Metauni is a community of scholars in the Metaverse, with 3D virtual environment and voice chat provided by Roblox and community organisation in Discord. All are welcome! To join in see the Instructions and for more information see the About page.

Enter metauni

Yet it is not these gifts, nor the most determined ambition combined with irresistible will-power, that enables one to surmount the “invisible yet formidable boundaries” that encircle our universe. Only innocence can surmount them, which mere knowledge doesn’t even take into account, in those moments when we find ourselves able to listen to things, totally and intensely absorbed in child’s play – Alexander Grothendieck

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The second metauni course Shadows of Computation (SOC) is now running and will cover introductory category theory and the relation to computer science. We recently ran a course on algebraic geometry called MAG. Got a Board Key from Roblox? To view the board on the web enter the Key at metauniService. We recently held the 2023 metauni festival.

Schedule

To join an event click the “Join now” button or, for Discord-based events, join the metauni Discord. Times are given in AEDT (UTC +11). Names in italics are the co-organisers of the seminar.

February 02, 2023

• Disruption 10:00-11:30 (Adam Dorr): Towards a science of technological disruption. An open discussion of technological disruption, how it works, what it means and how to play a positive part in it. This week: universal mind and privacy. Join now
• Euclid 11:30-12:00 (Dan Murfet, Ken Chan): Book two of Euclid with an AI assistant, just for fun. This week Book 2 Propositions 5,6. Join now
• Singular Learning Theory 16:00-17:30 (Dan Murfet, Edmund Lau): Singularities are knowledge. A learning seminar on Watanabe’s Singular Learning Theory: algebraic geometry serves statistical learning theory. This week: Working session on in-context learning. Join now
• AI Safety 21:00-22:00 (Matthew Farrugia-Roberts): reading group on technical and philosophical topics in AI safety. This week Reward modeling. Join now
• Anything At All 22:00-23:00 (Various): The seminar for everyone. This week Will Troiani - An opposite is whole only with its contrary; composing music and creating mathematics. Join now
• #metauni-dev 23:00-23:30: development meeting (in the Discord).

What’s off

• Abstraction 20:00-21:00 (Alexander Oldenziel): what is an abstraction? Are they universal? Runs biweekly. On hiatus. Join now
• Landau-Ginzburg 15:00-16:00 (Rohan Hitchcock): on the geometry and (bi)category theory of isolated hypersurface singularities. On hiatus. Join now

On hiatus

• Shadows of Computation (Billy Snikkers, Will Troiani): The shadows cast by computation onto category theory.
• Cryptography (Eleanor McMurtry): on zero knowledge proofs.
• Code (Ethan Curtiss): coding and math in Roblox (in the Discord). Sometimes we livestream working on metauni infrastructure, and sometimes we have guest speakers from the Roblox dev community presenting interesting projects they are working on.
• #metauni-dev: development meeting (in the Discord).
• Foundations (Billy Snikkers, Will Troiani): The nature of mathematical objects and the languages we use to describe them. The surprising utility of these languages when considered as mathematical objects themselves.

For videos from the seminars, see the pages for the individual seminars (linked above) or the YouTube channel. If you are a speaker in one of the seminars, see the instructions for speakers. For information about past events and videos see the events page. The tools we use are open source and we’ll happily help you set up your own seminars and teach you how to record them, just jump into the Discord and say hi. For information on how we record our videos see this page.

What is metauni?

On the theory that is better to show than tell, here is a video from one of our recent seminars:

For more see the about page and the YouTube channel.

History

Contributors to the tech stack in chronological order are Daniel Murfet starsonthars, Lucas Cantor HeadOfMusic, James Clift (JC), Billy Snikkers (BS), Ethan Curtiss, BenSBk, jaipack17, phoebe.

• 11/1/2021 - metauni founded
• 14/1/2021 - History start, got Discord integration working, intro video.
• 16/1/2021 - Update with clickable documents, audio plinths and working teleports, another video.
• 17/1/2021 - Rewrote Discord bot to use MongoDB, fixed some bugs, implemented slide presentations (video).
• 17/1/2021 - Implemented popover “fullscreen” GUI for looking at slides, synced to the presenter’s current slide. There is a video demoing this feature as well as recapping the other features.
• 18/1/2021 - Instructions for building your own node to be read in conjunction with this blog post for the database and this one for keep alive (now superceded by Billy’s excellent guide, see below).
• 20/1/2021 - Implemented the challenge system, with the first two challenges for the first event #1A, #1B see challenges.
• 22/1/2021 - First public event
• 27/1/2021 - Social media accounts up and running (LC on Instagram, DM on Twitter).
• 31/1/2021 - Added new talk area for Ziling Ye’s event (The Island).
• 1/2/2021 - Working whiteboards (by JC) and a new talk area (the Music Tower) for Lucas’s event.
• 10/2/2021 - Weiqi board first release on the Roblox Toolbox (construction video).
• 11/2/2021 - Whiteboard and Viewer first release on the Roblox Toolbox (created by JC).
• 17/2/2021 - Updated whiteboards, now drawing is visible to new players in a server, significant performance improvements (JC).
• 18/2/2021 - New administration features: kick, ban, control of whiteboard access (by BS).
• 25/2/2021 - First public release of AdminCommands (by BS).
• 1/5/2021 - Updated whiteboards, new replay feature (by JC).
• 16/7/2021 - Public debut of the talking boards and the locus concept.
• 4/11/2021 - Debut of the “What’s On” board in the metauni hub.
• 9/12/2021 - First open-source release of the metaboard (BS).
• 18/12/2021 - First release of private servers.
• 23/12/2021 - First release of persistent boards.
• 27/12/2021 - First open-source release of the Orb system for integrating Roblox’s spatial voice into metauni.
• 8/1/2022 - Switch to spatial voice for metauni events.
• 27/1/2022 - Integration of the Avatar Editor (by phoebe).
• 8/6/2022 - Automated schedule deployment system (by Ethan and phoebe).
• 7/7/2022 - First VR lecture.
• 9/7/2022 - Metaboard v1 (led by BS).
• 10/9/2022 - First VR replay (code by BS).
• 25/11/2022 - Integration of GPT for seminars.
• 10/12/2022 - Launch of metauniService (http://service.metauni.org).
• 2/1/2023 - metauniOS absorbs portals, orbs and part of metaboard.
• 4/1/2023 - Launch of GPT-based NPCs at metauni: Youtwice, Shoal and Ginger (video).
• 12/1/2023 - Festival 2023

Music in the Rising Sea:

• “Pop with Toys” by Lucas Cantor - in our event video and on the audio plinth near the knot.
• “Forgotten Sacrifice” by Lucas Cantor - in the Cave of Forgotten Sacrifice
• “The Deification Of Naram-Sin” by Lucas Cantor - at the Solar Peak.
• “A Metric Based on Insects” by Will Troiani - in the Blind Cave.