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?
To expand on this, one thing I haven’t seen in the comments yet, is how pivotal and amazing this would be for the handicapped and disabled community. I myself have a broken body and being able to do things in VR that I can’t in the physical world would be incredible.
I mean, seeing as this is not yet a reality… Have you looked into lucid dreaming?
Actually I have, but as soon as I realize I’m dreaming, I instantly wake up. So annoying!
This makes me wonder, how often do people’s disabilities manifest in their dreams? Presumably the rates would be different for those born with their disability and those who got it through illness or injury later in life.
For me, I became ill later in life. It’s been over ten years now of me living with my disability. In my dreams, sometimes I’m normal, and sometimes I’m not. It’s weird, seems like for me personally, it’s 50/50.