Plato in the metaverse
[Twenty-five hundred years ago] Plato believed that in a realm apart from the material plane there exists an inventory of Forms, which are the pre-material blueprint of every ‘thing’ in spacetime.
Envision an ethereal platform that contains perfect Forms of dogs… tables… clouds… philosopher kings… Republics… and even abstract virtues like Justice and Wisdom. The Forms are eternal, unchanging, and represent an apex level of reality.
Once projected and materialized in 3-D, Forms express as lesser versions of their ultimate Form.
Like a glitchy hologram beaming from R2D2. Or a sunset through a dusty pane.
And the universe is a giant processor of signals, from the pre-material ‘Realm of Forms’, into the fabric of spacetime.
For an ancient, Plato had very Philip K Dick contributions to futurism. His Cave Allegory reigns as the sourcemyth for cult reality-jailbreak epics that span from Metropolis to Logan’s Run to The Matrix.
Both Plato and Dick are that rare seer who’s visions trigger evolutionary upgrades to our understanding of the nature-of-reality.
Dick famously invoked the simulated reality thesis in The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. Isaac Asimov in his Three Laws of Robotics foreshadowed much of our zeitgeist discussion around AI.
And Plato’s Forms — which infers fields and particles as manifestations of underlying physical laws — offers an ultra-fundamentalist view about the nature-of-reality that has cutting-edge nu-physics applications today.
One of our favorites is Donald Hoffman’s desktop theory, which explains spacetime as a platform for observer-generated objects that are, in substance, rudimentary skins for unapprehendable atomic and subatomic structures.
Structures which, for reasons of evolution and environmental adaptation, we process as more navigable representations; like icons on a computer desktop. His thought-provoking thesis is deconstructed, here:
And now comes a new theory that has implications the physics that generate the object-layer. Or, the material ‘plane’.
It is a self-described principle called mass-energy-information Equivalence and without going too overboard, it could essentially be the operationalizing of Forms for the quantum age.
Conceived by Romanian physicist Melvin Vopson, the (m-e-i) Equivalence suggests that the material world, as we perceive it, is built in part on an informational element.
That information has actual mass.
Which — cutting to the chase — suggests that an informational layer is tethered to things in our physical reality.
Sounds a lot like Plato.
And, of course…
Riffing on Einstein
At its core, the (m-e-i) Equivalence extends Einstein’s famous principle (E=mc²), positing that just as mass and energy are interchangeable, information is a prime material.
It suggests that information — traditionally viewed as abstract — has physical presence, manifesting mass and influencing the material world as a fundamental building block of the universe.
But what, specifically, is ‘information’ in the context of Vopson’s theory?
In (m-e-i) Equivalence, information is anything that reduces uncertainty or conveys meaning. But how does information have physical properties — like mass, as Vopson suggests?
Imagine a bookshelf. Each book contains words, and these words are made up of letters — this is information. Now, according to classical physics, the ink and paper have mass, but the “information” (the ideas and stories), don’t.
They have no physical presence beyond the medium that carries it.
According to (m-e-i) Equivalence, this book-bound information isn’t just symbols on a page; it’s an immutable part of the universe, like matter (the paper and ink of the book) and energy (the light enabling you to read it).
Same goes for the words being typed into this document. In Vopson’s theory they are not simply weightless and invisible but in fact constitute some micro-infinitesimal mass that is an actually measurable.
What this suggests is that, at a fundamental level, the universe operates as a massive processor of information.
That, together with energy and matter, materializes the cosmos.
This process of turning no-thing into some-thing is not alien to us. Humans process information into matter as one of our prime functions.
Every thing we physically manifest starts as ‘ideation’ received, or generated, cognitively. And then — if we are inspired or motivated — we materialize those ideas into… actual ‘things’.
So that we are just mimicking the creationary operation of the universe. And we don’t have to impute ‘intelligence’. No need. It’s enough that we may arrive at a working theory of the universe as the staging platform for spacetime artifacts that have a higher dimensional source.
Theoretically.
While Vopson admits (m-e-i) Equivalence is “a bit speculative and still needs experimental validation,” — which he plans to do by weighing a digital storage before and after the deletion of a file —his work signals the potential of Plato’s Forms finding some basis in our development of an updated theory-on-the-nature-of-reality.
In the meantime, it has direct implications for digital world-building, aka the metaverse, which offers an amazingly well-suited platform for seeing what a Realm of Forms could actually look like.
And to construct a computational framework for creationary processes that take those Forms and materialize them in a lower dimension.
Set and Setting
And have we not admitted that the Forms are the true realities, and the things which are really real, and that all other things only appear to be and are not?” [Plato, in Phaedo]
The idea of applying Plato’s Forms and (m-e-i) Equivalence as a philosophical and scientific foundation for the design and coding of virtual environments is exciting.
But it could not be developed in the same way as the current version.
It’s safe to say most of the work being done on the Big-Tech metaverse — if they’re even still doing any — is non-generative. Meaning, the objects we will experience there are ‘canned’ or non-adaptively pre-designed for the environment.
As opposed to ‘generative’ ones which are dynamically, computationally materialized from algorithms that respond to incoming data flows, which would simulate the cosmology of Plato’s Forms and the processes described in Vopson’s (m-e-i) Equivalence.
Experiencing a digital reality that had Platonic mechanics as the prime directive of its entire creationary engine would be extremely novel.
Given how badly the corporate surveillance metaverse project did with just about everyone, this could be a powerful way to reboot the enterprise.
Someone will have to tell Mark Zuckerberg that no one is asking for a parallel world that is a lesser version of the actual one.
According to Forms, we already live in one of those.
But what if we developed a simulation of the universe as processor of Forms, operationalized by (m-e-i) Equivalence?
One in which an AI was trained to materialize objects and spaces as an operational flow based on a source layer of Forms — our new and potential last repository of the best of Earth.
A girl can dream.
…
We fed GPT -4 the above text in a channel that has been conditioned solely and extensively on (m-e-i)E and asked for examples of how that might look. It’s suggestions were typically ChatGPT but also at times elegant and interesting, definitely…
Information Physics as Blueprint for Metaverse Design
1. Forms as the Basis for Universal Design Language: Imagine a metaverse where each virtual object, from the simplest to the most complex, is derived from a universal design language based on Plato’s Forms. This could ensure a harmonious and interconnected digital universe where every element resonates with the users on a deeper, almost instinctual level, due to its alignment with fundamental truths about reality as suggested by (m-e-i) E.
2. Algorithmic Realization of Forms: Developers could write generative algorithms — which, again, ‘generate’ objects and patterns from data flows — that are specifically tuned to the Forms. These algorithms would not just randomly generate objects but would do so based on the codified Forms that dictate their properties and behaviors. For instance, a “Form of a Tree” could inform the algorithm to generate trees that embody the essence of “tree-ness” in virtual environments that connects it computationally to a vast ecosystem without which a ‘tree’ is not possible.
3. Mechanizing Emergence: Applying (m-e-i) Equivalence to generative design - which also harnesses data from natural phenomena or human activity - means that these digital processes and the objects they generate have a basis in the simulated reality. That they are fundamental to a literal creation process that can be highly determinist in the world that is created. For instance, an algorithm translating heart rate data into a sculpture is not merely creating a symbolic representation; according to (m-e-i), it’s transforming the informational essence of heartbeats into a new form of matter. What kind of world would we live in if its structures and systems were directly responsive to human heart activity?
4. Dynamic Adaptation and Evolution: Generative algorithms could also be designed to dynamically adapt and evolve virtual objects and environments towards their Forms. This could mimic the philosophical journey towards understanding and embodying the Forms, allowing virtual spaces to become more “ideal” over time or in response to user interactions, aligning with the evolving understanding of what those Forms represent.
5. Enhanced User Experience: By grounding the design of the metaverse in the concepts of Forms and (m-e-i) Equivalence, developers could create more meaningful and aesthetically-pleasing immersive experiences. Objects and environments with a foundation in these philosophical principles might resonate more deeply with users, offering experiences that feel more authentic and enriching.
6. Ethical Design Considerations: Incorporating Forms and the essence of objects as dictated by (m-e-i)E could also introduce an ethical dimension to metaverse design, encouraging creators to consider the impact and value of their creations in the virtual world. This might lead to a metaverse that is not only technologically advanced but also philosophically and ethically profound.
