David Chalmers: ‘We are the gods of the virtual worlds we create’
The techno-philosopher on meaningful life in the metaverse, building virtual utopias and why the ‘corporatocracies’ are becoming part of our brains
Arranging Lunch with the FT in the metaverse is a tricky business. But it seems the appropriate place to meet David Chalmers. One of the world’s best-known philosophers and cognitive scientists, he has stirred up something of a cyber-squall recently by arguing that “virtual reality is genuine reality”. So it is that, with an Oculus Quest 2 headset clamped firmly to my face, I find myself seated at a desk in central London staring across a virtual table at a lifelike avatar of Chalmers, physically located some 3,500 miles away in New York.
The metaverse’s critics have panned it as an escapist fantasy. But the 55-year-old co-director of New York University’s Center for Mind, Brain and Consciousness is one of those urging us to take it very seriously — even if he does not always take himself quite so seriously. As the lead singer of the Zombie Blues band, Chalmers has been known to bash out the immortal lyrics: “I act like you act, I do what you do/But I don’t know, what it’s like to be you/What consciousness is, I ain’t got a clue.”
His avatar suddenly materialises, with long silver hair and stylish stubble, declaring that our restaurant has a “nice diner quality” to it, even though it seems eerily quiet. The VR researchers at Barcelona University’s EventLab have not only designed the avatars of Chalmers and me but also teleported us into a 3D restaurant complete with plates of vivid salmon sushi. As I swivel my head left and right, I can see a spotlessly clean restaurant boasting white brick walls and wooden floors; through the plate-glass windows I see a deserted parking lot outside. We appear to have the joint entirely to ourselves.
Through my earphones, I can hear Chalmers’ resonant Australian voice as clearly as if he were sitting opposite me, although his lip movements do not quite synchronise with his speech. It takes him a little while to fix his seating arrangements to stop his virtual hands disappearing through the table. During that time, his avatar, dressed in black T-shirt and leather jacket, contorts itself around the table like Neo evading Agent Smith’s bullets in The Matrix.