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?
Fully would. As long as there is no massive downside IRL.
If I could have any experience I wanted and see all the things in the universe without like, living half my life span or my descendants being farmed for fertilizer, then for sure.
The one downside is there would be minimal knowledge gain. Unless that’s also part of the virtual world.
There would be a huge downside in the real world.
The real world would seem dull, boring and depressing. As you cannot have that rich experience as in that virtual world.
A bit like drugs. It would create a dependence which would increase indefinitely until it would be extremely hard to live anything in the real world.
It’s not obvious to me that this would be a downside. Real world already is dull and depressing to many people. If they can be happy in the virtual world then that seems like an improvement to the status quo
To expand on this, one thing I haven’t seen in the comments yet, is how pivotal and amazing this would be for the handicapped and disabled community. I myself have a broken body and being able to do things in VR that I can’t in the physical world would be incredible.
I like holding my wife and daughter too much for this to be truly tempting.
Absolutely plug me in and solder in the connection. Real life is a treadmill of misery.
Who’s going to pay the service costs to keep you in there uninterrupted?
Lets hope I can dialate my perception of time and block out the outside world or its going to be a short life.
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.
I’d be a thousand percent down if I didn’t think it’d be a subscription service that only exists to exploit me
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.
Corporations: not on our watch!
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?
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.
Yes, I would want to resist it. Life is about ups and downs, and I think the better idea would be to have an open-source augmented reality, maybe through glasses that you wear or contacts on your eyes, that can project shared images, like virtual props that everyone else can see, or just act as a VR HMD and replace all your vision with a virtual world for a while.
But bodily autonomy is very important, give people a choice and let them be informed by publishing the source code, PCB diagrams and all that kinda stuff so they know how it works and that they’re not being controlled.
I would love to immerse myself in the digital worlds like in Ready Player One. You could live in the cheapest and shittiest place possible but still have a blast with your virtual avatar and haptic suit. But, instead, we got the Metaverse with Zuck’s low res trees and Eiffel tower lol
Once I can pick and choose my body and change it on a whim, and it feels like my body, Im gonna end up staying in VR unhealthily much.
Even with the tech we have today, when I first used VR and selected a body for something like VRChat, I started feeling like the body was my own. You know the “fake hand” experiment? Something like that. But the illusion is quickly destroyed as soon as I touch something or movement dont match up. And the effect gets weaker for each time.
It was such a cool feeling. I want it again.
Here is an article on a book of a professor of philosophy and neural science about this subject :
The needs of body must be met and then the rest of my time is fair game. I mean being legit healthy not mainlining soylent.
I agree with the principle of what you’re saying, but a 100% soylent diet is actually perfectly fine, and genuinely much healthier than what almost anybody eats otherwise. It’s really good stuff. (assuming you are talking about the real-life name-brand stuff, not the literary version)
This idea of complete control over your reality reminds me of the book/novella The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect. Suffice it to say the story suggests that such a reality would ultimately be meaningless.
I would say it sounds great though, even if eventually it gets really depressing.
I did not read the book, but I can imagine it being interesting for a bit. I don’t know how would someone react to something like this however.
Maybe it can become meaningless, tho maybe if people still need to get into the real world to work, maybe it would become a way to escape the real world.
Which would make that once you get out in the real world, life may seem bad and depressing compared to that virtual world.
It would maybe generate undesirable effects and people would be in that reality for days (ex : what was imagined in Ready Player One). Create an increase in depressions and suicide rates…
Been a while since I’ve seen that referenced! Glad it’s still up.
Reminds me of a short story, where a girl is sent to a VR planet, for robots studying humans
There she has a… VR coffin, which she slowly learns can perfectly simulate reality, or the AI will send probes for her to experience things in reality.
She eventually realizes that they will make perfect human proxies, and starts to plan her escape from her VR coffin
Wish I could remember the name!
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.
