Lets assume we develop the capacity to create virtual worlds that are near indistinguishable from the real world. We hook you up into a machine and you now find yourself in what effectively is a paraller reality where you get to be the king of your own universe (if you so desire). Nothing is off limits - everything you’ve ever dreamt of is possible. You can be the only person there, you can populate it with unconscious AI that appears consciouss or you can have other people visit your world and you can visit theirs aswell as spend time in “public worlds” with millions of other real people.
Would you try it and do you think you’d prefer it over real world? Do you see it as a negative from individual perspective if significant part of the population basically spend their entire lives there?
I’d jump in, but i would still need a crafted experience. I find designing my own sandbox to be a bit dull. Remember the last season of the Good Place? Turns out infinite wish fulfilment might not be that effective at making us happy. And it certainly won’t help us to develop.
But if there are fun, designed experiences that are engaging and challenging to do inside this realm, sign me the fuck up.
Question though: how is time experienced on the inside? Because if our virtual experiences happen faster than real time we could get some real world advantages by studying and training in virtual.
One issue with learning and training, is that you’ll have the same limitations as now. You are still human, just connected to a machine and time cannot accelerate to learn faster.
However if we could move, change time to whatever place we want, create whatever we want. And still look real.
Then that would maybe make something very interesting for learning and training. It wouldn’t be faster. But for example a teacher would be able to create a world where they can help the students learn better, with images, simulations, stories…
However that may also create some issues where it wouldn’t be wise to recreate wars, death and other things which can be shocking for people. Because of that realism, it would be very hard to distinguish between a simulated war/death and a real one.
Tho it would maybe create a huge benefit for training for flying a plane for example. Cheap and no risks to break anything.
We could and we should. “Real world” will deteriorate socially, enviromentally and architecturally if real VR becomes popular.
Not necessarily. We might have robots and AI keeping up the economy and human drudgery is no longer needed.
deleted by creator
Knowing the food I make my Zomboid PC eat, I definitely wouldn’t want to. Time to eat an entire can of sardines and wash it down with some evaporated milk!
deleted by creator
I think it would be great to try out things that are impossible in the real world without any risks. Not necessarily crazy things, but things that are just not available to me irl. Like designing stuff without any limits of ressources or money. That way we could improve the real world by testing things in the virtual.
It quickly turns into a philosophical question of what you really want to do in the real world and why. It doesn’t make much sense to better your real world for things that could be easily done in the virtual. However, since your life even in the virtual world depends on your real survival, there would still be things to do.
Then there’s also the thing that your virtual world would be limited to your own imagination. At some point, that will get boring even with virtual people around. It would still make sense to exchange ideas with actual people in order to expand your own virtual world.
I mean, seeing as this is not yet a reality… Have you looked into lucid dreaming?
This makes me wonder, how often do people’s disabilities manifest in their dreams? Presumably the rates would be different for those born with their disability and those who got it through illness or injury later in life.
Here is an article on a book of a professor of philosophy and neural science about this subject :
Just watch the TV series “Westworld”.
(Edit: or one of the many other scifi movies / series / books discussing exactly that question.)
Probably if it’s a San Junipero situation.
Give me the outcome of The Good Place as well where you can choose oblivion after there’s nothing left to do.
San Junipero was one of the few “happy” episodes of Black Mirror but it didn’t ask the question of “where are we in 10,000 years?” like The Good Place considered.
It all the depends on the how and the what.
First of all, if the virtual reality is able to replicate physical sensation indistinguishably from the physical world, it’s not virtual, then, is it? Then it’s just alternative reality. If that was the case, the only dilemma would be the implications to the physical world. Will your body still exist, or are we talking San Junipero here?
As long as there are implications to the real world, then I believe a significant percentage of people will not abandon it, because of empathy.
I personally would only live an alternative reality if there was no one I love back in the real world anymore, or if I were to die.
As for virtual reality in the realm of possibilities, there will always be something missing, as addictive as it may be, so there will always be something to bring you back to reality
As for just trying it, hell yeah! As long as there are no negative consequences physically that I know of before hand.
You are actually describing my “ideal” world as I outlined here!
My vision is heavily inspired by Terence McKenna. I imagine a world as it might have existed during prehistoric times. Lush forests teeming with exotic wildlife, clean air, and crystal clear water. No highways full of billboards, no parking lots, no shopping malls, and no cars. Just safe grounds and paths for humans embedded deep within all of this nature. At a birds-eye view, it may look as if humanity has completely abandoned technology and regressed back into its childhood. Yet if you were to look out through the eyes of one of these utopian people, you would see the most wonderful augmented reality display. Information, communication, entertainment, education, global economies… almost everything has been de-materialized. Humanity’s ceaseless pursuit of technology has been mostly divorced from our physical environment and mother earth is bustling with life again. The only technologies that remain in the real world are those that help all of us live happy and healthy lives (modern medicine, delicious food, solar power, etc) all the while the shared virtual reality in our eyes is limited only by our collective imaginations. We are finally living in accord with nature without having to forsake our innate desire for knowledge and progress.
A very cool vision, but people would still have to live and grow food somewhere, and generate absurd amounts of energy. Assuming we can do vertical hydroponics and cold fusion, the centers of human civilization could be massive, but isolated and surrounded by unspoiled nature.
The question, then, is what stops people from multiplying endlessly and covering the planet in fusion-fueled mega-structures?
Our declining birth rate, presumably
Will decline even faster if everybody’s got a digital big tiddy goth gf that they can’t actually procreate with, and digital children of the perfect temperment if they so choose.
I’m greedy, I’d like more than one please
Education in the form of a cultivated social desire to live in harmony with our planet and not overpopulate it? I’m really not sure! I know I’m a romantic but a boy can dream. There has to be a more sustainable way for humans to live on earth though. Virtualization or dematerialization is the most realistic way for us to have our cake and eat it too.
Corporations: not on our watch!
Absolutely plug me in and solder in the connection. Real life is a treadmill of misery.
Well, in a world that has technology this advanced, you could maybe make your body do actual work in the real world (controlled by your employer) but you would still experience the virtual world as op has explained.
Sounds like a black mirror outline. I shiver at the idea.
At least you’d be in reality
That’s the problem were trying to excape from.
It’s a dystopian extension of what it could be if society continued on a bad path. In truth I’d absolutely hope that there would be better options at that point, because society is better. Right now, drugs are simpler and maybe even saner than engaging with reality fully.
Yeah, it’s disconcerting to consider, but it actually sounds quite nice to me. Let my body work and be productive while my mind is happy and free. If you’re only really experiencing the latter, what does it matter what your body is doing (as long as it remains safe and healthy)? Particularly if you stay in that virtual reality permanently.
Lets hope I can dialate my perception of time and block out the outside world or its going to be a short life.
Reminds me of this comic
https://twitter.com/Merryweatherey/status/1185636106257211392
You know, I feel like it would all seem pretty vacuous to me pretty fast. Maybe there’d be more opportunity in the real world as everyone dips into simulation, though.
I think sci-fi has it right with that, I mean you’d only get up out of your chair or whatever receptacle to perform bodily functions. Most people think everyone would turn into fat blobs, but I think that’s not the case. There’s this one sci-fi where I think they got it right, most people became emaciated due to a failure to eat and get any exercise.
Oh and I’ll take the blue pill, VR all the way, reality blows. Though some might say reality is already virtual. It’s an interesting hypothesis, sure would explain a lot.
For me it depends on who controls it really, say Amazon becomes the skynet and creates such seamless vr I will never even try it out, resisting isnt too difficult im that case
