Latest / Chief in Tech Deep Dive Shortcast / Chief in Tech S1E34 - Nanea Reeves : XR for Mental Health, Emotional Wellbeing and Personal Transformation

Transcript

Chief in Tech S1E34 - Nanea Reeves : XR for Mental Health, Emotional Wellbeing and Personal Transformation · Chief in Tech Deep Dive Shortcast

• 0:00
  I want you to just stop whatever you're doing
• 0:03
  for just a second, like really paying close attention
• 0:06
  to your posture right now. Seriously, do a quick
• 0:08
  inventory of your physical body. Oh yeah, that
• 0:10
  is always a dangerous game to play. No, think
• 0:13
  about your neck, think about your shoulders,
• 0:15
  because I mean, for the last 10 years, we have
• 0:18
  essentially been walking around with our heads
• 0:20
  down, you know, shoulders hunched forward, just
• 0:24
  staring into these tiny two inch glowing rectangles.
• 0:27
  It's terrible. We really have. We have fundamentally
• 0:30
  changed our physical relationship with the world
• 0:32
  just to look at our hands. It basically feels
• 0:36
  like we are all walking around wearing a self
• 0:38
  -imposed digital neck brace. Yeah, that's a really
• 0:42
  good way to put it. So the core question we are
• 0:44
  jumping into for today's deep dive is this. What
• 0:47
  actually happens when computing moves from the
• 0:50
  hand? back up to the head. Well, I mean that
• 0:52
  physical shift you're describing, the simple
• 0:54
  act of just looking up instead of looking down,
• 0:56
  is the literal foundation for a massive psychological
• 1:00
  shift. We are looking at a complete evolution
• 1:03
  in how we interact with digital spaces. moving
• 1:07
  away from being trapped in the tiny little screen
• 1:09
  to actually inhabiting an environment. And that
• 1:12
  is exactly our mission for this deep dive. We
• 1:14
  are exploring a platform called TRIPP, T -R -I
• 1:17
  -P -P. It's an XR or Extended Reality platform
• 1:21
  that sits in this really fascinating, almost
• 1:24
  uncharitable territory right between the realms
• 1:27
  of traditional meditation and like... psychedelics.
• 1:31
  Yeah, it's wild. It really is. And we are pulling
• 1:33
  our information today from a presentation given
• 1:35
  by TreePP's founder, Nenea, alongside the company's
• 1:39
  official vision statement. Our goal today is
• 1:41
  to unpack how virtual reality is evolving from
• 1:43
  a way to just escape the physical world into
• 1:46
  a tool to actively heal our minds. Right, because
• 1:48
  we step back and look at the broader landscape.
• 1:51
  It's not just the conversation about cool new
• 1:53
  hardware or the latest headset hitting the market.
• 1:56
  It is a paradigm shift in why we use technology
• 1:59
  in the first place. Because for so long, the
• 2:02
  prevailing tech business model has been entirely
• 2:04
  based on extraction. Always extract. Exactly.
• 2:07
  Extracting our attention, extracting our data,
• 2:09
  just pulling us away from our immediate surroundings.
• 2:12
  And TreePP represents an attempt to use those
• 2:15
  exact same immersive capabilities for restoration
• 2:19
  instead of extraction. I mean, that sounds great
• 2:23
  in theory, right? But before we get swept away
• 2:25
  by the utopian vision of it all, we need to talk
• 2:28
  about how this thing is actually built. Let's
• 2:29
  do it. Because let's be real about the VR industry
• 2:31
  for a second. Most people buy a headset, they
• 2:34
  have their mind blown by a roller coaster simulator
• 2:38
  for three days, and then that expensive piece
• 2:40
  of hardware ends up gathering dust in a closet
• 2:43
  somewhere. Oh, totally. The novelty wears off
• 2:45
  so fast. The wow factor is gone in a week. Yeah.
• 2:48
  But the data shows TreePP is doing something
• 2:50
  different. It's incredibly sticky. Yeah, the
• 2:53
  retention data they're pulling is highly unusual
• 2:55
  for the VR space. So in April and May of the
• 2:58
  data period from Naniya's presentation, 54 %
• 3:01
  of the returning monthly active users had been
• 3:03
  using the platform for four months or longer.
• 3:06
  Wait, really? Four months for a VR app? Yes.
• 3:09
  Exactly. That is not a nullity effect where you
• 3:12
  like show it to your friends at a dinner party
• 3:14
  and put it away. That is a deeply ingrained behavioral
• 3:17
  habit. People are actually integrating it into
• 3:20
  their daily routines. So how do you actually
• 3:22
  build a habit like that in virtual reality? I
• 3:24
  know they are currently available on Oculus and
• 3:26
  PlayStation VR. They're moving aggressively into
• 3:31
  AR augmented reality devices like Unreal glasses.
• 3:35
  Right, they're expanding quickly. Yeah, and they
• 3:36
  are also heavily integrating with mobile apps
• 3:39
  on iOS and Android. And the mobile app has this
• 3:42
  feature that I think really hints at why people
• 3:45
  keep coming back. It lets you upload your own
• 3:48
  personal images into the VR and AR experiences.
• 3:51
  Which is, I mean, that is a brilliant psychological
• 3:54
  anchor. How so? Well, think about what happens
• 3:56
  when you put on a standard VR headset. You're
• 3:59
  usually dropped into a prepackaged, totally anonymous
• 4:02
  digital environment. It feels synthetic, right?
• 4:04
  Yeah, like you're in someone else's simulation.
• 4:06
  Exactly. But by allowing you to upload photos
• 4:09
  of your dog or your family or, you know, a place
• 4:12
  you love, TreeFPP bridges the gap between the
• 4:16
  artificial world of the headset and the emotional
• 4:19
  reality of your actual life. You're populating
• 4:21
  this virtual sky with visceral reminders of what
• 4:24
  you personally are grateful for. Okay, but here
• 4:27
  is where the platform's design gets really controversial
• 4:29
  for me. Naniya specifically points out that TriPP
• 4:33
  purposefully repurposes the mechanics of digital
• 4:36
  advertising and video games. Yes, the compulsion
• 4:39
  loops. Right. We're talking about the exact algorithms
• 4:42
  that social media companies use to make you feel
• 4:44
  inadequate so that you will, like, click a targeted
• 4:46
  ad and buy something to fix it. TriPP is using
• 4:49
  those same behavioral loops to drive compassion,
• 4:52
  personal happiness, and well -being. They are.
• 4:55
  But wait, hold on, let me push back on this.
• 4:57
  Aren't addictive game loops and targeted digital
• 4:59
  ads the absolute root cause of our modern mental
• 5:02
  health crisis? How do you justify using the poison
• 5:05
  as the cure? I know, it sounds totally paradoxical,
• 5:08
  but the mechanisms themselves, and the actual
• 5:10
  reward pathways in the human brain, they're completely
• 5:13
  neutral. Your brain's dopamine system doesn't
• 5:16
  inherently care if it... was triggered by. impulsively
• 5:20
  buying a pair of shoes you don't need, or by
• 5:23
  successfully completing a really deep centering
• 5:26
  breathing exercise. The technology industry has
• 5:29
  spent decades and billions of dollars perfecting
• 5:32
  the science of hijacking those neural pathways
• 5:35
  to drive purchase intent. They figured out exactly
• 5:38
  how to make us click the button. They did. They
• 5:40
  really did. Yeah. What TriPP is doing is essentially
• 5:42
  staging a benevolent coup on those exact same
• 5:45
  neural networks. So benevolent, too. I like that.
• 5:47
  Yeah. So instead of giving you a notice that
• 5:49
  triggers anxiety, they might use a similar visual
• 5:52
  cue or reward mechanic inside the VR environment
• 5:55
  to prompt a moment of mindfulness. You catch
• 5:58
  a digital particle, you breathe in. The environment
• 6:00
  blooms with color, you breathe out. It is the
• 6:02
  exact same structural loop, but the payload delivered
• 6:05
  to your brain is calm rather than craving. So
• 6:07
  they're basically hacking the hack. They're replacing
• 6:10
  the payload. And by doing so, they're creating
• 6:13
  what Nannia calls network effects around concepts
• 6:16
  of well -being. Okay, unpack that, because usually
• 6:19
  in Silicon Valley, a network effect just means
• 6:21
  a product becomes more valuable the more people
• 6:23
  use it, like a social media platform. Right,
• 6:25
  but here the network effect is internal. The
• 6:29
  more you use the loops to enforce well -being,
• 6:31
  the stronger those positive neural pathways become
• 6:33
  in your brain. It is a literal proof of concept
• 6:37
  for conscious capital. Okay. It demonstrates
• 6:40
  that a company can generate immense societal
• 6:43
  good like improving mental health at a massive
• 6:45
  scale while still providing the strong financial
• 6:48
  returns that investors demand. It completely
• 6:51
  shatters the myth that impact investments are
• 6:53
  just, you know, charity masquerading as tech.
• 6:56
  That's fascinating. But I mean, a personal coping
• 6:58
  mechanism is great. But how does someone even
• 7:00
  come up with the idea to reverse engineer a dopamine
• 7:03
  loop for peace? It takes a very unique perspective.
• 7:06
  You need a very specific kind of brain to look
• 7:09
  at a video game addiction model and think, oh,
• 7:11
  I can use this for mindfulness. To understand
• 7:14
  the architecture of this platform, we really
• 7:16
  have to look at the architect. And the founder
• 7:18
  story is definitely not your typical Silicon
• 7:21
  Valley narrative of dropping out of Stanford
• 7:24
  to build an app in a garage. No, not at all.
• 7:26
  It is a deeply personal, really compounding series
• 7:30
  of tragedies. it perfectly contextualizes why
• 7:34
  the technology functions the way it does. Yeah,
• 7:36
  her journey starts with a teenage psychotic break.
• 7:39
  She ended up hospitalized at a very young age
• 7:41
  coming from a family that had been heavily impacted
• 7:43
  by substance use disorder. Right. And while she
• 7:46
  was in that hospital, a therapist sat down and
• 7:48
  taught her how to meditate. And she credits that
• 7:51
  single intervention, just the compassionate awareness
• 7:54
  of another person teaching her to focus on her
• 7:56
  breath with completely altering her decision
• 7:58
  making framework and ultimately saving her life.
• 8:01
  foundational experience with meditation lay dormant
• 8:03
  but still present for years until she faced a
• 8:06
  period of unimaginable grief. The timeline of
• 8:10
  what happened to her later in life is just brutal.
• 8:12
  It wasn't just one isolated event. It was a total
• 8:14
  cascade. Yeah, it was relentless. In June 12,
• 8:17
  she lost her sister Vicki to a drug overdose.
• 8:20
  While she was navigating that devastation, she
• 8:22
  also lost her grandmother. And then in the midst
• 8:24
  of all of that, her husband was diagnosed with
• 8:26
  cancer and deteriorated very, very rapidly. Let's
• 8:29
  just pause and consider the psychological toll
• 8:32
  of that. When you are watching a loved one waste
• 8:35
  away from a terminal illness or dealing with
• 8:38
  with the sudden shock of an overdose. The overriding
• 8:41
  human emotion is utter powerlessness. Completely.
• 8:44
  You are trapped in a physical reality where you
• 8:46
  have absolutely zero control over the outcome.
• 8:49
  And during this intense period of compounding
• 8:51
  grief, she and her late husband obviously leaned
• 8:54
  heavily on their decades -long meditation practice.
• 8:57
  But concurrently, she had this other major pillar
• 9:00
  in her life that seems, I don't know, completely
• 9:03
  incongruous. Video games. It is such an unexpected
• 9:06
  pairing. We tend to view meditation as this elevated
• 9:09
  spiritual pursuit of acceptance and video games
• 9:12
  as a base escapist distraction. Right, like turn
• 9:15
  your brain off and shoot aliens. Exactly. But
• 9:18
  for her, video games served a very specific vital
• 9:22
  psychological function during her trauma. Yeah,
• 9:25
  she said she loved video games precisely because
• 9:27
  they allowed her to control her environment.
• 9:30
  Yes. When she was sitting in a hospital room
• 9:32
  feeling completely powerless against the cancer
• 9:34
  destroying her husband's body, she could pick
• 9:36
  up a controller, step into a digital space, and
• 9:40
  actually feel like a hero. She had agency. If
• 9:43
  she pressed a button, something predictable and
• 9:45
  rewarding happened. Right. The exact opposite
• 9:47
  of what was happening in reality. Exactly. And
• 9:50
  that profound reliance on the medium eventually
• 9:52
  led her to a highly successful career in the
• 9:55
  male -dominated video game industry. Think about
• 9:57
  the contrast there. The meditation gave her the
• 10:00
  tools to survive her internal reality, while
• 10:03
  the video games gave her a temporary, controllable
• 10:06
  external reality where she wasn't just a victim
• 10:08
  of circumstance. It's like she had these two
• 10:11
  distinct life rafts keeping her afloat while
• 10:13
  she was drowning in grief. And eventually she
• 10:16
  realized she could lash those two rafts together
• 10:18
  to build a ship for everyone else. Oh, that's
• 10:20
  exactly what TruePP is. It is a digitized coping
• 10:23
  mechanism forged in the absolute crucible of
• 10:26
  human suffering. Exactly. When you understand
• 10:29
  that Naniya was an early investor in Oculus and
• 10:32
  that she started experimenting with VR simply
• 10:35
  to figure out why coming in and out of those
• 10:37
  virtual spaces felt so physically relieving to
• 10:40
  her, you see the authentic DNA of the company.
• 10:44
  She wasn't trying to build a toy. She was asking
• 10:46
  a fundamental biological question. How can we
• 10:50
  use this headset to stimulate a beneficial physiological
• 10:53
  reaction? Which brings us to the most critical
• 10:55
  transition in this entire discussion. Let's hear
• 10:57
  it. Because a compelling founder story is inspiring,
• 11:00
  and a personal anecdote about feeling better
• 11:02
  is nice. But an anecdote isn't science. No, it's
• 11:05
  not. If you want to claim that your technology
• 11:07
  can actually heal the human mind, you have to
• 11:10
  prove it. How do you take a personal VR habit
• 11:13
  and convince the medical establishment to use
• 11:15
  it on actual patients? You bring in the heavy
• 11:17
  data and they are swimming in it. They have analyzed
• 11:19
  over 2 million user sessions. That's a massive
• 11:22
  data set. It really is. But they are moving way
• 11:25
  beyond just asking users, you know, did you feel
• 11:27
  less stressed today? They are moving into objective
• 11:30
  biometric reality. They are planning to integrate
• 11:34
  wearable biosensors and eye tracking right into
• 11:37
  the headsets to measure physiological responses
• 11:39
  in real time. Wow. But the clinical trials are
• 11:43
  where this stops being a wellness app and starts
• 11:45
  becoming a medical device. Yeah, the jump from
• 11:47
  consumer software to clinical intervention is
• 11:50
  huge. Let's look at the specific studies. First,
• 11:53
  they were awarded a $1 million phase two grant
• 11:57
  from the National Institute of Drug Abuse and
• 11:59
  EDI. They are partnering with an organization
• 12:02
  called Sober Grid to specifically target substance
• 12:05
  use disorder, which given the loss of her sister
• 12:08
  to an overdose is incredibly poignant. Yeah,
• 12:10
  bringing it right back to her personal mission.
• 12:12
  Exactly. There is also a study protocol published
• 12:15
  by the University Hospital in Augsburg, Germany,
• 12:17
  available in the BMJ, actually focusing on using
• 12:20
  the platform to increase the quality of life
• 12:22
  for cancer patients. Again, addressing the exact
• 12:25
  traumas Naniya lived through with her husband.
• 12:27
  Right. But the one that absolutely stops me in
• 12:30
  my tracks is the study with the New York Office
• 12:32
  of Mental Health. Oh yeah, this one is incredible.
• 12:35
  They ran a pilot study, which was so incredibly
• 12:38
  successful that it has now been expanded into
• 12:42
  a full double -blind randomized control trial
• 12:44
  using TREPP with schizophrenic patients. Schizophrenia.
• 12:49
  From a VR app. I know. The primary goal is using
• 12:52
  the VR environment to de -escalate aggressive
• 12:55
  behavior. If you de -escalate that behavior successfully,
• 12:59
  it fundamentally reduces the need to chemically
• 13:02
  medicate or physically restrain those patients
• 13:04
  to stabilize them. Let's just break down the
• 13:06
  mechanism of why that works because it is fascinating.
• 13:09
  Think about traditional talk therapy. Okay. If
• 13:12
  you are sitting on a couch in a therapist's office,
• 13:15
  your brain is fully aware of its physical context.
• 13:17
  You have a lifetime of cognitive resistance built
• 13:20
  up. You can choose to ignore the therapist. You
• 13:22
  can argue with them. You can mentally block out
• 13:24
  the breathing exercises they are trying to teach
• 13:26
  you. Because your eyes are still telling your
• 13:28
  brain, I am in a clinical sterile room and I
• 13:30
  am anxious. Precisely. But when you place a patient
• 13:34
  inside an extended reality headset, you are entirely
• 13:37
  overriding their visual and auditory input. Right.
• 13:40
  The optic nerve is the ultimate back door to
• 13:43
  the brain. You bypass that cognitive resistance
• 13:46
  because you are directly altering their immediate
• 13:48
  sensory reality. So paint a picture of this.
• 13:51
  Imagine the schizophrenic patient in a psychiatric
• 13:53
  unit. The fluorescent lights are buzzing. The
• 13:56
  room is sterile. They are experiencing severe
• 13:58
  agitation, maybe, you know, auditory hallucinations.
• 14:01
  The environment itself is actively contributing
• 14:04
  to the panic. Then you put the headset on them,
• 14:07
  and in a fraction of a second, the fluorescent
• 14:09
  room is gone. Just gone. Gone. Their entire 360
• 14:13
  degree field of vision is replaced by a calm,
• 14:16
  softly lit, gently moving digital forest. The
• 14:20
  audio shifts to spatial soothing frequencies.
• 14:23
  The brain simply cannot process two completely
• 14:25
  different physical realities at the same time.
• 14:28
  The visual cortex accepts a new environment and
• 14:30
  it sends an immediate signal to the nervous system.
• 14:32
  We are in a safe, calm space. The nervous system
• 14:35
  basically has no choice but to down -regulate.
• 14:38
  You aren't just asking the patient to calm down.
• 14:40
  You are forcing their biology to mirror the calm
• 14:43
  of the digital space you've placed them in. Exactly.
• 14:46
  It is a level of environmental control that medicine
• 14:48
  has never really had access to before. And that
• 14:51
  is exactly why we are talking about schizophrenia,
• 14:54
  cancer, and severe substance abuse, rather than
• 14:56
  just... you know, an app for a stressed -out
• 14:58
  middle manager who needs to remember to stretch
• 15:00
  at their desk. Right. Given those intense clinical
• 15:03
  applications, you would naturally assume the
• 15:05
  user base would be strictly limited to hospitals,
• 15:07
  right? Or, conversely, since it is available
• 15:10
  on platforms like the PlayStation, you might
• 15:12
  assume the average consumer is your stereotypical
• 15:15
  19 -year -old male gamer playing Call of Duty
• 15:17
  between meditation sessions. Sure, that's the
• 15:19
  stereotype. But the actual demographics of who
• 15:22
  is using TreeAPP shatter every single stereotype
• 15:25
  we hold about virtual reality. Yeah, the demographic
• 15:28
  evolution of their user base is a textbook example
• 15:31
  of a product successfully crossing the chasm
• 15:34
  from niche early adopters to broad mainstream
• 15:38
  utility. Initially, the data shows it did start
• 15:41
  with that predictable gamer, male -centric, tech
• 15:44
  savvy crowd. But Naneya noted a massive shift
• 15:48
  after the January holiday sale. Really? What
• 15:50
  happened? Suddenly the audience skewed over 40
• 15:53
  % female. Oh, wow. And here is the fact that
• 15:56
  I cannot get over. She notes that their most
• 15:59
  consistent dedicated daily users are actually
• 16:02
  active boomers. See, that completely disrupts
• 16:04
  the lazy narrative that older generations are
• 16:06
  fundamentally opposed to adopting immersive cutting
• 16:09
  edge technology. We always just assume they don't
• 16:11
  want to use it. But the data suggests the barrier
• 16:13
  isn't a lack of interest at all. The barrier
• 16:15
  is simply intimidation. Yeah. The onboarding
• 16:18
  process for VR can be super clunky and isolating.
• 16:22
  What Tripppp found is that once that Older demographic
• 16:25
  gets a little bit of handholding, and once someone
• 16:26
  helps them get the headset on and explains the
• 16:28
  interface, they become the most fiercely loyal
• 16:31
  user base. They stick around because the emotional
• 16:33
  relief the platform provides is universal, regardless
• 16:36
  of age. And Dania ties this surprising user diversity
• 16:40
  directly back to an incredibly passionate argument
• 16:43
  about who is actually building the technology
• 16:45
  in the first place. This is where she starts
• 16:47
  talking about young girls and video games like
• 16:49
  Minecraft and Roblox. Right, getting them building
• 16:52
  early. Usually society tells kids that video
• 16:55
  games rot their brains. But here is a tech CEO
• 16:58
  arguing that handing a young girl a copy of Minecraft
• 17:01
  is the absolute key to her eventually running
• 17:04
  tomorrow's major tech companies. There's a deep
• 17:07
  psychological thread connecting those ideas.
• 17:09
  When a child, specifically a young girl, plays
• 17:12
  a game where she is actively building environments.
• 17:15
  Rather than just passively consuming a story
• 17:17
  someone else wrote, her self -perception changes.
• 17:20
  That makes a lot of sense. She begins to view
• 17:22
  herself as a builder and a maker. She has actual
• 17:24
  agency over the digital world. Exactly. And research
• 17:27
  shows that early self -identification as a creator
• 17:30
  directly correlates with young women choosing
• 17:32
  to enter university on computer science and engineering
• 17:35
  tracks. Which, she points out, is crucial because
• 17:38
  there is still a massive lack of women running
• 17:40
  technology and product design in the games industry.
• 17:43
  But she makes a point to note that the women
• 17:45
  who are there are showing up more and more, and
• 17:47
  surprisingly, they form incredibly tight -knit
• 17:51
  support networks. It's really a culture of a
• 17:53
  rising tide lifting all boats. Let's connect
• 17:56
  the dots between the creators and the consumers
• 17:58
  here. If your software development team is a
• 18:00
  monolith, say, entirely composed of 25 -year
• 18:03
  -old men, your final product will naturally only
• 18:06
  appeal to that monolith. Sure, they will build
• 18:08
  what they know. Right, but when you have women...
• 18:11
  diverse voices, and people who have navigated
• 18:13
  profound personal grease leading product development,
• 18:16
  the resulting technology looks entirely different.
• 18:18
  Because their life experiences demand totally
• 18:20
  different solutions. Exactly. And that is why
• 18:24
  a platform built by a woman who used games to
• 18:27
  survive the loss of her husband naturally appeals
• 18:29
  to a much broader spectrum of humanity. It appeals
• 18:33
  to stressed out mothers, to cancer patients in
• 18:36
  Germany, to active boomers in retirement. It
• 18:39
  addresses universal human emotional needs rather
• 18:43
  than just optimizing like niche gaming mechanics.
• 18:46
  It is the fundamental difference between building
• 18:48
  a virtual world where your only goal is to shoot
• 18:50
  zombies and building a virtual tool designed
• 18:53
  to help you reclaim your own mind. Perfectly
• 18:55
  said. It all comes full circle back to that initial
• 18:57
  idea we started with. Computing moving from the
• 19:00
  hand to the head. TreeIPT doesn't just feel like
• 19:03
  a neat software update. It feels like the vanguard
• 19:06
  of an entirely new philosophy regarding how we
• 19:08
  allow the digital world to intersect with our
• 19:10
  biology. It demands that we ask fundamentally
• 19:12
  better questions of the tools we create. For
• 19:15
  the last decade, we have been unconsciously asking,
• 19:18
  how can this glowing screen distract me from
• 19:20
  the discomfort of my life? Now we are finally
• 19:23
  starting to ask, how can this immersive environment
• 19:25
  equip me to better handle the reality of my life?
• 19:28
  And for those of you listening who want to explore
• 19:30
  this philosophy further, Nenea is incredibly
• 19:33
  accessible online. You can find her on Twitter
• 19:36
  at the handle at Nenea. And she frequently hops
• 19:39
  onto platforms like Quilt and Clubhouse for deeper
• 19:42
  real time chats. She is very open about sharing
• 19:45
  resources, especially if you are a parent wanting
• 19:49
  to figure out how to get your young girls involved
• 19:52
  in tech development instead of just tech consumption.
• 19:54
  Which speaks volumes about the mission driven
• 19:57
  culture. is built at the company. When you hear
• 20:00
  that Ed of Product joins a company like TreeIPP
• 20:02
  and calls it their dream job specifically because
• 20:05
  they want to change how people physically experience
• 20:08
  the world, you are analyzing a fundamentally
• 20:11
  different kind of tech venture. It really is
• 20:13
  a totally different paradigm. Well, thank you
• 20:16
  so much for joining us on this deep dive. We
• 20:17
  have covered a massive amount of ground today,
• 20:19
  from the realization that digital compulsion
• 20:21
  loops can actually be flipped for our benefit
• 20:23
  to the profound clinical trials happening with
• 20:26
  schizophrenia in cancer patients right now. It's
• 20:28
  been great. But before we wrap up, I want to
• 20:31
  leave you with one final thought to mull over.
• 20:34
  It builds on everything we've just unpacked about
• 20:36
  hacking our own neural pathways. Oh, this is
• 20:38
  the most fascinating implication of this entire
• 20:40
  technology. Think about this. If we can literally
• 20:43
  put on a headset, overwrite our optic nerve,
• 20:45
  and actively program a virtual reality to force
• 20:48
  our brains to become happier, calmer, and more
• 20:50
  compassionate. What does that say about our actual
• 20:54
  physical reality? Or are we all just walking
• 20:56
  around living inside a poorly designed, highly
• 20:58
  stressful game that we didn't choose to play?
• 21:01
  And if so, is the practice of mindfulness simply
• 21:04
  the process of learning the developer code so
• 21:06
  we can finally rewrite our own software? Take
• 21:09
  that digital neck brace off, look up, and think
• 21:11
  about that.