The goal of Reality Lab is to revisit some of the questions traditionally raised by the world contemplative traditions. These contemplative traditions claim that reality can be perceived in a radically direct manner. Even if we do not take those claims at face value, we can still take reality seriously as a topic of investigation. Instead of trying to approach reality indirectly, we can ask the question "how can we investigate reality as reality?" The Reality Lab is an exploration of this question; the underlying intuition being that a direct investigation of reality is both possible and worth doing collectively.

An important reason to ask the question of reality in SL is that VR and other tools are potentially bringing us to the point where we can do empirical rather than philosophical investigations of reality. Are there are deep links between traditional contemplative practices and the kind of explorations that happen in virtual worlds? Is it possible that these new technologies and techniques will allow a much larger segment of humanity to become engaged in questions of reality as such? Just as AI people have figured out that building chess playing computers is easy while building robots that pick up objects is hard, we may find out that certain aspects of the question of reality seem obvious but are actually rather hard.

Each lab hour will concentrate around a particular theme. The theme for the first Reality Lab on April 13th is "Direct Knowledge."


Vishnu Duranjaya in RL is Rajesh Kasturirangan. He is trained as a mathematician and cognitive scientist and has been associated with various Kira activities since 2001.