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proclamo t1_ivrzthi wrote

I have several doubts:

  1. If we can have isolated brains, the next logical step is not having even a brain. We would upload all our brain into a simulated one and continue living the simulation. It would be more efficient.

  2. What would be the incentives to living such a live as this? Only experience continuous pleasure? Having an endless orgasm or being drunk for years?

The current incentives can be always reduced to be the herd's alpha male or female. Every one of the living beings in this planet would become the dominant agent if they'd had the opportunity. In a simulated world, how would be reproduced that? Nobody would like to be under an alpha. Everybody will choose to be the alpha in their respective simulation, then we'll have only interactions with synthetic people.

If we only have success in ours lives, and we can even avoid the pains of the real existence like hunger or facing the death, would we want to live? Why?

This remembers me when the agent Smith said that in a previous version of Matrix where everybody was happy, the people suicide in mass. Or the Borges tale "The inmortals" where those inmortal people lived in holes in the ground passing the days because they've already lived all the possibilities infinite times and they didn't expect anything new in their lives.

  1. This makes me think such virtual worlds would be only an entertainment.
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Redvolition OP t1_ivs7l5m wrote

FDVR via isolated brains only requires three relatively low tech things:

  1. An artificial vascular system feeding the brain nutrients and essential chemicals. Has already been done in pig brains kept alive 36h in 2019, if I am not misremembering.
  2. Connection with sensory nerves that send and receive signals. There are already rudimentary technologies around this, mostly targeting prosthesis control and sensory implants.
  3. AI world generators. They don't even need to be fully realistic for being sufficiently immersive. Think of how many hours people dedicate to playing utterly unrealistic games.

Mind uploading, on the other hand, may require advanced nanotechnology or who knows what else.

On the philosophical side of the analysis, if we inspect human behavior, you will see that a large portion of us are essentialy pleasure seeking machines. We create entire colossal industries dedicated to nothing but mindless entertainment: games, anime, porn, film, and psychoactive drugs just to name the biggest ones.

For every person with complex long term aspirations, there are hoards that would be content with repetitive mindless pleasure within a synthetic reality. Comparing the most charming, endearing, heroic and romantinc real human lives with a fate of artificial pleasure as a plugged up brain ignores the vast swarths of humanity living mundane, gruesome, sickened, stressful, and humiliating existences. Maybe for the most fortuituous of us, switching to an artificial realm of being would be a downgrade in experience, but for most it will be the best thing that ever happened to them.

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proclamo t1_ivsmvul wrote

I have to find the study, but somebody tried to calculate the size of our memories in all live and it was like 120MB only, the "holes" we are constantly inventing them.

Almost all of us knows we can't be the herd alpha. Most people even don't try it, and other people like us takes the option to study and progress in our careers, mainly in knowledge works. We discover this provided us intellectual pleasure, and we'll find useful advantages of having literally everything at hand in a virtual reality. But this doesn't mean we don't want to be alphas, at least in our minimum local. I am with you, for some people will be the best experience of their lives, but my doubts are if they and us will be happy in a perfect experience like this.

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StarChild413 t1_ivwsw1o wrote

so, what, we should just plug into experience machines because capitalism sucks and we use drugs and read fiction instead of, I don't know, having real heroic quests defeating real villains or whatever the fuck

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w33dSw4gD4wg360 t1_ivudd77 wrote

We won't be thinking the way we do now, most things we do are guided by the primitive nervous system and our subconscious. By the time we have this technology, we will likely only enable the animalistic attributes for fun, just as we sometimes walk for fun

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