Idealism and multiplayer video games

[Czinczar]

I develop multiplayer video games almost everyday, and I often find myself comparing idealism to how multiplayer video games work.

So in a multiplayer video game, you have two important concepts : the server and the client(s). The server is the computer that receives and sends data to all the clients. A client is a computer on which a player is playing the game. So for example if you make your character jump in your game, that information will be sent to the server, and then the server will send that information to all other clients so all other players can see your character jump.

When you want to spawn an object ( which can be anything, not necessarily a 3d object, it can just be abstract data created through programming variables), 3 things can happen :
- the object created only exists on the server
- the object created only exists on one or more client(s)
- the object exists on both the server and the client(s)

So the way I have been thinking about it is as follows :
- The server is the mind at large
- the clients are the disassociated minds

- When you spawn something on the server, clients cannot access it at all, it's totally invisible and inexistent for the clients, unless the server communicates about this object to the clients.
- When you spawn something on clients, the server cannot access it at all, it's also totally invisible and inexistent for the server, unless the client communicates about this object to the server.
- The third possibility, which is the most expensive in terms of network resources, is that the object exists both on the server and the client(s) at the same time. But in order for this to work, in other words: for the object characteristics like its position, rotation color, etc.. to be synchronized on both server and clients, server and clients must communicate about it in real time.
- it can also happen that clients don't all see the same content. So each client can have a different experience. Because you can spawn something on one client but not on all other clients

We can use this as a metaphor to help us think about the relations between the mind at large and the disassociated minds. The MAL might not be aware of everything that happens in disassociated minds, and disassociated minds might not have access to everything that happens in the MAL. And there might be experiences which disassociated minds and MAL are sharing. Also, each disassociated mind can have its own experience. Lastly, in order for one disassociated mind to know what another disassociated mind is doing/thinking, it must go through the MAL.

We can extrapolate the metaphor even more, for example to what would endogenous and exogenous experience correspond in the server/client relation ?

[Soul_of_Shu]

Seems like an idea with which Tom Campbell might resonate with his VR game analog.

[Starbuck]

I have often thought that when the 'kids' get idealism, it will open world gaming that will be the most accessible metaphor. You put a dent in a lamp post and when you return an hour later the dent is still there even though it wasn't rendered by observation 'in between'.

Theres even a karma element in some games.

[Steve Petermann]

About two years ago I wrote a post on my blog with some alternative analogies to what Bernardo has suggested (dissociation of M@L). One was like you mentioned — a MMORPG. In this analogy, everything occurs in the mind of God (divine idealism) and God plays all the roles including the environment. I think this analogy has some distinct advantages because unlike Bernardo's undifferentiated, instinctive One, with the theistic approach things like meaning, objective value, teleology, and even free-will can follow straightforwardly.

https://dlcommunion.org/2019/01/24/anal ... -idealism/

[AshvinP]

Cleric's imagery from Deep MAL post is relevant here:

"Just as Earth's surface looks flat only because we are too close to it, so we can imagine that our idea of M@L can be imprecise because of a too shallow perspective. Below we can see a different metaphor.

Enclosing the curvature of M@L is only part of the work. Unless we address the question of the interior, we're still 'in the dark' regarding our inner nature. If we imagine that in some way the interior is illuminated (we'll see how this can happen), the picture would look something like the following:




I'll call the above Deep M@L in contrast to Flat M@L. Even at first glance we already see that this change of perspective leads to very serious repercussions. Before I continue I would like to say that nothing of this is new. These things have been known in one form or another, for millennia by the Initiates but they really began to take the shape that we'll see here in post-Christ time, ever since the Gnostic schools began to explore these Mysteries. This secret knowledge has been carried by a spiritual stream through the centuries and only about a little more than hundred years ago it began to disseminate in the general population - simply because humans are getting ripe for this. I also want to underline that the images presented here are nothing but analogies and metaphors. Nowhere in reality we'll ever be able to discover such geometric structures. What we are interested in is to grasp some ideas through the analogies. When we have the ideas, the visual representation can be discarded. Just as 'high' and 'low' temperature is meaningless in geometric sense, so everything here must be striven for the ideas themselves. The visual aids are only an intellectual scaffold that must be dismantled after it has served its purpose. Also it must be stated that the above illustration is incomplete. It focuses only on something very specific. There are many things missing from it so in no way it should be taken as full model of reality. As an analogy we can have topological, geographical, political, etc. maps - all of them represent only specific aspects of the Earth and can't explain anything in isolation. I beg the reader to withhold any preliminary judgments about the meaning of the layers and the center in the illustration. We'll try to elucidate them only gradually.

Just as globular Earth resolves many enigmas, impossibilities and contradictions existing in the flat Earth model, so does Deep M@L in relation to Flat M@L. What will be given below can be in no way exhaustive, it can be no more than hints that would have to be studied further."

[electricshephard]

So in a multiplayer video game, you have two important concepts : the server and the client(s).

I sometimes wonder whether the concept of the Father and the Son points to the same premise, albeit using a sociological metaphor rather than a networking metaphor.

In that case you could think of the server as the Father and each individual clients as the Son(s).

A related networking metaphor has the entire Internet as the mind at large (the Father) and each computer connected to the internet as every disassociated mind (the Son). In this case the M@L is not necessarily an independent server per se, but rather the sum total of all connected nodes.

Another metaphor which is quite fun is the idea of a railway network that flows in and out of a major city. So you could imagine a major city with a single major railway station right in the heart of the city. From this single station flows countless branch lines in every conceivable direction that eventually lead to sleepy village stations out in the middle of nowhere. When you travel up from any of the village stations, the destination is always the same: the major city terminal (aka the M@L). However, when you travel down from the major city terminal, the village destinations are individually unique, each with their own personality and qualities (aka the disassociated minds).

In any event, I think networking analogies are a brilliant method of trying to conceptualise / convey ontological ideas. Perhaps if computer networks had existed 2000 years ago they would have served as a better metaphor than the Father / Son relationship, which has surely been prone to misunderstanding and an erroneous (literal) interpretation.

[Soul_of_Shu]

So in a multiplayer video game, you have two important concepts : the server and the client(s).

I sometimes wonder whether the concept of the Father and the Son points to the same premise, albeit using a sociological metaphor rather than a networking metaphor.

In that case you could think of the server as the Father and each individual clients as the Son(s).

A related networking metaphor has the entire Internet as the mind at large (the Father) and each computer connected to the internet as every disassociated mind (the Son). In this case the M@L is not necessarily an independent server per se, but rather the sum total of all connected nodes.

Another metaphor which is quite fun is the idea of a railway network that flows in and out of a major city. So you could imagine a major city with a single major railway station right in the heart of the city. From this single station flows countless branch lines in every conceivable direction that eventually lead to sleepy village stations out in the middle of nowhere. When you travel up from any of the village stations, the destination is always the same: the major city terminal (aka the M@L). However, when you travel down from the major city terminal, the village destinations are individually unique, each with their own personality and qualities (aka the disassociated minds).

In any event, I think networking analogies are a brilliant method of trying to conceptualise / convey ontological ideas. Perhaps if computer networks had existed 2000 years ago they would have served as a better metaphor than the Father / Son relationship, which has surely been prone to misunderstanding and an erroneous (literal) interpretation.

Yeah, the anachronistic Father/Son metaphor was conceived to pander to a highly patriarchal culture. In this cyber age the cyber metaphors may be more apt, at least for a far more secular culture. However, if it becomes too divorced from the numinous, it will lose any appeal to the mystically inclined ... or so it seems. I tend to feel more affinity for BK's model, being more of a naturalist. Perhaps somehow if a more cybernetic model could be conceived, being combined with a process of the metamorphosis of Thinking, as per Ashvin's recent essays, whereby M@L enters a partitioned mode, in which as if weaving the crucible of a chrysalis wherein through some metamorphic alchemy (think Jung) its Thinking is transmuted, and then, as these multi-playing, relational, evolving loci of ideation, M@L goes from Beta, to Meta, to who knows where—and then graft all this onto Gebser's integral approach, and I'm all in!

[AshvinP]

So in a multiplayer video game, you have two important concepts : the server and the client(s).

I sometimes wonder whether the concept of the Father and the Son points to the same premise, albeit using a sociological metaphor rather than a networking metaphor.

In that case you could think of the server as the Father and each individual clients as the Son(s).

A related networking metaphor has the entire Internet as the mind at large (the Father) and each computer connected to the internet as every disassociated mind (the Son). In this case the M@L is not necessarily an independent server per se, but rather the sum total of all connected nodes.

Another metaphor which is quite fun is the idea of a railway network that flows in and out of a major city. So you could imagine a major city with a single major railway station right in the heart of the city. From this single station flows countless branch lines in every conceivable direction that eventually lead to sleepy village stations out in the middle of nowhere. When you travel up from any of the village stations, the destination is always the same: the major city terminal (aka the M@L). However, when you travel down from the major city terminal, the village destinations are individually unique, each with their own personality and qualities (aka the disassociated minds).

In any event, I think networking analogies are a brilliant method of trying to conceptualise / convey ontological ideas. Perhaps if computer networks had existed 2000 years ago they would have served as a better metaphor than the Father / Son relationship, which has surely been prone to misunderstanding and an erroneous (literal) interpretation.

Yeah, the anachronistic Father/Son metaphor was conceived to pander to a highly patriarchal culture. In this cyber age the cyber metaphors may be more apt, at least for a far more secular culture. However, if it becomes too divorced from the numinous, it will lose any appeal to the mystically inclined ... or so it seems. I tend to feel more affinity for BK's model, being more of a naturalist. Perhaps somehow if a more cybernetic model could be conceived, being combined with a process of the metamorphosis of Thinking, as per Ashvin's recent essays, whereby M@L enters a partitioned mode, in which as if weaving the crucible of a chrysalis wherein through some metamorphic alchemy (think Jung) its Thinking is transmuted, and then, as these multi-playing, relational, evolving loci of ideation, M@L goes from Beta, to Meta, to who knows where—and then graft all this onto Gebser's integral approach, and I'm all in!

It's definitely no coincidence the network technology-terminology arose at this time, rather it's a function of the metamorphic progression. That is the big difference between the materialist-dualist view and the idealist metamorphic view - the latter provides a perspective on why these things are happening which the former simply cannot imagine due to self-imposed limitations. The technology gives us the abstract symbols necessary to gain a footing for aperspectival mode, higher cognition, etc., but those symbols need to be experienced as noumenal relations eventually, as you say, or else the footing leads nowhere. Same goes for Father-Son, Mother-Son, Siblings, etc. These familial symbols are still the most powerful, as they come quite close to the numinous relationships and the soul-connections everyone can relate to in their personal lives. Yet it is also clear those familial relations are under strain because of the new networking technology. It is our task to translate-transfigure the mere symbols and analogies of the 21st century into concrete modes of imaginative and intuitive being-in-the-world.