Above: Experiential scaffolding. At this link some of the commenters points out a similarity to some of the (palliative) scenes at the end of Soylent Green. I’ve already mentioned Matrix Constructs, Clockwork Orange conditioning etc. The central theme seems to be that of choosing/prescribing experience that is meaningful to the experiencer: like the butterflies in the article.
This seems to be the open question, the degree to which we can clarify what people need and have technological ways of adding these components to the experience (meaningful elements, phobic ‘stimuli’, positively associated items) or whether we’re better leaving these to the imagination, like in hypnosis and imagination-based therapies, or whether we’re better introducing these elements in ‘real-life’.
It seems likely that, as nicely demonstrated in theme park design and put together in the MR framework previously discussed, that a combination of the above could be absolutely amazing. Sense Making essentially is Mixed Reality, as it blends different types of experience, of different classes and temporal statuses [‘Soylent Green’ (1973) Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer].