Architect of Thought: VR
Project overview + fundraising plans + co-founder search
As some of you know, I started this Substack a year and a half ago in an attempt to gather cognitive exercises from different traditions and compile them all into a great knowledge base. Now it’s time to reveal the seismic shift that Architect of Thought has undergone in the past few months, along with details of the future changes.
To summarize the future vision in one tweet:
An ecosystem around a VR app that helps people develop cognitive abilities in unconventional ways: not maximizing narrow skills, but solving complex problems in unusual environments.
Sounds good enough? Buckle up for some examples.
Use case: expanded awareness
Imagine a scene: you’ve got an ancient puzzle in your hands you have to solve but at the same time, a giant dragon spits fireballs at you. You should both focus on the immediate task in the foreground and pay attention to the environment to evade the projectiles aimed at you. Or: you solve mathematical problems that float in front of you and simultaneously count the animals lurking in the woods at some distance.
These will provide some good introductory training for Alexander Technique.
Use case: memory palace
If you use a graph note-taking app (e.g. Roam or Obsidian) you may love this one. How about mapping your whole graph of notes to a virtual space? It can be the house you spent your childhood in, or a castle, or a system of caves — or likely a combination of all these. You can attach your notes to points in an Escherian playground!
What you will see below is a draft and therefore amenable to change.Ecosystem overview
Once the VR app is loaded, you will find yourself in the main lobby and see several categories of exercises, called Aspects: awareness, intelligence, mathematics, note-taking, and so on. They can overlap: for instance, the Alexander Technique training mentioned above will be tied to both awareness and intelligence. Each Aspect will comprise a number of specific rooms. Working out in these exercise rooms will earn you scores in different Traits that represent various mental abilities (although it will be possible to turn progress-tracking off).
The mobile (and later, web) application will connect you to Helpers: programs that run in the background, helping you schedule your workouts and keep track of what you’ve achieved. Later, a couple of other helpers may be added (namely, one giving general lifestyle advice in the spirit of a biohacking app and another providing helpful GTD frameworks and a UI to employ those).
Finally, the knowledge base will contain everything related to the exercises and practices, in the form of articles or links to relevant sources. You’ll be able to access it from the mobile app or from within the VR environment.
Here’s a simplified view of the general structure:
Construction kit
This is the most difficult part of the ordeal. The construction kit will take hundreds if not thousands of hours in making, but when it’s complete you will be given a toolset that makes you able to assemble any exercise you wish while staying in VR. The kit will let us exchange ideas on how to improve one’s mind, not in the form of written text but as guided interactive VR experiences.
What I need
Funding
My aspiration is to go full startup mode1 but that requires a certain amount of prep time which I’m short on right now. I will be making Architect of Thought even if I have to do paid work in parallel but I really want to devote myself to it full-time right away and not slow down tenfold because of a job.
In the interim, as I’m looking for serious funding options, I need your help. If you’re hyped about the project, please support me on Patreon or PayPal:
If you want to stay anonymous, crypto payments are an option too:
Bitcoin: bc1qrknqul6un30u7x5se8e2pngjwdptnrnp3d0u9a
Ethereum: 0x567ccDD062Ec253293B2A3C0459A86c00CdDfDbeOnce the project gets funded, I will stop the crowdfunding campaign. Basically, what I lack now are 3-4 months during which I won’t have to worry about income, to make consecutively better prototypes and leverage my way up to the first investment round or a solid grant (partly depending on the controversial for-profit/non-profit decision I describe in the footnotes).
Working together
This is the most important long-term thing that I’m focused on (funding is only the most urgent one). Architect of Thought needs a skilled software engineer and an experienced 3D generalist who would be excited about the project. Once I raise a funding round, I will be hiring and these two directions will be a priority.
Besides that, I’m looking for a co-founder. I have the technical part of the deal mostly covered, as well as about 50% of product design and pitching. What I need the most is the startup side of startup-building. I lack understanding of how to raise money, split shares, do executive stuff, and so on. On top of that, if you are:
tech-savvy (knows how to code, uses Linux, and so on),
a fan of tools for thought (graph note-taking, spaced repetition, etc),
into critical rationalism (Karl Popper, David Deutsch),
highly agentic (this intentionally broad definition will require a vibe check),
and want to make this project together with me then just DM me already.
Bonus examples
Use case: mathematical functions
Many people struggle with the definition of a function (long ago, I was one of those people). An explanation cannot be more vivid than if it’s interactive and in VR. Show the student a simple visualization of a function: a box that spits out “true” or “false” depending on the number it is given and a rule. Then exhibit continuous functions that you can manipulate with a slider. Then gradually increase the size of the toolset, stack functions together, and let people see what happens in real-time.
There are 2-dimensional tools explaining functions but first, there are complex cases that will be easier to demonstrate with higher-dimensional examples, and second, stronger feelings of embodiment and presence may facilitate memorization.
Use case: juggling tutorial
With the use of haptic interfaces (e.g. vibrating controllers), we can teach people complex hand-waving patterns, like juggling. This is a hypothesis for now but it’s definitely worth checking. Wouldn’t you love to learn a fancy skill like juggling or lockpicking in such a cyberpunk-ish manner?
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Disclaimer: all content in this newsletter and any associated platforms is for informational purposes only. It shouldn’t be construed as a call to action, medical, or psychological advice.
I’m undecided on whether to make a for-profit or a non-profit startup. The main question is which form would benefit the long-term goals of this enterprise. (Said goals are: to make people smarter and increase humanity’s problem-solving capabilities.) This is uncharted territory for me but I am learning quickly and will be able to decide soon. If you’d like to contribute to the decision-making process, you are welcome.