Economic And Social Effects Of Living INSIDE Video Games....

[Spacescifi]

15 minutes ago, MKI said:

I think the topic of a "virtual world" and its impact on society, economically and social is a fun topic by itself.

However now this thread is mixing in AI and bitcoin topics for some reason  I think I'll just skip over those properties, since the original topic is interesting enough.

 

There are some holes in the premise that need addressing. Like why would this game make murder feel like murder? I can't think of a single reason for such a feature, so having "crimes be like real crimes" doesn't make any sense either.

Also no one would pay to play at that rate. You'd need to make it nearly free to get any sort of user-base. (hello second life) Without the "social world" aspect, its just a fancy video game and it would have minimal if not no impact on society as a whole. It's only if it's nearly or completely free, and highly accessible to a large group would such a technology actually take off and possibly affect society.

Generally I think you end up with what is essentially the modern day internet, but more flashy.  Ultimately however, such technologies would also follow the modern day internet in terms of problems. Anonymity can make people act completely different, positively and negatively. Stuff like "spending all your time in the pod" is already what many do, just its their phone, social media, video games. That's already "a thing", just without the pod itself. The changes to society wouldn't be much, only this technology would just change the way we currently do things to be even more evasive, but the end result is the same. People end up "plugged in".

 

 

Yeah... your right. Free it is. Yet the access is not, unless hooked up to public access. Otherwise you have to buy or rent your own pod. Public access has long wait times.

The 'world' comes in three flavours.

Gaming: Minimal if any pain receptors active.

Hard gaming: Gaming with ALL pain receptors turned on. Since some people want to experience things that should... end them. Can be legal or illegal depending on age and other considerations (like mental health history and past jail time).

Interspace: Where you have 3-D internet essentially. A world where every building is.... a website. Some bigger than others.... don't get me started on the dark side of the internet. Interspace is noted for having far more Users than AI present, unlike the game worlds. If AI is present, it's on some sort of mission. Pain receptiors are on totally here. Reason? For the experience.

NPC's are not or should not be in interspace, unless they are pretending to be an AI gamemaster or they are accompanied by a user who bought them outright.

 

Edited October 5, 2021 by Spacescifi

[MKI]

I know the idea of feeling pain to be pleasurable for some people, but most people don't really like pain. I can't see that being a highly requested feature. 

 

4 minutes ago, Spacescifi said:

Interspace: Where you have 3-D internet essentially. A world where every building is.... a website. Some bigger than others.... don't get me started on the dark side of the internet. Interspace is noted for having far more Users than AI present, unlike the game worlds. If AI is present, it's on some sort of mission.

This is Second Life through and through, or any other similar sandbox-like game. 

Just without the AI aspect, which again I don't want to touch on much because it turns into a rabbit whole. You can't just "add AI" and have it magically be whatever you imagine AI to be.

Even the modern day internet is made up of a bunch of actors doing things, and not all those actors are actually human. From your operating system managing its fan speed, to your router directing packets to the right servers, to the software running on this page to mange event handlers. All that software isn't "smart", or "AI", but they make up an incredible complex system. You can even boil down what you'd think of as "modern AI", like Alexa, or Siri is just a system built out of a bunch of data to match patterns. We call it AI, but its still crazy stupid. 

 

In general, such a virtual world can't be hyper realistic because if its too realistic... why play it?

[Spacescifi]

2 hours ago, MKI said:

I know the idea of feeling pain to be pleasurable for some people, but most people don't really like pain. I can't see that being a highly requested feature. 

 

This is Second Life through and through, or any other similar sandbox-like game. 

Just without the AI aspect, which again I don't want to touch on much because it turns into a rabbit whole. You can't just "add AI" and have it magically be whatever you imagine AI to be.

Even the modern day internet is made up of a bunch of actors doing things, and not all those actors are actually human. From your operating system managing its fan speed, to your router directing packets to the right servers, to the software running on this page to mange event handlers. All that software isn't "smart", or "AI", but they make up an incredible complex system. You can even boil down what you'd think of as "modern AI", like Alexa, or Siri is just a system built out of a bunch of data to match patterns. We call it AI, but its still crazy stupid. 

 

In general, such a virtual world can't be hyper realistic because if its too realistic... why play it?

 

Hyper-realism=hyper-escapism.

 

Sentient, able to reason is true AI.... which is why few would browse interspace because dumbware 'AI' and humans can cover that.

In the systems under it's control an OSAI is god-like, only answering to the human moderating team above it, which answers to the human administrator who monitors things overall.

Inside interspace, an OSAI has much the same abilities as a User, only becoming god-like in systems it actually controls, which definitely is not interspace. NPC's have less freedom in interspace... mainly because certain places they literally cannot enter and are barred as if with an invisible forcefield... unless a user or OSAI grants them access.

Edited October 5, 2021 by Spacescifi

[kerbiloid]

... Whiping the next virtual slave in VR helmet with a VR whip, the OP suddenly felt a light cold touch of a razor on the neck.

"Don Electrone sends his greetings to you and thanks for the idea of the NPC world which is aware of what you call 'real'..."

OP hardly swallowed, trying not to breath too much.

"... But you did it without respect. You even ignored the last upgrade of his character. And now he wants your right kidney as an excuse".

"But... But... But he... it is just a virtual character! A NPC character! Just an in-game AI!!"

"We don't care. His payments are real. "

Edited October 6, 2021 by kerbiloid

[SOXBLOX]

@Spacescifi Yeeeaaaahhhhh, no. I don't see much of Western civilization going for this. The first issue is that it's so bizarre. That world isn't real. Most people in the West today are at least very mildly concerned about getting away from screens. If I had to guess, I wouldn't see any more than a third of the American population, and probably less of the general European one, even seriously considering this.

But let's say a subset of the population does accept this. What happens to them? They start to live more and more in the realm of their virtual environments, to the detriment of their real-world contacts and connections. They lose touch with reality and become dependent on the illusion in their heads. Sound familiar? Yep. It's just an extension of modern social media. (Plus, it also sounds like the screen-rooms in that Ray Bradbury dystopia.) So maybe we can extrapolate its effects? You bet. We get something halfway between a zombie apocalypse and 1984.

First of all, democracy would die. The people in charge of the virtual world would inevitably twist it to their own views. It would be the greatest propaganda machine yet. Don't think it would happen? It already has. Check out the modern internet. Who decides what is "misinformation"? Are they always necessarily right? No. Humans are both self-interested and really, really good at telling themselves "This is for the common good, so it's okay".  Bad combination.

And what happens to the people who are duped by the system? When they realize they've been duped, what do they do? Or what happens if they're addicted, but the power is out or something? There's a saying, "Civilization is just three missed meals away from mass rioting." This is the same thing, just on steroids.

And then there's the element of fundamental human needs. Contrary to what many people seem to think, humans need more than just food and water. We need a solid way to interpret the world and make sense of the things that happen to us. We need actual relationships with family and friends for the benefit of our mental health. The virtual world you describe just won't cut it. The people who put themselves in it will suffer because of that.

So this is just a bad idea on so many levels. Fortunately, from a cynical point of view, the entire thing defeats itself. The adherents who accept the bio-tech and jump in to the virtual world will become unproductive members of society. They won't propagate. In fact, a lot of them might end up so sunk in depression or whatever that they just snap. Like I said, that's the cynical view.

What really scares me is what if the people who like this sort of idea try forcing it on us? ("For the common good, according to us," remember?) The forcible hijacking of my sensory inputs? I think I'd rather die, like the animal that chews its leg off in order to escape from a trap.

TL;DR: It's not compatible with human nature, and it won't work in a free society. It could be forced on people, though.

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, SOXBLOX said:

But let's say a subset of the population does accept this. What happens to them? They start to live more and more in the realm of their virtual environments, to the detriment of their real-world contacts and connections. They lose touch with reality and become dependent on the illusion in their heads.

And that's great!

UBI + VR =

• billions of people are sitting at home, instead of doing the job bad but stealing it from the robots who do it good;
• no need in thought-out jobs, invented just to make the people stay in a controlled environment instead of walking around streets, and to make them be tired instead of being bored.

If make them rotate a dynamo under the chair, it's both mass sport and green energy.
For better performance, their virtual avatars could be whipped, so the pain loopback is also a very good idea.
One NPC with a whip + 100 real players in pain dynamo-chairs = power of community, the electric power.

1 hour ago, SOXBLOX said:

It's just an extension of modern social media.

What, do you think, they are for?
They turn the chaotic human mess into a regular, predicted order.

1 hour ago, SOXBLOX said:

We get something halfway between a zombie apocalypse and 1984.

1984 was about physically aggressive societies, while these ones aren't.

1 hour ago, SOXBLOX said:

First of all, democracy would die.

Vice versa, in the VR it would be perfect, and also everyone's party always wins.
Maybe even, 1 mln of people = 1 mln virtual presidents, and everyone feels happy.

1 hour ago, SOXBLOX said:

And then there's the element of fundamental human needs. Contrary to what many people seem to think, humans need more than just food and water.

And they can serve each other thinking they are playing a fantasy game in augmented reality.

1 hour ago, SOXBLOX said:

We need actual relationships with family and friends for the benefit of our mental health.

And you can select and reload any set of them any time.

1 hour ago, SOXBLOX said:

The adherents who accept the bio-tech and jump in to the virtual world will become unproductive members of society. They won't propagate. In fact, a lot of them might end up so sunk in depression or whatever that they just snap. Like I said, that's the cynical view.

Virtual augmentation is not just the future, but also a way to let everyone live in a perfect world of his own dreams doing any chores in the real world.

Just an office boss is feeling (and seeing) like a horned fire-breathing beast on a throne of bones, whipping the naked, skinny office slaves with frightened faces, in a dark-red lava hall full of screams and madness,
while the office staff feels like they are happy elves on a field of flowers and seeing him like a kind elven king in a cloud of butterflies.
So, everyone is happy and satisfied with his job.

1 hour ago, SOXBLOX said:

What really scares me is what if the people who like this sort of idea try forcing it on us?

Why "forcing"? "Granting"!

Edited October 8, 2021 by kerbiloid

[SOXBLOX]

25 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

[Literally your entire post]

Sometimes I can't tell if you're serious or are just really, really sarcastic. Either way, keep it up! 

[Nuke]

getting paid to play video games may actually become a thing. in ye olden days of yore, you paid money for video games, they would run on modest hardware, they tended to have exit points and hardly any grind at all. it was for fun. games were simple and not something you really could live in. but things have changed since the golden dos era. video hardware started getting insanely powerful. software renderers gave way to hardware acceleration which led to better and better video hardware that rival what people in the '90s would call a supercomputer. at the same time games changed. multiplayer became a thing in the quake era, but the games were still simple. around the same time were games that started to have a cinematic story, then cutscenes gave way to interactive storytelling, games also got bigger games, like minecraft and elite dangerous and the amount of time you can sink into them became astronomical. changes in pricing models made it possible to pay subscriptions to play games depended on external datacenters and the mmo was born. but gamers didnt like the subscription fees. some time later devs figured you could make more money letting people play for free and selling premium content, the f2p model became highly lucrative. somewhere in there gpu crypto mining became a thing, while its possible to run a large scale farm and get filthy rich, you can use small scale farming to fund your gaming hardware and many games, because most of them take place in the datacenter, my gpu is grossly underutilized and as a result i can turn a small amount of profit just by playing video games. these are things that have happened.

fastforward a hundred years. power has become cheap due to commercial fusion and environmental catastrophes have been averted. all world currencies become cryptographic. population is still an issue and needs to be controlled (video games are good at this and high end gaming hardware is as ubiquitous as tv was in the 80s, the internet in the 90s, and the smartphone is now). meanwhile companies have developed software to put the capabilities of gamers to work to solve real world problems (for example basing real-world logistics after virtual infrastructure that someone made in a game).  computers have reached the pinnacle of their performance, virtual reality sets now feature direct neural interfaces (it is no longer possible to know if you are in a virtual world or not). production is almost completely automated and ubi becomes widely adopted. there are very few real world jobs, however virtual jobs exist and you can support yourself irl just by playing video games. some might eve opt to have their brains jacked in at the datacenter and discard their bodies entirely (in the name of efficiency). this might even be an option for robotic space missions, where astronaut brains live in a small self sufficient module and can construct a colony through telepresence robotics. 

[DDE]

2 hours ago, SOXBLOX said:

And then there's the element of fundamental human needs. Contrary to what many people seem to think, humans need more than just food and water. We need a solid way to interpret the world and make sense of the things that happen to us. We need actual relationships with family and friends for the benefit of our mental health. The virtual world you describe just won't cut it. The people who put themselves in it will suffer because of that.

If only mental health.

If kids end up shorter without literal parental touch, to the point of telomere (freakin' DNA) damage, imagine the rest of the effects across the board.

Spoiler

BTW it's an amusing retroactive explanation of the difference between T1/2/TSCC Sarah Connor of normal height, and the laughable pint-sized casting choice in T5. Don't let Terminators brng up kids.

"Come at me in the comments"

 

[kerbiloid]

What's a difference between an odd-job person gathering garbage from the road curb and the same person wearing a lightweight augmented reality helmet seeing the cars as pony and unicorns, the asphalt as ruby and diamond pavement, the garbage as colored mushrooms?

Only in the level of happiness.

(See the pokemon hunters.)

Just presume that Vault-Tec is real, and everything strange is actually a Fallout-like experiment, and everything gets reasonable.

The pokemon experiment was successful, wasn't it?

A lot of people were effectively living in two realities at once, interacting with both of them.

Just replace the useless pokemons with actual chores.

[magnemoe]

On 10/8/2021 at 8:47 AM, Nuke said:

getting paid to play video games may actually become a thing. in ye olden days of yore, you paid money for video games, they would run on modest hardware, they tended to have exit points and hardly any grind at all. it was for fun. games were simple and not something you really could live in. but things have changed since the golden dos era. video hardware started getting insanely powerful. software renderers gave way to hardware acceleration which led to better and better video hardware that rival what people in the '90s would call a supercomputer. at the same time games changed. multiplayer became a thing in the quake era, but the games were still simple. around the same time were games that started to have a cinematic story, then cutscenes gave way to interactive storytelling, games also got bigger games, like minecraft and elite dangerous and the amount of time you can sink into them became astronomical. changes in pricing models made it possible to pay subscriptions to play games depended on external datacenters and the mmo was born. but gamers didnt like the subscription fees. some time later devs figured you could make more money letting people play for free and selling premium content, the f2p model became highly lucrative. somewhere in there gpu crypto mining became a thing, while its possible to run a large scale farm and get filthy rich, you can use small scale farming to fund your gaming hardware and many games, because most of them take place in the datacenter, my gpu is grossly underutilized and as a result i can turn a small amount of profit just by playing video games. these are things that have happened.

fastforward a hundred years. power has become cheap due to commercial fusion and environmental catastrophes have been averted. all world currencies become cryptographic. population is still an issue and needs to be controlled (video games are good at this and high end gaming hardware is as ubiquitous as tv was in the 80s, the internet in the 90s, and the smartphone is now). meanwhile companies have developed software to put the capabilities of gamers to work to solve real world problems (for example basing real-world logistics after virtual infrastructure that someone made in a game).  computers have reached the pinnacle of their performance, virtual reality sets now feature direct neural interfaces (it is no longer possible to know if you are in a virtual world or not). production is almost completely automated and ubi becomes widely adopted. there are very few real world jobs, however virtual jobs exist and you can support yourself irl just by playing video games. some might eve opt to have their brains jacked in at the datacenter and discard their bodies entirely (in the name of efficiency). this might even be an option for robotic space missions, where astronaut brains live in a small self sufficient module and can construct a colony through telepresence robotics. 

Its already an economy in MMO who is kind of tied into the real economy. In many games you can trade cash shop tokens or items for in game currency. Its no way to get money out however. 

Now if you break the rules of the game companies its ways to get money out by bot farming or boosting characters for payment, this get you money but not much, but an benefit of internet is that any teen in an low cost country can do this. 

An game who uses your gpu to mine crypto currency is exploiting kind of like lootboxes. An company with an data center pays less for an Kw/h than an apartment and they can write the electricity bill off as expenses while the customer has to pay income tax and VAT on to the power use, it would been an way better deal to simple demand payment for time played but the you can not targeting kids and other unaware 

Now I could imagine people playing the enemy but you have PvP for this, also think decent AI with decent voice generation like it would be amazing for NPC as it don't take much. 

Now in the diamond age, one lady had an acting job in an VR game, it was an murder on the orient express style who done it there the payer played the detective. And in this setting having other people for the important roles make sense if you have an high budget, in an war game much less so as interactions are much more scripted because the settings. 
 

[Spacescifi]

On 10/7/2021 at 9:43 PM, SOXBLOX said:

@Spacescifi Yeeeaaaahhhhh, no. I don't see much of Western civilization going for this. The first issue is that it's so bizarre. That world isn't real. Most people in the West today are at least very mildly concerned about getting away from screens. If I had to guess, I wouldn't see any more than a third of the American population, and probably less of the general European one, even seriously considering this.

But let's say a subset of the population does accept this. What happens to them? They start to live more and more in the realm of their virtual environments, to the detriment of their real-world contacts and connections. They lose touch with reality and become dependent on the illusion in their heads. Sound familiar? Yep. It's just an extension of modern social media. (Plus, it also sounds like the screen-rooms in that Ray Bradbury dystopia.) So maybe we can extrapolate its effects? You bet. We get something halfway between a zombie apocalypse and 1984.

First of all, democracy would die. The people in charge of the virtual world would inevitably twist it to their own views. It would be the greatest propaganda machine yet. Don't think it would happen? It already has. Check out the modern internet. Who decides what is "misinformation"? Are they always necessarily right? No. Humans are both self-interested and really, really good at telling themselves "This is for the common good, so it's okay".  Bad combination.

And what happens to the people who are duped by the system? When they realize they've been duped, what do they do? Or what happens if they're addicted, but the power is out or something? There's a saying, "Civilization is just three missed meals away from mass rioting." This is the same thing, just on steroids.

And then there's the element of fundamental human needs. Contrary to what many people seem to think, humans need more than just food and water. We need a solid way to interpret the world and make sense of the things that happen to us. We need actual relationships with family and friends for the benefit of our mental health. The virtual world you describe just won't cut it. The people who put themselves in it will suffer because of that.

So this is just a bad idea on so many levels. Fortunately, from a cynical point of view, the entire thing defeats itself. The adherents who accept the bio-tech and jump in to the virtual world will become unproductive members of society. They won't propagate. In fact, a lot of them might end up so sunk in depression or whatever that they just snap. Like I said, that's the cynical view.

What really scares me is what if the people who like this sort of idea try forcing it on us? ("For the common good, according to us," remember?) The forcible hijacking of my sensory inputs? I think I'd rather die, like the animal that chews its leg off in order to escape from a trap.

TL;DR: It's not compatible with human nature, and it won't work in a free society. It could be forced on people, though.

 

Well.... as stated the entire simulation is hyper realistic... literally 'matrix' like.  One camnot really tell the difference between reality and the sim unless they actually KNOW. what reality is supposed to be.

Seriously... you can work, sleep, have a family and kids and die in the sim.... if you are an NPC. For an NPC, the sim is their 'reality' and they know of nothing more. And the NPC's are just as realistic in character as real people because they are.... just they don't live in our 'reality' but in one made by the OSAI.

 

Humans can work, eat, have families, but are unable to actual have NPC offspring by mating with NPC's. Also human death in sims is not truly the case if they were just banned or logged off.

 

Yes... this whole scenario COULD be forced... and not just a machines take over like the Matrix.

 

Rather, one nation COULD use such technology to subjugate the populace rather than having to forcibly deal with resistance cells 24/7.

And this way could be preferred if life in the sim is better than IRL anyway.

 

Poor folks eat the same stuff day in and day out.

In the the sim? Whatever the OSAI is directed to have available under the authority of the conquering nation.

 

Imagine if third world folks lived like average westerners in the simulations? They may not want to go back ...

Edited October 10, 2021 by Spacescifi

[SOXBLOX]

11 minutes ago, Spacescifi said:

And this way could be preferred if life in the sim is better than IRL anyway.

(Ignoring the fact that these sim-dwellers would still have to eat, sleep, and stuff in the real world...)

Aaaaand there's the same blasted postmodern notion that humans just need to be fed and watered to be happy.* I would like to point out that many rebels and resistance leaders throughout history have been well fed and watered. Case in point: the US's Founding Fathers, who were wealthy merchants or farmers/plantation owners, and stood to gain little materially by revolution. Yet they still revolted, and often lost their property or lived on slim rations. Why?

I would like to reiterate that humans are more than the most basic material needs. We're more complex than that. And that's why this won't work. Human nature will always fight against it. Which is a good thing.

* I don't want to pick on you specifically or anything. I just see this idea permeating many corners of our society in general, and I don't personally think that it's healthy. I'd like to at least expose it in our thinking. 

[Spacescifi]

14 minutes ago, SOXBLOX said:

(Ignoring the fact that these sim-dwellers would still have to eat, sleep, and stuff in the real world...)

Aaaaand there's the same blasted postmodern notion that humans just need to be fed and watered to be happy.* I would like to point out that many rebels and resistance leaders throughout history have been well fed and watered. Case in point: the US's Founding Fathers, who were wealthy merchants or farmers/plantation owners, and stood to gain little materially by revolution. Yet they still revolted, and often lost their property or lived on slim rations. Why?

I would like to reiterate that humans are more than the most basic material needs. We're more complex than that. And that's why this won't work. Human nature will always fight against it. Which is a good thing.

* I don't want to pick on you specifically or anything. I just see this idea permeating many corners of our society in general, and I don't personally think that it's healthy. I'd like to at least expose it in our thinking. 

 

I am not saying it is healthy... it's a scifi scenario.

The cool thing is the hyper realism though...

And again... although the matrix never went into detail... I am sure there are ways to keep a human in a pod without it becoming full of human waste products. Just use monitoning and human staff and machines to clean it.

 

Actually... a human staff would be better to monitor the pods.

 

They could be fed without ever leaving the sim as they are not aware of the real world body inside the sim anyway..... which opens a whole nother can of worms if the human staff misbehave that is.... that's the point where even I don't want to discuss it.

Edited October 10, 2021 by Spacescifi

[SOXBLOX]

24 minutes ago, Spacescifi said:

 

I am not saying it is healthy... it's a scifi scenario.

The cool thing is the hyper realism though...

And again... although the matrix never went into detail... I am sure there are ways to keep a human in a pod without it becoming full of human waste products. Just use monitoning and human staff and machines to clean it.

 

Actually... a human staff would be better to monitor the pods.

 

They could be fed without ever leaving the sim as they are not aware of the real world body inside the sim anyway..... which opens a whole nother can of worms if the human staff misbehave that is.... that's the point where even I don't want to discuss it.

We seem to agree that this probably isn't a good thing... I'd suggest we put this and most of the other transhumanist stuff in the "morally-wrong/iffy tech" zone and bury it. Best to not give human nature the chance to try to use this stuff, IMO.

[Spacescifi]

10 minutes ago, SOXBLOX said:

We seem to agree that this probably isn't a good thing... I'd suggest we put this and most of the other transhumanist stuff in the "morally-wrong/iffy tech" zone and bury it. Best to not give human nature the chance to try to use this stuff, IMO.

 

We... you and I, will never have the power to make that call for the masses since the tech is scifi fantasy.

And if such were ever possible, either it would be stopped or would have both it's enemies and supporters.... which makes for great fictional drama BTW so thanks!

[kerbiloid]

5 hours ago, SOXBLOX said:

(Ignoring the fact that these sim-dwellers would still have to eat, sleep, and stuff in the real world...)

Zero problem.

Spoiler

 

Just put on the farmer a HUD VR visor and let him work and play at once, merging both realities in one, the augmented one.

So, he will be able to see the field with coordinate grids and numbers.
Every hundred feet a pink fruit appears with ta-dam and flies up. Every acre -  a music and applause.
To the right from him there sits his wife avatar, giving advices and at once a permanent video call.
To the left there is a speaking virtual catgirl, healing his self-estimation after the first one's advices.

When the day is over, the farmer walks to the bar, where 99 bottles of same moonshine on the wall are virtually painted into fifty shades of collection liquors.

After the bar he returns to home following the big red arrow, indicating him the direction of every next step (like in google street view).
(Wealthy men may buy an exoskeleton. It will allow to carry two bags instead of one, and as a bonus it can carry the owner from bar to home even if he is unconscious.

The car driving and parking skills of such augmentation are just priceless.
Even being deadly drunken, he can park his pickup between two cars with a half-inch gap, and the road police never stops him.

5 hours ago, SOXBLOX said:

who were wealthy merchants or farmers/plantation owners, and stood to gain little materially by revolution

Physiologically.
But economically they escaped from taxes and limitations getting much greater trading abilities, which are much more important for a businessman than trivial food and water.
(One could remind about the First Congress petitions, and what made them unhappy in Boston.)
Maybe not themselves personally, but themselves as a community and its next generations.

Edited October 10, 2021 by kerbiloid

[DDE]

On 10/10/2021 at 7:33 AM, SOXBLOX said:

Aaaaand there's the same blasted postmodern notion that humans just need to be fed and watered to be happy.

Funny. The pre/anti-modernists generally blame modernists proper for such materialistic views.

On 10/10/2021 at 8:11 AM, SOXBLOX said:

We seem to agree that this probably isn't a good thing... I'd suggest we put this and most of the other transhumanist stuff in the "morally-wrong/iffy tech" zone and bury it. Best to not give human nature the chance to try to use this stuff, IMO.

The problem is that there are benefits to racing to the bottom with iffy tech, to a point where one can drastically change the balance of power in the world. Look at India...

Spoiler

...and then consider that the US, China and perhaps even Russia have shut the door on the topic.

But that's an aside over a pet cause. @Spacescifi's hypothetical is effectively soma, a method of escapism from a terribly dull world. So long as cheap computing resources are available, I can see it being promoted to keep a large population of unneeded proles at basic sustenance, precisely to satisfy their non-material needs at no expense.

I also wonder about the capacity of the human mind to serve as a GPU of sorts: how much can it be made to fill in the blanks of a virtual reality in lieu of computer graphics? It's clearly capable of doing VR when we dream, and getting it to cooperate with the simulation is obviously more efficient than trying to trick it.

 

[kerbiloid]

46 minutes ago, DDE said:

I also wonder about the capacity of the human mind to serve as a GPU of sorts: how much can it be made to fill in the blanks of a virtual reality in lieu of computer graphics? It's clearly capable of doing VR when we dream, and getting it to cooperate with the simulation is obviously more efficient than trying to trick it.

Unlike the primitive species, a human has a sitting part enough capable to implant a secondary brain and use it as GPU.

[DDE]

On 10/11/2021 at 9:51 AM, kerbiloid said:

Unlike the primitive species, a human has a sitting part enough capable to implant a secondary brain and use it as GPU.

Well, one of my favorite pet ideas was para-VR through artificially-induced lucid dreaming. Seems efficient and elegant.