The Tetris Effect Made Me Realize I’m a Cyborg
Sounds ridiculous? Hear me out.
Recently, something weird started happening to me.
Sometimes, late at night, when I’m meditating or dosing off (or both as is often the case) I see something…well…strange.
My phone.
I’m still holding it.
Except I’m not — it’s a hallucination.
But before we get to the crux of this issue, we need to talk about reality.
Our Perception of Reality
Reality is something we tend to take for granted. If we didn’t, and constantly questioned the validity of every facet of our experience, we’d probably lose our grip completely. Anyone, like me, who’s sampled psychedelics, or suffered from a psychotic break, knows firsthand how slippery perceptions of reality can be. Mess with your brain enough, and you could find yourself outside a sphere others seem to share, fated to spend your life’s remainder stumbling on the crumbling bedrock of the ‘real’.
But don’t worry, this only happens to a tiny percentage of people.
Or does it?
From Plato’s cave to Husserl’s phenomenology, one of the chief concerns of philosophers has been what constitutes reality. It is after all, along with the existence of God, one of the fundamental questions humans have asked themselves since time immemorial:
“What is real?”
At the risk of quoting one of the most memed films of all time, I believe Morpheus put it pretty succinctly:
“If real is what you can feel, smell, taste and see, then ‘real’ is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.”
Morpheus’ words undoubtedly pay homage to the 18th-century philosopher, David Hume. Hume was an empiricist, meaning he held the belief that “causes and effects are discoverable not by reason, but by experience". Below, the Scottish enlightenment thinker expresses similar sentiments to Morpheus:
“I may venture to affirm …that [persons] are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in perpetual flux and movement.”
So what happens when something should, according to reason, be impossible but still feels palpably real? Where does this leave notions of objective reality?
The Hypnagogic State
Have you ever experienced sleep paralysis? Well, this mightily unpleasant feeling arises during hypnagogia: the liminal space between wakefulness and sleep. During this state, people can experience hallucinations, lucid dreams, muscle spasms, as well as what Candice Carty-Williams calls, “a faceless man climbing across the floor towards you”.
But what is actually happening in our brains during hypnagogia?
Thankfully, science has an answer — so let’s break it down.
There is a machine called an electroencephalogram (EEG) capable of measuring our brain waves. Our neurons constantly communicate with each other at speeds up to 156–270 miles per hour, and these bursts of electrical activity can be measured in waves by the EEG.
The 5 different waves (you may already be familiar with) are, from slowest to fastest:
- delta waves
- theta waves
- alpha waves
- beta waves
- gamma waves
In a state of wakefulness, our brains produce alpha and beta waves, with the latter being predominant. But when we become sleepy, alpha waves start to take over. In the lightest form of sleep — usually lasting between 1 and 5 minutes — alpha waves drop to less than 50% and slower theta waves have also been observed.
The upshot?
In a hypnogogic state your sense of waking reality, of “here” and “now”, becomes meshed with your dreams. Essentially, you are caught between worlds, hence the seeming vividness of the sights, sounds, smells, and touch you experience. At that moment, experiences can feel as real as anything else. The difference between a malevolent poltergeist and a trick of the brain is only distinguishable via an act of retroactive reason. And the latter is certainly more attractive if you want to actually sleep that night!
But I don’t want to dwell too much on the negative aspects of this fascinating phenomenon. Prominent historical figures such as Dahli and Thomas Edison famously used hypnagogia as a source of inspiration. Surprisingly, the creative potential of this state was ignored by cognitive science until recently. This 2021 study concluded that:
“There is a creative sweet spot within the sleep-onset period, and hitting it requires individuals balancing falling asleep easily against falling asleep too deeply.”
However, as intriguing as this may sound, I didn’t write this article to explore the untapped potential of hypnagogia. I wrote it to tell you about the realization that I was a cyborg.
The Tetris Effect
Have you ever had a monotonous job serving customers all day? After a particularly long and busy shift you settle down for bed and, seemingly beyond your conscious control, your brain starts running through the motions:
“Thank you, have a nice day. Thank you, have a nice day. Thank you, have a nice day".
This is called the Tetris Effect.
Why is it called this?
Well, when the day’s repeated activity involves moving objects, as in the video game Tetris, the corresponding hypnagogic images tend to be perceived as moving. (Pretty weird to name a neurological phenomenon that’s probably as old as our frontal lobes after a video game made in the 80s, but there we go.)
So nothing out of the ordinary then. If I’d spent the day rock climbing I would feel the touch of rocks, and if I was a tree surgeon, I would see images of different kinds of trees (that would be nice). Instead, what I see are my phantom hands gripping a rectangular screen showing nothing—a portal into a blank void.
And the feeling is…unsettling.
Dahli harnessed artistic inspiration, Edison came up with new inventions, lucid dreamers explore imaginative worlds, and I am holding my phone.
Based on what we know about the Tetris Effect, the all too obvious truth is that I simply use the damned thing too much (go figure).
But the implications go deeper.
We’re all Cyborgs
On the Joe Rogan Experience, Elon Musk spoke on how phones have massively enhanced our cognitive capabilities:
“Your phone is already an extension of you. You’re already a cyborg. Most people don’t realise they’re already a cyborg.”
We tend to think of the screens that dominate modern life as outside of ourselves. After all, they’re not literally fused to our bodies (yet). But if our sense of the real is an effect of consciousness, then our phones, tablets, computers are more a part of us than we may realize.
Think about the experience of using your phone: your brain focuses on the information or images on the screen and dials out the surrounding environment. In those moments, according to your brain, your environment is your phone. Your phone is your reality. This technological wonder affords unfettered access to anything that takes our fancy in that given moment. Our brain’s pleasure centers are hardwired to what Bo Burnham aptly called:
“Anything and everything all of the time.”
Experiencing the hallucination of holding my phone in a hypnogogic state reminded me that my sense of self does not necessarily stop at my body’s surface, but at the boundaries of consciousness. Through meditation, consciousness can expand to include the entire universe, or, as a result of digital addictions, be limited to the realm of our phones — and all that entails.
With Facebook’s Metaverse on the horizon, perhaps now is a good time to take a step back; to carefully consider the world our children will inherit. After all, it’s going to be pretty difficult for them to mop up this climate mess while strapped to an Oculus Quest 2. How will prolonged immersion in virtual reality affect their sense of the 'real’? If, as Morpheus and Hume point out, reality is the result of sense perception, when technology inexorably improves what will be more ‘real’ to future generations: virtual reality or reality proper?
Before consciousness and technology have fused beyond the point of no return, perhaps we should remind ourselves that these are tools. Wondrous, entertaining, enormously helpful, yes, but also potentially harmful to our better natures. So, do we want to continue being cyborgs, marching apathetically towards a transhumanist dystopia? Or do we want to exercise as much self-control as humanly possible, and ground ourselves in a reality that warrants preserving?
The choice is ours.
If you would like to support me directly you can buy me a coffee.
You can also support me by signing up to Medium using my referral link. Not only do you get full access to Medium, but you will be helping me realize my dream of writing creatively full-time!
