Heather Moor Is a Therapist

ROLLO

"VR and conscious experience both present us with an integrated ontology. Ontology is not only a subfield in academic philosophy investigating the logic and semantics of concepts like 'being,' 'becoming,' or 'existence.' The concept also refers to an area in computer science and information science investigating the representation, formal naming, and definition of the categories, properties, and relations of the concepts, data, and entities that substantiate a given-or even all possible-domains. Interestingly, the conscious brain is an information-processing system too, and it certainly represents data and entities as 'being,' 'becoming,' or 'existing.' Conscious experience can be described as a highly-integrated set of hypotheses about the likely causes of the inputs received by the embodied brain, in the external as well as in the internal (i.e., intraorganismic) environment. It is not a list of propositions containing existential quantifiers. For an information-processing system to be conscious means it runs under an integrated ontology, a unified, subsymbolic situation model, which is internally presented to it in an integrated temporal frame of reference defining a subjective now, a 'window of presence.' VR creates ontologies and integrated situation models too, but their presentation within a single 'lived moment' (i.e., a Jamesian 'specious present,' the temporal frame of reference referred to above, plus the construction of an experiential subject) is still left to the brain of the user. If this is correct, then it follows that if we understand the computational principles underlying self-location and self-presentation within an internal temporal frame of reference in our brains, and if future VR technology were then to create a virtual 'specious present' as part of a yet-to-be-invented form of virtual time representation, then this would amount to the creation of a very simple form of artificial consciousness."

-- Thomas Metzinger, 'Why is Virtual Reality Interesting for Philosophers'

Jojo has read the essay, but Heather and Rollo have not.

Rollo Moor is currently logged into VR with his friends, Kaede, Harry and Tsar.

The next generation Oculus Sight is defined by its optical system advertised as more comfortable for the eye than natural daylight. Their system relies on a special OLED display, hybrid fresnel lenses and 'VR contacts.' As long as the user regularly uses lubricant eye drops -- or cries regularly during their experience -- VR is easier on and thus more healthy for the eyes than reality itself.

Rollo and his friends are logged into an application called Board. They are riding hover boards across a long bridge in the sky, stretching over smaller towers, purpling coral, white clay homes, reddish businesses and teal signage of an old city in twilight, whose sea sparkles like moving stars beyond it. The Plasmid District to the north is newer, composed of darkened blue glass condos, sky parks of green trees, neon light rails. The bridge tapers and curves like a stem split from one supertower to the other three in the city, across the Ivy, Bell and Nevada Districts.

There, against such a backdrop, as small dots moving along the 'boardway', launching off ramps and around bowls, through halfpipes and nessies, Rollo, Kaede, Harry and Tsar originally met in VR. They do not know each other in real life, although both Rollo and Kaede live in Toronto.

One of the subtle elements to these social-VR relationships is in how one approaches one's 'mask,' or avatar. No one can see anyone's real face in VR, instead relying on style, gestures or voice to determine personality. For the terminally shy, as is for much of our youth, VR makes an excellent training ground to build social confidence. For example, one of the more popular applications, Stand Up Simulator, can allow a person with social anxiety, like Rollo, to bomb in a controlled environment and all without the moment to moment facial expression of terror. A user can experience a simulated public speaking failure over and over again until it feels somewhat like standing up to a monster in a dream; the nightmare vanishes.