I Disagree with The Three-Body Problem’s Author Liu Cixin Regarding The Metaverse. Here’s Why.
#sciencefiction #culture #technophilosophy #metaverse #matrix
Chinese writer Liu Cixin who penned the famous science fiction The Three-Body Problem seems to have a beef with the metaverse. As one of the most successful Chinese science fiction novels in the past two decades, The Three-Body Problem has been adapted into a TV series. The TV Series’ poster and trailers have been released and it is expected to air sometime this year.
Credit : Three-Body Problem official trailer.
Following this release, Liu Cixin, who is by now known as China’s first metaverse architect, made a controversial statement that the metaverse will be an involution of the entire human civilization. He said that as a closed system, the entropy value, or the state of disorder, of the metaverse, will always tend to maximize, and hence it is not productive for humanity to spend time in the metaverse. Liu Cixin thinks that the metaverse is a highly seductive and hallucinogenic ‘spiritual opium’ and is worried that human beings will lose themselves in this virtual la la land.
He further made an even stronger statement comparing the race to the metaverse versus the race to the outer space. He posited that now humans’ brightest minds are obsessed with these two frontiers of exploration, and if we manage to nail one down, we will abandon the other pursuit. He worries that we’ll realize an ubiquitous metaverse before we realize mass space travel. “If the race to the metaverse wins, it will be a disaster,” he said.
Well Liu Cixin definitely did not paint the rosiest vision of virtual reality in his seminal work. Characteristic to science fiction, the story was rather dystopian and I understand why he made such a statement. However I will have to respectfully disagree.
First of all, it is bizarre that people keep thinking that the metaverse is a waste of humanity's productive energy, or in the words of Liu, “being in the metaverse will maximize our entropy.” I think people come to this conclusion because most of the existing use case of the metaverse is gaming, hence the reputation of it being a “spiritual opium” that dangerously sucks people’s time and attention.
Credit : Homunkulus 28 / Getty
Regardless of all the criticism against the computer and the internet, we must all unanimously agree that the internet has brought us freedom and a sense of infinite possibilities. Metaverse is going to be the next generation internet. A virtual reality internet where we can simulate a digital world and modify it at will is probably one of the best creator tools we have invented to date. It will equip humanity with the infinite potential to create, it will become a platform to channel our spiritual and creative prowess, uncapped.
Can you imagine? Creation in the real world is often limited by physical laws and natural limits, but creation in the metaverse is energy-efficient, limitless, borderless, and possibly more egalitarian than our physical reality.
Imagine that regardless of glass ceilings such as nationalities, class, religions, gender, ethnicities, and so on, we can transform into anyone in the metaverse, and create anything we want. Our competition in the metaverse will be distilled into the more abstract and spiritual qualities such as our talent, intelligence, humor, creativity and curiosity - all the things that transcend our physical bodies.
Consider the phenomenon of virtual influencers in China, a great use case of the metaverse. Virtual influencers have gained more and more attention on Chinese TikTok, Douyin, and other social media platforms all over the country. For the first time ever in humanity, we have witnessed deep emotional bonding between people separated by virtual interfaces, between real-life fans and virtual avatars.
Our famous virtual idols on Douyin. Credit : STEPVR
On July 6th, Douyin’s popular virtual influencer Xu Anyi hosted a 100-days birthday party. Fans showed an outpouring of heartfelt emotions, some people read poetry for Xu Anyi, some people confessed their deep love for him, and some people cried with euphoria…… In just 100 days, Xu Anyi’s Douyin fans increased by 430,000. This was a scale of peer-to-peer outreach and engagement unimaginable in the past, before the era of social media, the internet and virtual reality.
It has been proven that being a virtual influencer is something that any ordinary person can do, as long as your persona is set up properly. Anyone can be as successful as Xu Anyi, based on their innate qualities, and not external ones such as physical looks, material possession, race, gender, and socio-economic backgrounds. Being a virtual influencer isn’t as out of reach as being a traditional celebrity. You neither require a professional team to help you plan and package your public image, nor a complete entertainment industry set up to support you. Like in the case of Xu Anyi, he is just an ordinary person who goes on live every night, and keeps consistent at it.
The metaverse will be composed of virtual beings, virtual spaces, virtual economy, and social relations. The virtual influencers are the first concrete examples who have successfully generated commercial returns in the metaverse, and they were far from being “unproductive” as Liu Cixin criticized. Once virtual reality becomes our second skin, and once we have established a more complex network of political, social and economic relations in the metaverse, there’s virtually no limit to what possibilities we can create together. Well, we do need enough power and technological infrastructure to support the metaverse as a start, but beyond that, there will be nothing stopping us.
Secondly, I also think it is bizarre that humans glorify exploration to the outer space so much. Some people say that exploring the outer space is akin to journeying to a sea of stars and exploring the metaverse is akin to consuming spiritual opium, one depends on material pursuit and the other on spiritual pursuit.
What is so wrong with living in “The Matrix”? Credit : Little White Lies
Why is “consuming spiritual opium” such a bad thing? Why is living in “The Matrix” such a bad thing? Human beings are always greedy for material pursuits, and our vast productive and creative prowess has made us grow, evolve, explore and conquer since the dawn of time. However, how many planets will finally satisfy our thirst for conquest? How much more of our Mother Earth must we destroy to support all of our material ambitions, needs and wants? How much more physical resources must we expend in order to sustain our growth? On the planet Earth, each person’s wealth is capped and limited, but in the metaverse, abstract and spiritual wealth is not capped - this is a source of wealth that can be exploited infinitely without consuming any additional energy. Instead of conquering a planet, perhaps it is better for humans to channel our tremendous brain capacity to form new systems, communities and ecosystems in a massively shared virtual reality.
Personally, I think both sailing the outer space and manifesting the metaverse are equally worthy pursuits, so I don’t think there is any need to diss one in order to praise the other. Metaverse is not a virus, nor is it a sort of existential threat to humankind. It is simply a new technology, and it is normal for humans to have some fear and suspicion around anything new and revolutionary.
Our minds are still the greatest manifestor in this universe, and whatever we envision will come into reality. Hence the metaverse of our co-creation will depend completely on our perception of it. Will it be a positive or a negative one? It is up for us to decide.