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?
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!
We are in a virtual world.
Continuous macro geometry which suddenly converts to discrete units when free agents interact or observe it?
Sounds a lot like how we’re currently building voxel-based procedurally generated worlds where a continuous seed function determines geometry which is converted into discrete units to be able to track state changes by free agents to what’s initially determined by the seed function.
We even have sync conflicts and lazy optimization in how it handles tracking these changes.
So to your question - are you able to resist the allure of this world? Should you? Does it being virtual or not change whether or not there is meaning in your life?
Though I’m not really interested in being a king of my own universe. I’d much rather be a traveler through the universe of another. And I suspect there’s much more interesting universes out there than simply an educational sim of what life was like in the late stages of humanity and the establishment of what came next, so I’m game to explore.
Also, the creation and variety of virtual worlds we are creating and will continue to create is very much part of the narrative of this reality. And so while traveling through this virtual world, I’m certainly keen on exploring its precursors. We’ve already come a long way from Pong.
At the same time, I’m not a fan of replaying things, so while I am curious and look forward to whatever is the next world in my queue, I think it’s important to take time to appreciate the one I’m in at the moment, as I am certainly am never coming back to this shit hole, as beautiful and majestic as its entropy driven ‘design’ can be in moments.
As with most things, balance is generally a good way to go.
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
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.
What’s happening to the users’ bodies and how are things handled financially for this hypothetical scenario?
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.
It’s fine, but moderation is key. If you spend all your time (or even your life!) there, then that’s unhealthy. You’re using it as an escape and avoiding the real world.
But why? What if someone is truly happy in the simulation while in real life they’re miserable. I doubt that on their death bed they’re wishing they didn’t spend more time doing meaningless work and having no friends.
I wanna live in the project zomboid universe or into the radius VR. There’s just something about living in a apocalypse and trying to survive that makes it appealing for me.
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!
Can food and chips all day
I’d be a thousand percent down if I didn’t think it’d be a subscription service that only exists to exploit me
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
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.
I like holding my wife and daughter too much for this to be truly tempting.
What if they were there with you?
Assumptions:
- Stasis: When i spend months inside VR, my meat prison does not degrade faster than it would have leading my current livestyle. So at least something like the Matrix. Mind Upload would be perfect.
- Variety: The VR is large enough i will not get bored for at least 50 years.
- Control: The VR device is owned and operated by me, without requiring connection to some corporation. My VR life is owned by me. So no Corporate Dystopia. I can end the VR any time i want.
- Immersion: I can choose my avatar, the graphics is good and i can set the amount of pain i want to experience.
- Affordable: I can financially afford to stay in VR for at least 50 years.
Positives:
- Exciting: Every day can be an adventure. The best food can be copy-pasted. Have a house in the woods without having to sacrifice amenities. See the world without pollution. Dive trough oceans without having to catch your breath.
- Much less suffering: No more exercise (unlike my meat prison my avatar does not need exercise). No unwanted pain: Set pain to off if you don’t want to feel exthaustion, stubbing your toes,… No more disease, No worrying about wrecking your body.
- No more physics: Meals will remain fresh and warm even after weeks of hiking/climbing in the snow. Teleportation will be available.
Negatives:
- ?
If such VR is ever achieved, almoset everyone will live in it, and those living in it will look back and ask themselves how humans were ever happy to live like we do today.
I agree. Possible explanation to Fermi’s paradox (where are all the aliens?) is that they’re enjoying their lives in virtual worlds
Negatives: real world stagnation.
But maybe that’s a positive actually.
I can see the line of reasoning and honestly I would probably be an early adopter.
There is no invention (that i can imagine) i would look forward to if Mind Upload VR was real.
That would mean stagnation, but progress is only good if it reduces suffering. And i just can not see how making faster computers and learning physics can reduce suffering if there is Mind Upload VR, where all pain is optional.As long as the VR is more like a Matrix where the body still ages and dies, of course i would want research to continue so death does not rip me from my awesome virtual life before i have played it trough. Maybe even multiple times.
I agree that progress will most likely slow down once Matrix VR is real because why waste your precious years lerning physics and biology when there is affordable VR?
Once Mind Upload VR is there i can actually see science progressing much faster, because if you have a processor that can simulate one conciousness and be loaded 10%, you can either put 9 more people on it, or you could speed up time 10x, so the mind that is researching new technology will experience 10x more time than real time and be done with research much faster.
Or you could store yourself on disk and wait 1000 years to have science catch up.Really? If I could upload my mind, one of the biggest things I’d want to do is explore the real universe. Upload digital people into probes and suddenly we can actually travel the stars.
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.
