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apple_achia OP t1_iv9to8t wrote

Reply to comment by [deleted] in In the face on the Anthropocene by apple_achia

And I think you’re not grasping the nature of representation versus reality. This is Not a Pipe. End of story. And if you’d rather secede from reality to enjoy the falsities of images, just because they promise you infinite dopamine, and you truly believe that wouldn’t lead into a self referential loop of madness, if you’d give up your birthright for shadows on the wall, then do it. The rest of us will work on making something worth living for. Go on, cut yourself off from the tree of life to a simulacrum, this technology would be nothing but a new method of assisted suicide, or did you forget that life actually needs to propagate itself to keep going. Good luck simulating that. I’ll be building it, with all of the risks and difficulties entailed.

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[deleted] t1_iv9uh34 wrote

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gangstasadvocate t1_iv9y7qm wrote

We already trip to try to broaden our experience horizons. I would definitely want to be in something like this

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apple_achia OP t1_iv9vsid wrote

You seem to believe what we perceive IS reality and therefore if I stimulate my brain to believe there is a steak in my belly, there may as well be. You have a shallow understanding of what is constructed and what is objective. None of us perceive objective reality, it’s ontologically impossible, but we are having a physical impact on the universe and our senses, as well as how we construct our understanding from the stimuli those senses provide, are our only shot and understanding that reality. And obscuring that through a self made deception of the senses is NOT reality.

Sure, I’ll concede many people would definitely choose this. But that would functionally just be mass suicide by a pleasurable means. It’d be treated in society the same way a heroin overdose is. After all, that’s also tricking the senses into experiencing bliss, while your physical body withers away.

And then there’s the question of how this would affect climate change? Wouldn’t the least materially well off be the most likely ones to seek the refuge of a false pleasurable world? The people who use exponentially more resources than the rest of us, and are therefore causing the problem, would for the most part go on with their lives. And if they don’t, but the system is totally unchanged, we just have the option for the pleasurable suicide of simulated reality, others would take their place like they always have when the powerful die.

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[deleted] t1_iv9xmvk wrote

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apple_achia OP t1_iva1nvp wrote

That’d the thing though, definitionally it wouldn’t be reality. It would be meaningless. You wouldn’t be in a mansion, your body would still be here. Wasting away while your mind toils away, praying that nobody on the outside turns off the lights

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[deleted] t1_iva4m12 wrote

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apple_achia OP t1_iva5v5b wrote

Yes making yourself unable to die IS a big concern of life huh? And stripping away all of your defense mechanisms in favor of being a nothing but a very vulnerable brain does make that a bit more difficult.

Well I’d say primarily that in spite of your insistence on leaving behind the prison of the flesh, like it or not, your brain is made of meat and it uses some 20% of all the calories you take in. The idea that you should just lop off the bits that aren’t useful to make life more efficient takes it as a given that these parts are NOT useful, while in reality we have very few vestigial structures. Humans have bodies because brains don’t form let alone survive on their own. We have stomachs because chemical energy from plants and animals are an efficient and available way to gain energy without needing a society to build and maintain an entire power plant, a power plant mind you that when you’re in your little brain box, nobody will be watching. We have limbs because it’s dangerous to sit in one spot for your entire life, the emergence of animal life taught such a lesson to the plants and fungi. You’re talking about voluntarily neutering yourself so you can just sit about castrated from the physical world and pretend really hard that you’re happy, that you’re a god and not a clump of cells in a box.

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[deleted] t1_ivaa7uc wrote

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apple_achia OP t1_ivaafyo wrote

Have fun killing yourself by seceding into the pleasure machine

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[deleted] t1_ivac3nv wrote

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blueSGL t1_ivbqiey wrote

> Pain and pleasure are just the beginning.

we have such sights to show you. (I couldn't resist)

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ThoughtSafe9928 t1_ivfuaw9 wrote

u/apple_achia when they die and realize they are actually currently in one of these simulated realities, completely unaware and realize that what they hold so dear to be their true body never actually existed in the first place

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