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I too am surprised. In my mind, it has long been inevitable that - at the very least - the wealthy population of the planet will retreat into a virtual world, a
by lusr 15y ago
I too am surprised. In my mind, it has long been inevitable that - at the very least - the wealthy population of the planet will retreat into a virtual world, ala "The Matrix".
It's not just the benefits of instant, unlimited sensory gratification (which are IMMENSE - real-world physical attraction and location no longer becomes an issue for finding partners, you can enjoy any activity at any time which in the past could cost you enormously in terms of money and/or risk: in a virtual world there's no spread of diseases if you're not in physical contact with people, no risk of death driving @ 140mph, etc. which also means a reduction in health costs, etc.).
It's simply far more efficient in many ways: why physically travel to work when you can have virtual meetings, offices, etc.? You could attend university anywhere in the world regardless of your location. Doctors could operate remotely where it's physically cheaper to live. Sitting at home all day (or in a Matrix farm) also means using less energy so you eat the bare minimum, don't need to own a car, don't need a big house with a garden, etc. On a larger scale, how useful will e.g. war become as the demand for physical resources falls? The efficiencies are mind-blowing; it is globalization of both personal and economic activities and human resource allocation without the physical constraints.
Ironically enough, in the same vein as your comment, I would expect people on HN are more likely to be fans of such an extreme form of telecommuting, telelearning, etc.
Not that I'm not suggesting all of this is good or healthy. Who knows what the psychological or physical effects of such a lifestyle will be.
Speculating further: At that point, why bother exploring the universe? Or more interesting: to what extent would wealth exist? It seems people would only need enough wealth to maintain their physical bodies and access to the planetary supercomputer. Accumulating more wealth could prove very difficult since classical economics falls apart in a virtual world where supply can become potentially unlimited over time. Would it be possible to accumulate sufficient "real" wealth to construct devices capable of finding and communicating with aliens, and/or visiting them? Would industries capable of building such devices even exist after everybody moves into the matrix after a few thousand years? All in all, once civilization reaches a particular level of technological development, it seems like there's a very small window where anybody will see benefit to OR have the resources to communicate with aliens.
- arethuza 15y ago"At that point, why bother exploring the universe?" Greg Egan's novel Diaspora has significant number of people choosing to live in fully uploaded virtual environments - the problem being that you do have to start paying attention to the outside universe when it tries to kill you by destroying the hardware running your environment: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_%28novel%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_%28novel%29 Iain M Bank's Feersum Enjin covers some of the same ground: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feersum_Endjinn http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feersum_Endjinn
- arctangent 15y agoIain M Banks also has the similar concept of "subliming" in several novels: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sublimed http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sublimed
- keenerd 15y agoAnd don't forget about his most recent book, Surface Detail, that is entirely about simulated realities for the dead.
- arethuza 15y agoNot to mention the construction of virtual Hells in Surface Detail: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_Detail http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_Detail (A truly ghastly concept).
- nkoren 15y agoI generally agree with the premise that the wealthy (ie most of the developed world) are retreating into stimulation of their pleasure centres, aided and abetted by an industries which are increasingly focused upon satisfying this. And I also agree that it's a real risk to the ultimate future of our species. This is hardly a new idea: Olaf Stapledon wrote in "Starmaker", in 1937, about a VR-obsessed species anaesthetizing itself into extinction. What I find curious is that many of the <i>very</i> wealthiest are rejecting this trend in very absolute terms. Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Robert Bigelow are spending their fortunes on real hardware rather than virtual reality, with the explicitly stated goal of making humanity a multiplanetary species. Other billionaires (Paul Allen, Richard Branson) are making complementary efforts, although without quite the same degree of aspirational rhetoric. If they collectively succeed in establishing small colonies on Mars, then the initial rigours of colonial life will not allow for the kind of idle narcissism that is currently feasible for the wealthy on Earth. Whatever the fate of Earth, that will at least postpone the onset of a cultural coma for our species. I tend to think that if this happens, then complete culture death at the hands of artificial pleasure is no longer possible. Once we're out of the deep gravity well of Earth, the marginal cost of establishing additional colonies elsewhere is very much lower; if even a very very small minority of the population keeps the spirit of evolution alive, then that will be sufficient to spread through the universe. So, I don't really see this as a good solution for the Fermi paradox, since it seems highly improbable that EVERY civilisation would succumb to video games before becoming multi-planetary.