treasure of our experiences.
However, over-saturation can be damaging. This is clear to all parents who know how difficult it can be for their children to get back into family communication mode when they have been immersed in social media for a while and are requested to return to the non-virtual world. Social media certainly has the potential to overwhelm our learned cultural skills and affect our emotional and intellectual capacities.
As noted in my previous article, the metaverse utilises knowledge of users’ habits, preferences and weaknesses gained from tracking their behaviour to get access to their minds and is set to bind significantly more human attention than any technology has before. This potentially deeper interference with the human mind is a serious issue that we citizens must not simply accept as a matter of fate.
In the final analysis, it is citizens who develop and operate the learning machines running the metaverse, and these citizens must comply with the standards and rules that legislators have or will set on behalf of the electorate.
A blanket approach would be inappropriate
Since the metaverse is very likely to develop massive momentum quickly, it’s imperative that we are prepared to deal with it.
The following chart is not intended to be a comprehensive picture of all the outcomes of the metaverse, rather it highlights and categorises some of the differential effects in regards to their impact on society. This will help to facilitate the search for realistic assessments and ways to contain harmful developments. The starting point for this are not the technical triggers, but the potential effects on the human mind.
It’s clear that there will be desirable and non-desirable effects. The cases labelled as “clearly negative” have existed for many years in regular social media, though perhaps with less efficacy than what the metaverse is capable of.
The items under "potentially negative" in the middle have question marks because it cannot be clear whether and to what extent they are risks.
For the sake of illustration, here are two concrete questions situated at the extreme end of the spectrum but nevertheless pertinent:
• Will users with tendencies to violent behaviour, which they can act out freely and with impunity in the metaverse, be thus more or less inclined to do so in the real world?
• What are the effects on mental health for users of the metaverse who adopt a second identity through an avatar? More specifically, what will happen to users who suffer from a split personality?
We know that other immersive technologies with less immersive power can trigger distressing mental lapses mental lapses. So we cannot simply dismiss these questions and look away.
Instead, such questions can only be answered after solid empirical studies have been completed.
How can society deal with the issue sensibly?
The idea of very smart algorithms as triggers for mental changes may be new yet there is very extensive knowledge on the impact of chemical and biological triggers, i.e. psychopharmaceuticals. Institutions like the FDA, the EMA and the MHRA have been developing the expertise for their scientific evaluation of these phenomena.
When looking for the capacity for independent scientific assessment of psychoactive algorithms, we can only revert to the supervisory institutions for the healthcare industry and the launch of any new product for the metaverse should depend on the agencies’ prior approval. Their scientific evaluations protect consumers from harmful effects and reduce liability risks for the manufacturers of medicines. There is no reason for an exemption for the new sector. As with chemical and biological medicines, public health is the highest priority.
The boundaries between chemistry and artificial intelligence are currently in flux. Consequently, these agencies are expanding their expertise. This includes the area of psychoactive substances.
The fear that such institutions might not be impartial is understandable. Breaches of integrity can occur in all institutions that are supposed to oversee commercial activities especially if the decision-makers are poorly paid or society cannot guarantee their or their family members’ personal safety. It should be noted that this is a general issue, applicable to many areas of society, not only the supervision of the metaverse.
Narcos
As the agencies give the green light for metaverse products one by one, a market segment for compliant products will come into being driven by companies eager to defend their reputation.
However, it would not be realistic to expect that the permissible supply of metaverse content will be enough to meet the demand. As in the area of non-legal drugs, unauthorised offers for special areas of the metaverse will enter the market quickly and in large quantities.
It is quite likely that the markets for unregulated services will organise themselves in a similar manner to those for illicit drugs and have a negative impact on the mental health of the population. This is where the jurisdiction of regulators ends, and challenging new tasks fall to the police.
Conclusion
There are established ways to contain and regulate the dangers that will be generated by the metaverse. However, their complete elimination will not be possible.
To set the stage
Lao Tzu’s words sum up a dramatic contemporary scenario: While in some parts of the world people are increasingly affected by water scarcity, others face the growing threat of too much water due to extremely heavy rainfall and rising sea levels.
While the poem captures the ambivalence of water perfectly, the words "soft and weak" also seem to describe the way modern civilisations have responded to it. Their foggy perception and sluggish action is just as dangerous as the threats themselves.
Why Water?
The focus of this essay is to use the prominent example of water to help identify concrete approaches for dealing rationally with the issue of climate change. Climate change affects us in many ways, including the expansion of deserts, forest fires, the salinisation of soils, landslides, extreme weather events, agricultural crop losses, loss of biodiversity, spread of disease and human and wildlife migration.
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Scientists and engineers have laid the foundations for our prosperity. And only these elites can show us the way to overcome the harmful externalities of these very engines of our wealth. This article supports the thesis that we are technologically and organisationally in a position to successfully meet these challenges, step by step.
One obstacle to the mobilisation of existing resources lies in the fact that the general public has only a vague understanding of the issue. They do not realise that, unless we make controlled sacrifices, nature will impose uncontrollable sacrifices on us.
We urgently need to overcome the human tendency to trivialise and understand with our minds and hearts what will happen if we do not listen to the guidance of our scientists and engineers. However, while these experts hold the keys to the right strategies, they are only trained to communicate with other scientists. This leads to a situation of misunderstanding and therefore a lack of adequate action.
Blurred perception of facts
Every day, we are all exposed to an overdose of reports about minor and major disasters in all forms of media. We more or less defend ourselves against this by ignoring some news, i.e. reducing the strain on our nerves by filtering information. It is human nature to rely on the mostly correct assumption that unpleasant developments will eventually end and change for the better. In the case of climate change, however, looking away and hoping things resolve themselves doesn’t appear to be a winning strategy.
A wealth of scientific analyses on climate change is available to everyone, but these are mostly comprehensible only for other scientists.
We should openly acknowledge that most people in the northern hemisphere have a sense of empathy for people "in the south" who are plagued by overpowering rains, flooded lowlands, islands disappearing into the water, eroding coastlines or droughts. However, the geographical distance and lack of awareness of the frequency of such disasters dilute solidarity. Collective psychological repression can set in quickly.
Most people in the northern hemisphere do not consider an increase in average temperatures of a few degrees to be alarming. Many even express relief that the winter is often milder than in the past. Loud protests by campaigners are experienced and understood by most citizens as a disturbance or perhaps exaggerated fearmongering.
At the level of policy, scientifically informed decision-makers attend international conferences on climate change, where they negotiate with other decision-makers on action plans that have no teeth but are presented as hard-won progress. And they are increasingly supporting “green” sectors of the economy. However, they are often reluctant to share the full extent of their knowledge about the problem because they do not want to jeopardise their recognition by “rocking the boat”.
The factual impact level is decisive for citizens
There is controversy about the interplay of causes of climate warming (industrial emissions, volcanic activity, ocean currents, etc.). We don't want to debate that here. What is more relevant are the changes in global average temperatures and their trends, as determined by scientific methods.
Instantaneous interruption or reversal of a climatic process?
Changes to the climate are not new in human history, and certain events have triggered reductions in temperature. A striking example of a break in climatic developments is the eruption of an Icelandic volcano in the year 536 CE, whose dust made the atmosphere in the northern hemisphere so opaque to sunlight over a period of more than 20 years that temperatures fell drastically ("Little Ice Age").
Recently, it has been hypothesised that ice ages were triggered by asteroids.
It may be tempting to pin our hopes on the possibility of such events helping us to mitigate climate change, but while we cannot rule them out, events of this kind are rare and unpredictable, we must not include them in projections. It would be absurd to hope for random external causes that could interrupt or stop the progress of global warming. While hope is a human propensity, it is not suitable for contingency planning.
Our real bottleneck
What is preventing us from taking appropriate action to minimise and reverse the rise in average temperatures?
Citizen perception of the nature and dimension of the threat is inevitably blurred, because the daily reports from the media are mostly unstructured and not comprehensible to non-scientists. The reports do not allow us to recognise the essentials.
Citizens need an overview that is communicated in an honest, understandable and clearly structured way. Only when citizens have realised the nature and scale of the problem will decision-makers have the courage to take action with determination. In essence, it is about legitimising protection strategies that are considered unpopular today.
Given that citizens do not have access to graspable knowledge, we have a transformation problem. And this can be overcome if science presents the overall scenario from a certain distance. Figuratively speaking: It is not about describing every pixel point of an image, but about showing the image as a whole. The holistic representation deviates from the usual approach of scientists, because each of them is professionally held to focus on "pixel points" in their respective area of specialisation. This is the only way science makes progress, but that's not what is needed here.
The contours of the hologram can be communicated in an understandable way using e.g. the key points mentioned above:
If the effect of a detail is not legible, the presentation of the measurement can be improved. In particular, the exponential impact of very small changes in average temperatures in the atmosphere goes very much against human intuition. We can compensate for this disadvantage in perspective: Instead of referring to changes in temperature in degrees Celsius, we should consistently communicate changes in basis points, i.e. in hundredths of a degree Celsius. For example, labelling a temperature rise as "32 basis points" would be correct and would make the difference easier to comprehend than "0.32 °C". This method is a common practice in the financial industry. There, too, this method of representation is helpful in raising awareness that a small change can have massive implications.
Comparing our planet with human bodies helps us to comprehend the effect of changes in temperature: If your body temperature rises by 1° Celsius, you have a fever and are not feeling well. If the temperature rises by 1.5 or even 2° Celsius, you are very ill and hardly able to work. It is similar with our planet: If it experiences increases in average temperatures of this magnitude, it shows the symptoms of a "serious illness". However, this "fever" does not go away after a few days.Truthful and comprehensible holographic description will work like a call to action as sensible citizens will refuse to accept the idea that their lives, that of their children or that of their grandchildren, will be exposed to significant and unparalleled danger.
Here is a simple example of a call to action: It is true that the onset of toothache does not necessarily trigger a reaction in us straight away. We are perhaps still hoping that it will go away on its own. But at some point we turn to the dentist for help. We may later find the dentist's bill stressful, but the relief of finding a solution to the problem outweighs this. It is necessary that we anticipate, that we sense the expected greater pain, in order to take the initiative.
Governments will only act vigorously when informed citizens demand it vigorously. There has been pressure from sections of the population for a long time, but its direction has always been vague and therefore not sufficiently effective.
And like a dentist, a government cannot act for free, but will send bills to taxpayers. The later the comprehensive strategy is implemented, the higher the bill.
Defensive and offensive measures
The necessary government action plans are not the subject of this article. It should only be mentioned that defensive measures are necessary first, e.g., improved meteorological warning systems, raising and strengthening of dams and dykes on the sea coast and rivers, preparation for the abandonment of non-defensible areas. In addition, measures are needed to halt the dangerous trend and then slowly reverse it. These essentially consist of avoiding emissions and removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.
Desperate measures?
The keyword for desperate actions is "geoengineering". This could imply approaches such as making either the atmosphere or our oceans absorb less sunlight or bind more CO2. While these approaches sound exciting, they are not fully developed and run the risk of causing irreversible damage. As such it is unlikely they will be used.
Sabotage of the communication of scientific work
There are two groups working against open and fair communication between science and the citizens.
Refuseniks who are not interested in facts work against this. They are used to believing their own feelings and those of their friends from social networks. There should be no discussion with them, because deviations from their assumptions act as fuel for them. Science will not lead them out of their dream worlds.
Then there are the sceptics, who may have expert knowledge but only select those parts of it for their thinking and communication that seem to support their rejection of action. This is a dangerous species, because “expert” sceptics can claim some credibility and can disrupt societal communication successfully. The only way to weaken these people is to persistently ask them for better and well-founded alternatives. Then they have to provide verifiable answers or quietly hoist the white flag.
Acknowledgements:
My heartfelt thanks go to Professor Reinhard Gast. As a practising geologist and experienced researcher, he has helped me to grasp the exponential impact of seemingly minimal changes in the temperature of our atmosphere, similar to our own bodies, and the uniqueness of the current situation.
Authorship disclosure:
Fully human generated