Predictive brains in hyperreal worlds: how XR exploits the indifference to being

Abstract This opinion paper proposes a novel framework for understanding the neurological susceptibility to extended reality (XR) as a tool of manipulation. We argue that Meinong's ontological claim that objects retain their properties regardless of the existence, Friston’s active inference, and Baudrillard's social critique of hyperreality are not parallel frameworks but independent derivations of a single structural consequence of representational systems: that the criteria by which such systems operate are constitutively indifferent to whether their contents are grounded in a mind-independent referent. This indifference is a logical necessity in Meinong, a structural byproduct in Friston, and a culturally amplified pathology in Baudrillard—with XR functioning as the technical apparatus that simultaneously satisfies all three conditions. Examined together, these levels—ontological, (neuro-)cognitive, technical, and social—reveal that the coherence and efficacy of representations can structurally override questions of existence. This multilayered indifference to being provides the theoretical foundation for our central argument concerning human vulnerability to XR-induced hyperreality. We contend that when AI-fueled XR applications become sufficiently powerful, they can induce a state of hyperreality where the distinction between real and simulated dissolves. The human brain, already primed by its neuroconstructivist nature to prioritize operational utility over ontological truth, responds to such environments with an inherent indifference to being. As XR systems grow increasingly adaptive and affectively attuned, they expose this bias by making hyperreality visible—aligning the technical precision of simulation with the biological drive for coherence and blurring the cognitive boundary between assumption and judgment.