Facebook's Odd "Metaverse" Move

Let's talk about the metaverse because like I'm really fascinated by this decision of Facebook to change the name of Facebook to meta and to the metaverse, which I think people are just going to, they're going to like re, they're going to realize that this is, this is a crazy idea that you're going to give your life to some sort of augmented or virtual reality world that's created by a guy who's involved in this company whose algorithms are sowing the seeds of distrust and hate. But now we're going to fucking let him take over what you see and feel because you're going to have a new company and this new company is going to be virtually reality based where he's literally, he reenacted a scene from Black Mirror. Yeah. Which is unironically. I know. And you know what makes me a little sad? I think that it's going to happen. You think it's going to happen? Yeah. I think that you and I are of a different generation, dude. I think there are a lot of kids who are growing up in Fortnite world and spend a lot, and I think the pandemic really accelerated this. There are a lot of people who lived online for the entire pandemic. And so for people like me and for people like my parents, not seeing other humans for a long time was actually quite painful and terrible. Like we actually did want to get out and be with the community and see friends and do that sort of stuff. What if you spend your entire life from the time you're a little kid interacting with screens? And the screens are getting increasingly sophisticated so that they are interacting with you in ways that humans would. What if you get to be whatever, like we're a society, we're just talking about this, where you get to be whatever you want to be. What if there's a world where you actually can be and everybody sees you the way you want to be seen? Would you rather live there where you're like rich and good looking and everybody likes you or would you rather live in the real world where you're disconnected from all that and you end up with like Ready Player One world? I think. It's going to happen. It is. As long as it can become indistinguishable from reality, which it will be able to be, it's going to take time, whether it's five years or 10 years. If you go back and look at Pong, which was the first game that I ever saw when I was a child, it's ridiculous. It's like a white ball that bounces across and you have a straight line. Two paddles, yep. That's a paddle. And it's the dumbest game you could never convince a child to play today. They'd be like, get the fuck out of here with that stupid game. I can go play fucking Halo, right? But back then when I was a child, that was a big deal. If you extrapolate, if you could just go in the future from now, what they're available, what they have available now, these insane video graphics, the unreal engine, and then move yourself 20 years in the future, yeah, it's going to be indistinguishable. And the AI is getting better and better in terms of being able to imitate human behavior, in terms of being able to innovate on its own. And haptic feedback suits and all these different things. All these video games that they have that emulate sports, they're getting so close. When you watch these basketball games and the UFC has a game, when you watch the players, the fighters move around, like, God, it's so close. It's not quite there, but they're getting better and better with each iteration. And it's just a matter of time. And what I wonder is if we are innovating ourselves, when it comes to this stuff, before innovating ourselves out of existence as a civilization. But don't you think that's probably where this goes, no matter what? No, I think then the barbarians come to the gate. I think that's what happens. Really? Because the real world still exists. You innovate an entire generation of people. And let's just take this on the most baseline demographic level. None of them get married, none of them have babies. In two generations, this ain't gonna matter. You're gonna have a good time in the virtual reality, and then there are gonna be no babies carried this on. And the only people on earth are gonna be religious Jews, religious Catholics, and religious Muslims. And that's it. The vulnerability lies in the power grid. Because the power grid is so vulnerable that if someone just detonated the power grid, all this stuff stops, and then you have no life. Your life is completely, you've invested it completely in this augmented world, this virtual world. But this virtual world, all you have to do is pull the plug, and it's out. And it's out for millions of people. It's like the equivalent of dropping a nuclear bomb in a culture. If you really all live inside of a computer system, some sort of a... VR, yeah, it's virtual reality. Yeah, no, that's right. And what I fear is that when you do that to a civilization, it's basically the equivalent of you bring in a wild animal and you put it in a cage for a long time, and now you can't release it back in the wild, right? It's gonna get eaten. What happens to you is a civilization. What happens if you've taken an entire generation of people, told them that their entire life exists online. They don't have to interact with other humans. They don't have to interact in human ways with other humans. And then there's an entire other earth out there that isn't doing any of this. By the way, China's not doing this. China is banning it. China's banning it. China's saying you're not allowed to go online certain days of the week if you're a kid. We're gonna ban the kind of stuff that you can see. So in the long run, which civilization is gonna be more durable? The one that actually understands the vulnerabilities of human nature or the one that says we're gonna use those vulnerabilities to make you feel subjectively happier? I'm amazed at the level of conditioning. Here's what killed me about the pandemic, honestly. Well, what killed me? The level of conditioning that it took in order to rejigger how people think was so low, it shocked the hell out of me. It really shocked me. I was talking to my business partner, Jeremy Boring, about this. And early on in the pandemic, he was like, people aren't gonna stand for this. When they'd shut everything, it's like three months from now, people are gonna be losing their minds. They're gonna be out on the streets protesting to get rid of the masks, and they're gonna be out at ballgames again. I was like, that's not right. I think it'll take a year. We're like a year and a half in, and half the country's still like, well, you know, what if this just kind of continues? Like, all right, I guess? The amount of dependency that was bred by people saying, just go back to your house. Human beings are really adaptable. And this is something that Brett Weinstein and Heather Heidig talk about, right? That's our superpower. We're super duper adaptable. So we're super adaptable. To our own detriment. Sometimes to our own detriment. So if we change our social circumstances radically in a way that's unhealthy for us, and we are now interacting with technologies that were built to take advantage of our lizard brain, then what happens when there are people who are just not engaging in the same game, they're not playing the same game that we are, right? We're essentially drugging ourselves. Robert Nozick is the libertarian philosopher. He talks at one point about what he calls the experience machine, his thought experiment. And the experience machine is basically VR. He's writing this in early 1960s. He says, what if there was a machine where you could plug into it, you'd feel the illusion of choice, you'd feel as though your choices had some sort of significance, and it would give you the dopamine hit that you get in regular life. Would you plug into it or would you not? And his theory was you wouldn't plug into it because you still want to feel like your life has real world consequences. What if everybody is in, everybody you know is in that experience machine? Then you're the one who gets left out if you're not in the experience machine. Darrell Bock What is real world? What is real world? I mean, that's what the problem is. That analogy was created before the sophistication of computer systems has reached the point now where you can look at it 20 years from now, and you kind of get an understanding of where it's going to be. When you're dealing with what's possible now, I don't think you're going to be able to stop people from doing it because I think it's going to be so overwhelmingly addictive. You look at how many people are just addicted to looking at their Instagram. It's so simple. It's nothing. I mean, it's nothing. The dopamine hit you get off of this little phone. It's minimal, but people are completely all in on it. John Ligato Yep. And I think that what that's going to – I do wonder if there's going to be, and I wonder what you think about this, if there's going to be a bifurcation in the same way there's been a bifurcation about so many issues between the people at the top of the elite spectrum and the rest of the population, where the people at the elite spectrum are making the metaverse but their kids aren't actually in the metaverse. John Ligato Right. Like Steve Jobs didn't let his kid use an iPad. Steve Jobs Exactly. Like I'm on the internet. My kids are seven, five, and one. We don't have the TV on in our house. My kids don't watch TV. My kids don't get internet access until 18. That is not a thing I wanted. John Ligato 18? Steve Jobs They can be out of my house and they can get internet. John Ligato They're going to do drugs. Steve Jobs They're going to do drugs. John Ligato They're going to do drugs. Steve Jobs They're going to do drugs. John Ligato They're going to do drugs. Steve Jobs They're going to do drugs. John Ligato They're going to do drugs. Steve Jobs They're going to do drugs. John Ligato They're going to do drugs. Steve Jobs They're going to do drugs. John Ligato They're going to do drugs. Steve Jobs They're going to do drugs. John Ligato They're going to do drugs. Steve Jobs They're going to do drugs. John Ligato They're going to do drugs. Steve Jobs They're going to do drugs. John Ligato They're going to do drugs. Steve Jobs They're going to do drugs. John Ligato They're going to do drugs. Steve Jobs It sounds so cute for what it actually is. It's a terrible thing, but it sounds cute. Oh, they're turning tricks. You didn't understand English. You'd be like, oh, they're the musicians? No, no, no. John Ligato Of a sort. Steve Jobs Yeah. John Ligato But I think that's one of the stories. If we're talking about the elite versus everybody else gap, everything that gets created is Steve Jobs If they're that concerned about their children. John Ligato But you said everything, right? Steve Jobs Yeah. John Ligato Yeah. Steve Jobs Yeah. John Ligato Yeah. Steve Jobs Yeah. John Ligato Yeah. Steve Jobs Yeah. John Ligato Yeah. Steve Jobs Yeah. John Ligato Yeah. Steve Jobs Yeah. John Ligato Yeah. Steve Jobs Yeah. John Ligato Yeah. Steve Jobs Yeah. John Ligato Yeah. Steve Jobs Yeah. John Ligato Yeah. Steve Jobs Yeah. John Ligato Yeah. Steve Jobs Yeah. John Ligato Yeah. Steve Jobs Yeah. John Ligato Yeah. Steve Jobs Yeah. John Ligato Yeah. Steve Jobs Yeah. John Ligato Yeah. Steve Jobs Yeah.